Page 52 of Ruthless, But for Her

Cassia had settled in, seemingly either not noticing or not bothered by the attention she was still receiving from the Wild Boar's patrons. Ashton noticed. Each and every glance.

“The truth,” she said simply, taking a sip. She blinked, her thick lashes framing a set of innocent eyes peeking over a mug almost too big for her to hold. Then again, the Wild Boar saw very few women as patrons. “I may have been sheltered. But a sheltered woman can still read.”

Ashton was becoming more amused by the moment. But he refused to let it show, lest she think he did not take her seriously.

“I believe it. I saw your trunk of books. So tell me, which have you read that shed insight into the upbringing you believe I received?”

Whatever Cassia had been about to say was paused when a serving girl returned with a trencher of bread and cold fowl.

“I did not mean to insult in any way. Or presume I know what it was like to be raised at the Daisy. I meant only that I am not as delicate as everyone insists on believing.”

Had he ever engaged in such a discussion before? He didn't have to think very hard.

He had not.

Most of the women he had encountered were neither titled nor sheltered in any way.

“You wish for the plain truth?”

He was sure she didn't.

“I wish for you not to treat me as my father and my husband did. As if I were a pane of glass that might crack if a man breathed on it too hard.”

He took a bite of the fowl. It was better than it had any right to be, this far up the coast. The Wild Boar sat close enough to the water that fish and fowl came fresh, and Magge had never once served a guest something she wouldn't eat herself.

“The plain truth would be offensive. No gentleman would dare speak of it to a lady.”

Cassia stuck her chin into the air and looked at him with an expression that defied every word he'd just spoken.

“I am no lady but simply Alys, the widow of a humble wool merchant. A woman who kept her husband's books and walked his warehouses and heard every coarse thing his men said when they thought she wasn't listening. I have heard worse than you'd ever say to me.”

“Have you.” It wasn't a question.

“Try me and see.”

Ashton considered her over the rim of his cup. She meant it. That was the part he kept catching on, that she meant nearly everything she said, and had spent her life among people who never did.

“There is a word,” he said.

“Pardon?”

“When one of Margot's girls is uneasy with a man, she has a word.” He watched her. “She says it, and everything stops. Whatever is going on. However far it has gone.”

“And the patron?”

“Any man who hears it and does not step back...”

“Yes?” she asked.

“Would be dealt with.” That was all Ashton would say for now. “The word is mercy. Say it and I will stop.”

She cocked her head to the side, as if considering his words. As if she didn't believe him.

So he told her what she wanted to know, starting with the mundane parts. He spoke of running down to the docks as a young boy, buying fish and ale and bread for the Daisy. Of being raised entirely without privacy and learning the language of the docks, of the sailors. Interacting with all sorts. Nobles, visiting merchants, and even members of the clergy.

It was the first time, but not the last, she would gasp in surprise. But Cassia never asked him to stop. Not as he told her how their rules evolved. How each of them became the Daisy's enforcers.

And finally, he told her of what he learned from Margot's girls as a young man. He knew he was telling her more than he should. She was a lady, a recent widow… But Cassia had asked for the truth, and so he gave it to her.