The Blood of a Baron - K.J. Jackson Page 0,68

Laney’s hand. He needed to get rid of it—for both their sakes.

His eyebrows lifted and he glanced at Desmond, then looked to Jules, keeping his eyes averted from Laney’s outstretched hand and the box. He was too close to acting like a madman as it was. His words came out strained through clenched teeth. “But where is it that the box belongs? Where is its home? Laney cannot hold it any longer, Jules.”

Jules’s right cheek pulled back in a cringe. “That I don’t know. I just know that I saw what I saw in the middle of the pain. The curse of it will not rest until it is returned to its rightful home.”

“What is that thing?” Jules’s aunt stepped into the room, holding a thick swaddle in her arms. Muffled cries drifted upward from the folds of the blanket. Lady Raplan lifted the babe in her arms. “This one is fussy, looking for his mama.”

Jules’s lifted her arm, waving her aunt into the room. “Elle, thank you for bringing him down. I’ll take him.”

Elle moved into the thick of the room and set the swathed babe into Jules’s arms. She stepped back, her gaze moving to the box in Laney’s hand, a curious smile on her face. “What is this? What are we looking at?”

Desmond moved slightly in front of Elle, his arm lifting between her and the box. “Nothing, Elle—it’s trouble—best you forget you ever saw it.”

She leaned to the side to look past Desmond to the box. “But I recognize that box.”

Everyone in the room froze, all eyes shifting to Jules’s aunt.

{ Chapter 27 }

“You do?” Desmond choked out the words, his eyebrows high. “You recognize it?”

Elle nodded.

“From where?” Jules asked.

Elle looked over her shoulder at Jules. “Near my home on the Isle of Wight. There’s a mosaic wall that features that box—only it’s big.” Her hands went wide in front of her. “But that swirl on the top of it—it is unmistakable—it is the same angry pattern. The mosaic is in the ruins of some Roman Baths deep underground. I was helping to excavate the area and we came across this hidden room filled with mosaics.” She shrugged and pointed at the box. “That box—or what looks like it—is on one of the walls and I always thought it odd, to waste the time and skill to set a picture of a box into tile.”

All eyes wide, Jules looked to Desmond. Wes looked to Laney.

“Can I see it?” Elle asked.

Laney moved so fast she nearly tripped trying to hand Elle the box.

Elle studied it, turning it about in her hands. “Does it open? There’s a mosaic on the opposite side of the bath of a box that is open. The color was faded but it looked like possibly a ruby or a garnet inside—it was hard to discern as there were a number of tesserae that had fallen off that creation.”

Desmond pointed to the top of the box. “Swivel the top to the left—there’s a seam you can’t see well.”

Jules’s aunt flattened her hand on top of the box and slid it. The ruby set into the ring sparked to life the moment the light of the chandelier above hit it. She shifted it in the light, letting it catch the sparks from above. “Oh, that’s pretty—magical even.” She nodded to herself as she stared at the stone. “I’m certain this is it—the picture of the box in the mosaic. It’s mesmerizing even, a thing of beauty. No wonder it was put into the tile.”

Elle snapped the lid closed and handed the box back to Laney. “It is so bizarre that there is a picture of it there and that the box still exists—that it ever existed. Those mosaics are fifteen—sixteen centuries old.”

The second the box hit her hands again, Laney’s body instantly went stiff next to Wes. The reprieve was too short—he needed to get that blasted thing out of Laney’s hands.

Laney’s jaw dropped, her mouth slightly agape as she stared at Elle. “You—you just gave it back to me.”

Elle’s head cocked to the side. “Yes. It is yours, isn’t it?”

Laney looked to Jules, then to Desmond and then to Wes. Her head swiveled back to Jules’s aunt. “You didn’t feel anything?”

“What?” Elle’s brow furrowed, her words drawing out slowly as she tried to understand. “Feel something? It’s a pretty stone and very interesting. Not to mention mysterious.”

Jules heaved a sigh, shifting the babe swaddled in her arms. “Since no one else will say it,