Beautiful Torment *Book One of the Beautiful series*

14) Get a Ride?

By the time they arrived in Cresthaven, they were exhausted, sore and soaked. Despite her fatigue, Lucy jumped down from the horse, helping her friend off its high back. Both of them were dead on their feet as they limped their way into town. Going straight to the local stable, one of the first buildings in sight as they entered the vast port city.

Doing her best to ignore the giant fortress toward the center of the buildings, towering over the rest of the inhabitants. Knowing its occupants were probably nestled into their soft beds back at the retreat home some miles away.

A misting rain wet the air and formed halos around the lanterns fixed to the slate wood siding of the brown structure.

Lucy dropped their bags on the ground next to a waterlogged barrel before turning to her young friend. She felt her heart give a sallow squeeze, Victoria was shivering, lips pale with the cold. Her hands found the girl's shoulders, tugged the thick cloak more tightly around her body, and tried for a smile. "You stay out here little Red, I will not be long." She did not give the girl a chance to argue, but instead grabbed the lead of the queen's horse and guided it into the building.

Inside she found only a single stable boy was awake at the late hour. The young boy was brushing one of the horses they were housing as he looked up with a smile, which faded upon seeing the state of the late arrival. "My gods," he rushed over, taking the reins from her. "Let me help you."

Lucy simply shook her head, unwilling to accept any kindness with her friend still out in the cold. "I wish to surrender this horse I found wandering around the outskirts of the city," without further explanation, she turned and headed for the door.

Disregarding his insistence from behind her, asking for her to stay and at least get warm. Once she rounded the corner, the last thing she heard was his call of, "Wait, is this a steed from the royal stables?" Likely, he noted the royal crest stitched into the saddle.

The boy or his master would return the horse, and no one would be any the wiser to where the thieves had gone. To Lucy's great relief, the minimal coinage she had saved over the entirety of her life was enough to buy them a warm room and meal at one of the inns for the night. In the morning she would take them far away from this place.

Once settled in their room, Victoria stripped her soaked clothes and crawled into the single bed, shivering under the thick old quilt. Lucy started a fire in the stone fixture, tending it long enough to gather the red hot coals in the bath pan. A metal box that sat under the tub full of cool clean water, warming it to a tolerable temperature.

"Come on." She gathered her shivering friend and helped her out of her damp underclothes. "You relax and get out once you start to cool." Lucy kissed the top of her head, "I have to go tend to a matter before we can leave tomorrow." When Victoria argued, Lucy shook her head, "Do not worry, I will be right back." Walking over to the door, she only stopped to add, "Lock the door behind me." With that she left their shared room, waiting only long enough to hear that the door was in fact secured before throwing her damp hood over her head and leaving the inn.

The entire ride here she had been thinking of what Victoria had said about not trusting her anymore. She was willing to do anything to get the poor girl to safety, which meant doing something she swore she never would. If only to prove how much the friendship meant to her.

Sticking to the shadows, she approached the harbor where crew members slept aboard the various docked ships. Walking until she found one with its lamps still lit, hesitating before stepping out of the darkness and boarding the scrubbed deck.

After a minute of looking around, a gruff voice startled her, "You are not supposed to be here, lass." Whipping around, she came face to face with a frightening man who towered over her like Zeus incarnate. A scar stretched from one corner of his face to the other. Both his ears were lined with little gold hoops and a sword gleamed from the scabbard hanging off his hips.

Before she could lose her nerve, she hurried out, "I need to buy passage for me and my sister. I-I have not a copper piece to my name, but we are both hard workers. We will earn our keep, if you so choose."

The man's eyes looked her over, drinking in the disheveled state of her clothes, her skinny stature. Whatever he found made him sneer, flashing a silver tooth. "Find your passage elsewhere, this is no ferry." Throwing a thumb over his shoulder, he added, "Show yourself off my ship, I do not ask anything twice."

When he made a move to turn to walk away she called in a voice strained and desperate, "Wait." A thick lump of fear had taken root in her throat, but she swallowed hard against it. With shaking fingers, she undid the clip of her cloak and let it fall to the deck with a wet slap. The weight of her next words pressing down on her is more heavy than that of her coverings, "I can pay in other ways."

Her dress was low cut enough that it displayed the top of her breasts. The sight of them, pale as moonlight and velvet soft, caught his attention. Her entire life she swore she had never stoop as low as selling her body, but after what she had let Victoria go through alone. Plus without anything else of value to offer...

There were not many, if any, choices left.

Defeat and humiliation welled inside of her, but she pushed against the feelings. Her jaw clenched tight and she tilted her chin up defiantly, daring to meet the sea captain's smirking gaze. "Hmm." The hunger in his eyes was immediate, just like the men from Granston House. "What kind of ways are those?" His voice was a low rasp, sea spent and savage from his time away from shore.

As an answer, her trembling fingers pulled at the front tie of her dress, causing enough slack that it fell off her shoulders, revealing the tight bodice below. The captain came closer, making Lucy catch her breath. She held it in to keep from whimpering. Having a man this close made her so uncomfortable she was nauseous. The Duke's vile assault ebbed in the back of her mind, fresh and painful as the day he attacked her. But that was nothing in comparison to what Victoria had been forced to go through.

The captain reached up, his fingers brushing the tops of her full, silky chest. "Yes," he muttered, "This would work."

"You will allow us passage?" her voice hitched, the threat of tears breaking the words. Quickly adding, "And no one touches my sister."

The sailor looked over her frightened features, bolstered by her evident nervousness. "For your innocence, I will even guarantee you both safety from my men." She opened her mouth to ask him how he knew, but he silenced her with a finger to her lips, "I have bedded enough women to know when a young lady is still pure." Placing both hands on her hips, he pulled her close, without a care that her rain damp dress was soiling the front of his trousers. "You have a deal, lass." He leaned down, slamming his lips against hers as if sealing their agreement.

Lucy squeezed her eyes closed, doing exactly what she had told her friend to before being bedded by the Duke. She went somewhere far from the ship and its grungy captain, back to the warmth of their last resting place. Where Alexander was probably being bathed in riches and women. She let herself imagine it was his lips on her instead of the sea dried chaff of the man holding her.

However, when his hands roamed further down, cupping her backside through the folds of her skirt, the weight of his touch suddenly lifted. An odd sense of relief flooded her veins, but quickly became replaced by cold dread. Had he changed his mind? If so, how was she going to get them out of the city?

When she opened her eyes, her gaze was met with the broad shoulders of a mountain of a man. His cloak covered back retreated from her as he stalked toward the captain now laying thirty feet away on the ship's deck. "You dare lay a finger on her?"

Although she could not see his face, she would have recognized his voice even if he had spoken through a crowd of people.

"Alexander?" Her surprised breath earned her a heated glance over his shoulder. "What...?" Lucy pulled up her dress in a hurry, suddenly more ashamed than she had been before. She avoided looking over at the small handful of men waiting just on the dock, all adorned in uniforms of the Royal Guard.

"I will deal with you in a minute," the prince snapped back at her, returning his attention to the captain. "Do you know who I am?" He closed in on the man who was attempting to get up from somehow being thrown so far from where he had been fondling Lucy.

"This bitch's master?" Dusting himself off he met Alexander's glare with squared shoulders.