Page 7 of A Captain So Callous and Cruel

“Explain what that means.”

“It’s a brothel,” she explains to me now, like it’s an obvious question. “I was in training.”

“To be a whore,” I say doubtfully, still not believing the words in her story. She is too well-kept, too ethereal to be a common whore in a brothel. Someone would have noticed her. Someone would have ruined her by now.

She nods. “Yes.”

Eyeing her, I sit silent for a moment, watching for signs of suspicious behavior. “You would have fetched your Madame a pretty penny.”

“Not after my mother died. She accumulated debt, and I was going to be made to take on that debt.”

“So?”

She shrugs. “So…I ran.”

“Then what?”

Her face falls, clearly a little put off by all my questions. “Within twenty-four hours, I was caught by a slaver and placed on the market.”

I pour whiskey into my glass and take a large gulp, thinking about her story. I turn it over in my head many times, still disbelieving it. “How did your mother die?”

“She’d been ill for a long time.”

“Yet, she was servicing men?”

Her eyes narrow on mine, and I see that defiance poke out from beneath her meek expression. “How else were we to eat? You think indecent men care what they’re rutting in?”

I grin at her, surprising her. “No, I suppose we don’t.”

She looks away, disturbed by my expression. She folds her hands together tightly, channeling her fears there.

Yes, I detect the fear in her strongly now. She is unsure.

I take another gulp of my whiskey. “Have a bite, Red. You earned it.”

She doesn’t budge, though for the briefest of moments, she peeks down at the food in front of her..

“Not hungry?” I press. “It is poor manners to ignore an invitation by the Captain of a very fine vessel as this.”

“It’s not that,” she whispers. “I’m just scared.”

I cough out a laugh. “Are you now?”

Scared is not the emotion she elicits.

“Yes.”

“Tell me what you’re scared of?”

“You.” She swallows, squeezing at her hands again.

“I suppose you’ve heard of me then.”

“Yes.”

“You’re right to be scared,” I tell her. “But I’m not hurting you, am I?”

She shakes her head. “No.”

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