Page 13 of Ruthless, But for Her

“Ashton, we need to leave. Immediately.”

He ignored Ryker.

“Was it her husband?” he asked, his manner rougher than it would normally be with a woman, but there was no time left for gentleness.

She flinched at the question. Then, as if deciding something, she drew herself up.

“Her husband is a hard man. Her dowry was large enough to restore his inheritance. Her father is a good man, but...”

He'd heard enough. Ashton had little desire to listen to the reasons why Lady Cassia had been married to someone like Roland.

He turned from her. “Good day.”

She stopped him.

“You will take care of her while she's in your keeping?”

Nell loved her charge, and likely felt guilt for her inability to protect Lady Cassia. He had no quarrel with her and therefore answered honestly.

“I will.”

Ryker had not been jesting. As they re-boarded their ship, Ashton was mostly successful in ignoring Ryker's litany of curses and questions about why he'd needed to speak with the maid.

The boarding plank groaned under their weight as they crossed back. Behind him, Ashton could hear The Aldgate's crew finding their voices again, the low murmur of men reassuring themselves that the worst had passed.

It had not, for all of them.

Leif had The Einar's stern swung to receive them, her hull kissing The Aldgate's with a dull thud as the two ships settled together in the swell. The moment Ashton's boots hit the deck, the oarsmen moved without being told, sweeps running out on both sides, long ash shafts dipping into the grey water in practiced sequence. The boarding plank was drawn back and lines cast off.

“Are you going to tell me,” Ryker said, falling into step at his shoulder, “or am I to spend the next four hours constructing a theory?”

Ashton moved toward the stern. Around them, the crew settled back into the rhythm of a ship underway, oars working, men moving as men do when they've done something enough times that it no longer required thought. It steadied him, that sound. It always had.

“Her husband is a hard man.”

Ryker was quiet for a moment. That was unusual enough to note.

“You went across a plank onto an English merchant vessel, at risk of your life and mine, to confirm something you already suspected.”

It was not a question.

“I went to confirm the degree of it.”

Ryker looked at him. Ashton did not look back. The Aldgate was already fifty yards off their port quarter, shrinking into the haze, her single sail beginning to fill as the morning wind found her. A cog under sail was a sluggish thing. She would reach Berwick by nightfall, carrying nothing now but her crew and the news of what had happened to them.

“And?” Ryker asked.

“Her dowry restored his inheritance.”

He said nothing more. He didn't need to. Ryker had grown up in the same world he had. He knew what it meant when a man married a woman for her money and owed her nothing after.

“Ashton.” Ryker's voice had dropped. Not concern, precisely. Something closer to warning. “What are you thinking?”

The wind shifted, carrying the smell of open water. Ahead of them, the fog was thinning, the horizon showing itself in pale strips of grey and silver. The Einar's bow lifted on a low swell and came down again, a motion so familiar, he barely registered it.

He was thinking about a woman who had not flinched.

He was thinking about a man who had bought a wife and called it a marriage.