Page 17 of Ruthless, But for Her

“I am now Deputy Warden,” he had said, his chest full of a pride so excessive, it had left no room for anything else.

He had taken her that night more roughly than ever before.

“Continue looking at her that way and today will be your last.”

The harshness of her captor—Ashton's—tone pulled Cassia's attention back to the present. She turned to see who he had been speaking to, but one fisherman looked like the other. Sailors, very few women, and the roughest looking men that made even The Einar's crew appear as if they were gentry, filled the streets.

“Leif said he will be along after securing The Einar,” Ryker said as they continued down a narrow alleyway. Cassia struggled on the uneven cobblestones to keep up.

“We will need a meeting to discuss potential retribution,” Ashton said. But she could tell he was distracted, seemingly on her behalf.

Ryker and Ashton continued to speak, Ryker driving the conversation. Ashton seemed to respond only when absolutely necessary.

She focused on his expression as a way to avoid looking at her surroundings.

His face could have been carved from stone. There was a perfect stillness to it, as if the world around him were nothing more than a distraction he had long since stopped finding interesting.

The question had been wanting to come out of her mouth since he had made the statement, and though Cassia had been trained from an early age that silence was her defense against the world, she couldn't help but ask it.

“Who am I to meet?”

Neither spoke. The two men exchanged a glance.

“Go ahead of us. Tell her what happened here today. We will be along,” Ashton said to Ryker.

Without further comment, Ryker turned and disappeared down the alleyway.

Ashton sighed, as if Cassia and her question were a burden. She would have liked to remind him he could have avoided such a burden by not taking her captive in the first place.

Instead, she held her tongue.

He stopped so abruptly that the man behind them walked into him. As weathered as the sea they had just sailed in on, this man’s skin was sun-kissed and lined. Though he had likely seen no more than thirty summers, perhaps the same as Ashton, he appeared much older.

As he spun toward Ashton, seeming about to make a comment about their collision, the man raised his head and looked at her companion.

He muttered apologies and backed away, all but running from them.

How odd.

Taking turn after turn through Mere's End, they finally made their way to a building with a wooden sign above the door. On it, an otter held a mug, and the word Cuthbert's was carved beneath it.

“When we go inside, I will take you through the back first.” He did not look at her. “With that exception, stay by my side.”

“Because I am your captive,” she said.

She'd been too bold already. She wished the words had gone unsaid.

“For your safety,” he added quietly.

He led her through a narrow passage at the side of the building, little more than a gap between two walls, to a small yard at the back. There stood a wooden structure, a privy of some sort, rough but private. He waited outside without being asked, his back to her, watching the alley.

He was waiting when she emerged, and they made their way inside.

The alehouse was low-ceilinged and dim, smelling of woodsmoke and tallow. A fire burned at the far end and rushes rustled underfoot. The noise of men, lower than she expected, filled the room, the kind of talk that stops just short of argument and stays there.

A table near the front window had a view of Mere's End outside. It was occupied by two men with ale, but as they approached, both men stood without a word and moved away as quickly as the stranger in the alley had.

Ashton gestured for her to sit first.