Page 49 of Scandalous

As was his practice in a brothel, he’d engaged for a meal, drink, and the best-looking woman in the house. The food had been excellent, as had the wine. The woman, also, was much finer than those in most port towns. She’d also been eager and skilled.

Not, apparently, skilled enough.

Martín groaned and immediately regretted it. His last memory had been of paying the madam three times the amount she usually charged in exchange for her promise to keep the lack of activities to herself. At the rate he was going, there wouldn’t be a whore in existence who wasn’t privy to his embarrassing secret.

Martín had sent the woman from his room and proceeded to get drunk, as if that would help him forget that his cock had refused to function for an unprecedented second time in a row—at least it wouldn’t in the presence of a whore.

Once he was alone, his treacherous brain had replayed the episode with Sarah over and over again. Just recalling her powerful orgasm had given him an erection of raging proportions. Instead of feeling relief that his breeding organ still functioned—after all, his cock had been the center of his existence his entire life—he’d felt only anger. What good was it that it did so in response to only one woman? A woman who was not available, and never would be after the way he’d treated her.

It had been a good thing he was alone and nobody else had witnessed the ensuing orgy of self-pity. Not to mention that the only way he’d been able to vanquish his insistent arousal had been to satisfy his own urges, something he’d not been forced to do since he was a boy. And certainly never while in a building filled with dozens of perfectly good whores. Martín’s face heated with shame at the memory.

After two pots of coffee, a hot bath, and a larger breakfast than he had believed he could eat, he was ready for Sarah when she showed up precisely one hour later.

He wouldn’t have thought it possible, but the two hours that followed were even more humiliating than the previous two nights. She treated him like a stranger she’d been engaged to teach. She was polite yet distant, gentle, yet firm. The lesson was nothing more than a business transaction. Gone were the small personal asides she’d previously included while teaching him. Gone were the warm smiles and uninhibited praise.

It was misery. And it was all he could do not to push her from the room and go back to bed.

But Martín survived the lesson, his body becoming almost weak with relief when she stacked up her books and papers and left. He’d survived today, but he did not know how he could tolerate such treatment for the remainder of the journey.

Apologize.

The errant thought hit him like a stray piece of shot.

Apologize? Where had that come from? It was not a thought of his making; perhaps he was still drunk?

Martín looked down at the desk to the page he’d been working on, a sheet of practice words and sentences. His large loopy handwriting looked nothing like Sarah’s, which was consistent and uniform. Just like she was. She’d been consistently open and caring from the beginning, even while holding him at gunpoint.

She had behaved the same way with him while he had been . . . Martín stopped. Why go in that well-trammeled direction? He’d done what he’d done, and nothing could undo it. Apologize? He snorted and crossed his arms. He would not apologize, and nobody could make him.

Nobody.

He grasped the quill and signed his name with a flourish on the blank paper in front of him, as if he had just struck a deal and made his mark to seal it.

Nobody.

* * *

When Martín later reflected on the weeks that followed Tenerife, he could say, in all honesty, they were some of the worst of his life. True, they were nothing compared to being a slave, so they were not the most terrible days of his life.

Sarah treated him with a politeness that made him recall his boorish behavior every second they were together. Not a single personal comment or discussion occurred during the weeks of tutoring that followed. If he made a joke, she ignored it. If he smiled at her, she ignored it. When he thanked her for the dictionary, she ignored him.

All she allowed were the same businesslike transactions Martín had with any other member of his crew.

Her cool behavior was even more jarring when he walked past Graaf’s cabin—which he admittedly did more often than was necessary—and heard laughter coming from behind the closed door. It was all Martín could do not to smash through that door and pull the Dutchman’s head from his shoulders.

Every time he saw her strolling the deck with Daniels, it was like a boot to his groin.

Each afternoon she spent reading to the men who gathered before her on deck was like having a treat dangled before him that was just out of reach.

Her reading was miraculous, her voice changing with each and every character. Martín lingered on deck just like all the others while she spun a web of magic over his men. Over him. He hated that he held his breath in suspense as he braved the world’s perils with Gulliver. Really, it was agonizing, and he’d brought it all on himself.

Martín stared at her face while she read, his rage enough to choke him. He wrenched his eyes away from her profile and looked up. Beauville was watching him. His first mate’s face was impassive, but Martín swore he saw a flicker of amusement in the other man’s eyes.

“Have you nothing better to do?” Martín snapped, ignoring the fact that he, too, was lounging and listening instead of working.

Beauville moved along, his lack of argument making Martín even more irascible. He repressed the urge to yell at the other lounging men and instead stalked below deck. He was about to enter his cabin when he noticed the Dutchman’s door was open. Why wasn’t the fool up on deck with the rest of the fools? Martín strode to the open door and looked inside.

Graaf was hunched over his miniscule desk, concentrating so hard he didn’t hear Martín’s approach.