The Blood of a Baron - K.J. Jackson Page 0,67

side of Westminster Bridge,” Wes said. “Who knows how many tore her townhouse apart—”

“They tore your house apart?” Desmond looked to Laney.

She nodded.

“They ripped it to shreds looking for the damn box. Presumably they killed Mr. Filmore. And five of them attacked us an hour from Seahorn.” For a long breath Wes’s gaze went to the ornate fresco on the celling—Hylas being bewitched, or bewitching, the nymphs. It was hard to discern.

“Again, I am sorry,” Desmond said to Laney and then shifted his attention to Wes. “Yet you still have it?”

Wes’s head tilted to Laney. “Laney’s been holding it. She’s the one that can. You know I cannot.”

Desmond nodded.

“I saw it.” A scratchy female voice cut into the thick air of the library.

All of them looked to the doorway.

Wrapping a shawl tight under her chin, Jules moved into the room, her steps wobbling, her body and face looking beaten to hell.

Desmond was to her in an instant, his hands around her to support her. “You need to be upstairs resting. How did you even walk down here? You don’t need to worry on this.”

“No. Not until I tell you this.” She glared at her husband. “You know I will worry and will get no rest if this isn’t resolved.” She pointed to the settee.

Shaking his head, Desmond gingerly walked her over to the couch.

She settled onto the cushions as Desmond stuffed small round pillows behind her back and around her to support her wrecked body. She fussed with her wrapper and shawl for several seconds before waving Desmond off and she looked to Wes and Laney as they moved in front of her. “I saw it—the box. In the middle of the pain I was in when I was having the babe. Such pain searing through my body—but there it was, in the middle of it all clear as the sun in a cloudless sky—I saw it.”

“Saw what?” Desmond asked, his hands at his sides twitching as though he wasn’t sure if he should pick her up and carry her to bed or step back and let her be.

She looked up to her husband. “What needs to happen to the box. Where it needs to go.” She looked from Desmond to Wes and Laney. “It needs to go to its origins—its home. That’s where it needs to be to set the curse to rest.”

Desmond heaved a sigh. “What? Jules—”

“No—listen to me,” Jules said. “I know this sounds mad and I don’t know if I imagined it or if I heard it once upon a time from my father or one of his men and am only just remembering it now. But the box needs to go home to where it was incepted. The power of it never should have come into the world as it did.”

The room went silent.

Jules looked to Wes and Laney. “Did you two see it? Do you know? Know the power it wields, what it can do to a mind, how it can rot it from the inside out?”

A quivering intake of breath came from Laney and she nodded. “We know. We’ve seen it.” She reached into the pocket of the plum dress and pulled the Box of Draupnir free, holding it outright in front of her in her palm.

No one made a motion toward it.

Laney lifted it slightly. “I was hoping someone might take it from me at this point.”

Wes tried to stifle a guffaw. Unsuccessful.

Jules’s look latched onto Laney. “You know, don’t you? You know we can’t just set it back into the world again in an indiscriminate way. We tried that.” Her hand ran across her brow, shoving back auburn strands of hair. “And we were wrong—so wrong to try and get rid of the Box of Draupnir to someone that deserved the curse. It was happenstance that your brother got the box instead of who it was intended for, and then he paid the price of it. I am so sorry. We had hoped…”

She paused, shaking her head as she looked solemnly to Laney. “It was wrong of us and the box cannot go to an innocent again. Nor can it fall into the hands of anyone evil enough to deserve the curse as they could hurt too many innocent people along the way. It has to go home.”

Madness.

As much as Wes liked Jules, she spoke of madness and was clearly addled from just giving birth. He had no patience for it, his fist curling, aching to strike the box out of