Worth Any Price (Bow Street Runners #3)(78)

"I promise you that I would never-"

"I'm not asking for reassurances or promises," he said harshly. "I'm stating a fact. There is a part of me that you don't want to know."

"In the past you've asked me to trust you. In return I ask you to trust me now. Tell me what happened to give you such nightmares. Tell me what haunts you so."

"No, Lottie." But instead of leaving, Nick remained in the room, as if his feet would not obey the dictates of his brain.

Suddenly Lottie understood the extent of his tortured longing to confide in her, and his equally potent belief that she would reject him once he did. He had begun to sweat heavily, his skin gleaming like wet bronze. A few strands of sable hair adhered to the moist surface of his forehead. Her longing to touch him was untenable, but somehow she remained where she was.

"I won't turn away from you," she said steadily. "No matter what it is. It happened on the prison hulk, didn't it? It has to do with the real Nick Gentry. Did you kill him, so that you could take his place? Is that what torments you?"

She saw from the way Nick flinched that she had struck close to the truth. The crack in his defenses widened, and he shook his head, trying to navigate past the breach. Failing, he gave her a glance filled with equal parts of rebuke and desperation. "It didn't happen that way."

Lottie refused to look away from him. "Then how?"

The lines of his body changed, relaxing into a sort of wretched resignation. He leaned one shoulder against the wall, facing partially away from her, his gaze arrowing to some distant point on the floor.

"I was sent to the hulk because I was responsible for a man's death. I was fourteen at the time. I had joined a group of highwaymen, and an old man died when we robbed his carriage. Soon afterward we were all tried and convicted. I was too ashamed to tell anyone who I was-I simply gave my name as John Sydney. The other four in the gang were hanged in short order, but because of my age, the magistrate handed me a lesser sentence. Ten months on the Scarborough ."

"Sir Ross was the magistrate who sentenced you," Lottie murmured, remembering what Sophia had told her.

A bitter smile twisted Nick's mouth. "Little did either of us know that we would someday be brothers-in-law." He slouched harder against the wall. "As soon as I set foot on the hulk, I knew that I wasn't going to last a month there. A quick hanging would have been far more merciful. Duncombe's Academy, they called the ship, Duncombe being the officer in command. Half of his prisoners had just been cleared out by a round of gaol fever. They were the lucky ones.

"The hulk was smaller than the others anchored just offshore. It was fitted for one hundred prisoners, but they crammed half again that amount into one large area belowdeck. The ceiling was so low that I couldn't stand fully upright. Prisoners slept on the bare floor or on a platform built on either side of the deck. Each man was allowed to have sleeping space that was six feet long, twenty inches wide. We were double-ironed much of the time, and the constant rattling of chains was almost more than I could stand.

"The smell was the worst of it, though. We were seldom allowed to wash-there was always a shortage of soap, and we had to rinse with seawater. And no through ventilation, just a row of portholes left open on the seaward side. As a result, the reek was so powerful that it would overcome the guards who first opened the hatches in the mornings-once I even saw one of them faint from it. During the time that we were locked down from early evening until the hatches were opened at daybreak, prisoners were left entirely to themselves, with no guards or officers to observe them."

"What did the prisoners do then?" Lottie asked.

His lips parted in a feral grin that made her shiver. "Gambled, fought, made escape plans, and buggered each other."

"What does that word mean?"

Nick shot her a swift glance, seeming startled by the question. "It means rape."

Lottie shook her head in bewilderment. "But a man can't be raped."

"I assure you," Nick said sardonically, "he can. And it was something I had a rather strong desire to avoid. Unfortunately boys of my age-fourteen, fifteen-were the most likely victims. The reason I stayed safe for a time was because I had made friends with another boy who was a bit older and a damned sight more hard-bitten than I."

"Nick Gentry?"

"Yes. He watched over me when I slept, taught me ways to defend myself...he made me eat to stay alive, even when the food was so foul that I could barely swallow it. Talking with him kept my mind occupied during the days when I thought I would go insane from having nothing to do. I wouldn't have lived without him, and I knew it. I was terrified of the day he would leave the hulk. Six months after I'd boarded the Scarborough, Gentry told me that he was due to be released in a week." The look on his face caused Lottie's insides to tighten into cold knots. "Only one week left, after surviving two years in that hellhole. I should have been glad for him. I wasn't. All I could think about was my own safety, which wasn't going to last five minutes after he left."

He stopped, sliding deeper into the memories.

"What happened?" Lottie asked quietly. "Tell me."

His face went blank. His soul had clenched hard around the secrets, refusing to release them. A strange, cold smile flickered on his lips as he spoke with utter self-contempt. "I can't."