“Worried for your reputation?”
More like worried for her sanity. He’d driven her to the knife’s edge with his performance earlier. Her body still hummed and throbbed in all the wrong places.
“You will need to sleep, Daniella. I need you alert.”
Fine. She rose with all the dignity of a princess and approached the bed. “You take up too much room.”
“Stop stalling and get in. I can hear your teeth chattering.”
She bit down on her bottom lip but did his bidding. The floor had been very cold and a draft had breezed in from the crack beneath the door to chill her through the thick wool.
When she finally settled and had warmed up somewhat, he spoke. “What do you want to know?”
Did she want to talk to him now? While they were so close? Patrick’s earlier revelations meant she had to try to discover more about Amelia and James’s mother and why her father may have taken them. “What would you have done in my situation?”
“At what point?” he asked, seemingly unsurprised by her line of questioning.
“I suppose at the beginning.”
“When was that? When the men noticed you as a woman and not a girl?”
“I never saw that as a problem.”
“You may not have but I would stake my title on the fact that your father did. How long do you think he would have been able to fight the men off? During how many battles did he risk his own life to keep one eye on his enemy and the other on you?”
“I have always held my own in a battle and my father knew that.”
“So why did he overlook your skills and see the vulnerable woman rather than the cut-throat pirate?”
A good question. How long had she stubbornly denied what sat right in front of her? But shouldn’t the final choice have been hers? Should she not have had more of a say in where she would reside? Her father had a residence: she could have stayed at home and looked after the men who lived there, too old or injured to serve on a ship.
No. She would no more have agreed to that than to London. She snorted and rolled over, forgetting for a moment where she was and how close he was.
“What is it?” James asked, his face only a fraction from hers in the candlelight. How does he always manage to smell so good all of the time? she wondered.
“I suppose I wish I was born a boy,” she eventually said. “It would have been so much easier.”
“But you could have been born a lady. Then you would have had other choices. You certainly wouldn’t have known another option lay on the seas.”
“I have witnessed the lives of ladies and I would have rather been born a fish.”
He laughed then, the sound echoing in the small room. “You have power, Daniella, you just don’t know how to use it or where to direct it.”
“I know how to use a sword, how to disarm my opponent and kill a man. I can swim, run, ride. Power is in strength.”
“Not always. Power can also be in deception; it can be in charm or wiles. My sister can stop an entire ballroom of dancers with the right amount of hysteria.”
“I will not use my sex as a weapon and neither should she. It misrepresents women and is probably why the men of London think they can own their wives.”
“Ah, a radical at heart then?”
“Not at all, I merely believe women should not be used as property or pawns, or be powerless to change their futures, their lives, the lives of their daughters.”
“You are wrong, Daniella. The women of London learn from an early age to manipulate their husbands. Tears, for example, can be most useful under the right circumstance and used sparingly. It is not an admission of weakness but a strong tool and as old as time itself.”
Daniella huffed. “I do not cry.”
“Ever?” He sounded incredulous.
“No. Well, perhaps if I am physically hurt.”
“Not even when you were so ceremoniously dumped on your brother?”
“Not even then. Tears do not alter anything or take back one’s actions or change courses.”
“You are wrong there also. It works for Amelia every time.”
“She manipulates you with salty water and you let her?” She almost laughed thinking of the Butcher cowering before his sobbing sister.
“I let her think she does, yes. I love her enough that if she can make herself cry to change my mind, then it is important enough to maybe change my mind over.”
“Perhaps it is genuine despair at her circumstances, rather than counterfeit.”
He shrugged. “Whichever. It is effective.”
There was no point arguing further so she changed the subject. “And you said she was traveling the continent with your mother?”
“I believe they are somewhere near Italy as we speak. Probably spending all of my money and laughing about it over copious amounts of warm chocolate.”
“Tell me about her.” She had known he would lie, expected him to, but for some reason it still smarted.
“Amelia?”
“I want to hear more about your family.”
“Why?”
“Why not? I feel as though I know nothing about you.”
“You don’t need to. You only need to know that you can trust me to do the right thing when this is over.”
“Can I?” She didn’t miss the “when this is over” part. She would no more trust him than she would try to swim with a shark. Now that she knew exactly what he stood to lose in all of this, his agenda, she had to come up with her own backup plan. He would trade her for his mother and sister, if her father did indeed have them, or try to. Nothing was going to change that. It’s what happened to her after that that would ultimately decide her fate.
“I think you would like Amelia,” he said, a tone of wistfulness in his voice.
“What makes you say that? It sounds as though we are total opposites.”
“You have some similarities. You are both stubborn as old mules.”
“I’m not sure that was
