Page 37 of Ruthless, But for Her

Ashton's eyes found hers across the table and held.

“No,” he said. “I don't believe you will.”

CHAPTER 21

Ashton

They’d left Mere’s End behind them at the top of the bluff. Roland had come by water, to the one stretch of stone that belonged to no one, and so they’d been forced to go to him.

The path down from the bluff was wet the whole way, and worse near the bottom. Rock, then rock worn smooth, and finally the landing.

Someone had built it once before anyone in the village remembered. Stone laid out into the water, a few timber posts, black with rot, still standing where boats had tied off. They were mostly unused now. The sea had been taking it back for years.

Ashton watched his own feet.

Then hers.

The last of the light was waning. What was left didn’t reach past the end of the stone where the landing dropped away and the deep began. Salt, and tar, and the smell of a boat sitting close greeted them.

The coble was held off the end on a line, a lantern at its bow.

Ashton counted the men. Four on the stone, two by the boat.

“Closer to me,” he whispered as the five of them made their way out onto the stone. They walked close together, Cassia among them. The path was narrow. Near the end, it was too narrow for more than two people walking beside one another.

“Be careful. The sea is deep and unforgiving, even this close to shore,” Ashton said.

“You’ve mentioned that before,” Cassia responded.

She said it without the fire of the earlier meeting. This Cassia was too worried to be annoyed.

Once they were close enough that faces came into view, Ashton picked him out easily. He was standing in front, not surprising. His cloak good wool, cut to be seen, befitting the office of deputy warden, Roland stood tall. A leader of men, or so he probably wanted people to believe.

So this was the man who’d bought her, and hurt her and called it marriage…

Ashton had wondered what he’d look like.

He looked like nothing. A well-dressed man on a rotting stone.

Ashton marked where each of them stood, which one of them would move first and how far the water was from every pair of feet. Then he schooled his face into passiveness, resisting the urge to clench his fist or reach for his blade.

It was Sorren who spoke first.

“As you can see plainly, your wife is among us. Unharmed.”

All heads turned toward Cassia. While the others gave her their attention, Ashton counted the weapons the men carried.

“By rights, as her husband, I’ve come to claim Lady Cassia of Grantchester. And…”

“Husband and not deputy warden?” Ryker taunted, knowing full well that if he’d used that title here, every one of them would already have been slaughtered. It was only because he came as Cassia’s husband and not as a warden that any of them remained alive.

“I will mark the occasion as a very unfortunate misunderstanding and assume you stopped the Aldgate without knowing what precious cargo it held.”

So that was the way of it. Well-mannered. Controlled. A despicable excuse for a husband.

Ashton was beginning to see why Silas de Grey had chosen him. The two men were cut from the same cloth.

“Or,” Roland added, “do you demand coin for her return? Was this less a misunderstanding than something more devious?”