Page 103 of Barbarous

She crossed her arms. “I’ve noticed.”

“I laughed because I learned the saddle vandal is none other than your cranky servant Rowena.”

Daphne’s jaw dropped. “What?”

“The poor woman believed I had come to disrupt your life the same way Hastings had. She was only trying to protect you. I’ve told her she is to forget both the unfortunate incident as well as any thoughts of trying such a thing again. I can forgive her for it once; twice would be more difficult.”

Daphne’s mind raced, recalling all the times Rowena had railed against Hugh, detailing what an evil man he was. She shook her head, but that did nothing to dispel the thoughts.

“She must be unbalanced.”

“She sounded sane when she confessed. I think she was just doing the best she could to protect you and the boys. She feels nothing but remorse.”

Daphne had no idea what to say. None.

Hugh pulled her down until he could bite her lightly on the chin. “Have you lost your voice, my dear? Do I need to find some way to help you locate it again?” He raised his eyebrows suggestively, his other hand moving to the apex of her thighs, his hips flexing beneath her. Only now did Daphne realize what she was straddling.

“How can you jest about such a thing?” Daphne demanded. She gasped when his fingers slid into her curls.

“Oh, I’m very serious about this, I assure you.”

Daphne gritted her teeth at the bolt of intense pleasure his finger incited and gathered every bit of strength in her body to put her hand on his forearm. “Hugh.”

“Hmm?”

“Will you look at me, please? My face,” she amended when he continued to stare at the place between her thighs.

He looked up, a dreamy smile on his face. “Yes, darling?”

“You are very good at distracting me.”

“I intend to practice and get better.” She frowned and he pulled back his hand, his expression instantly—but not convincingly—meek. “But I can see that now is not the time—you have something you’d like to say, my dear?”

“Will you tell me what happened to your eye?” She steeled herself for the look of cold menace he’d worn the last time they’d spoken of his eye.

But he just smiled. “Of course I will tell you, darling. I did not mean that it should be a subject of mystery between us.” He reached back and stuffed a pillow beneath his head and then lay back, his hand absently stroking her knee. “The maiming itself was unpleasant but the circumstances surrounding it were worse.” His eyes flickered to hers. “I’ll have to tell you a bit of a story so it will make sense.”

Daphne nodded.

“Several months into my captivity I devised a plan of escape. I included in my scheme several other prisoners with whom I’d formed a type of brotherhood.” He paused, his expression pensive. “The experience of slavery is difficult to explain to one who has not known it firsthand. Suffice it to say the sensation of being owned and having no power is so engulfing it is often easy to forget you are anything other than a possession. The effect over time is debilitating and some men lose the battle against their transformation to chattel.” He gave her a grim look. “It was the look in those men’s eyes that scared me. I swore I would wage war to avoid becoming one of those men.

“The first skirmish in that war was to make the association of like-minded men who would support each other when the despair descended, which it often did.” A muscle jumped in his temple and Daphne felt a pang of guilt for opening this door. But it was too late to close it now.

“There were ten of us, a group small enough in number to avoid too much notice but large enough that we could temporarily crew a ship if we were lucky enough to escape. It took several months of painstaking work to develop our plan. We were very close to making our move when, without any warning, nine of us were seized and dragged to the sultan’s dungeon.

“One of our number was not present—a half-English, half-French sailor named Emile Calitain.”

Daphne felt a chill.

“Calitain had been a slave for perhaps a year longer than I. When he did not appear with the rest of us, I believed he’d fought against our captors and been killed. Unfortunately that was not the case.”

Hugh’s face was once again a mask of fury but at least he displayed none of the killing rage he’d displayed while choking the life out of Malcolm or fighting Calitain. His anger now seemed less . . . consuming.

“As luck would have it—bad luck—Faisal Barbarossa, the same man who’d captured me, was in port. Barbarossa was a cousin of the sultan, and when he learned about the escape plan and my part in it, he was more than happy to use his considerable skills to get the truth from us.”

Daphne didn’t want to ask, but if she didn’t, this history would continue to stand between them. “Skills?”

Hugh stared up at her, arrested by the word. He swallowed several times, hard enough that she could hear it.