“I was embarrassed,” she said, finally. “I haven’t been afraid of a man in a long time.”

“A man? Who? What did he do?” His own grip had tightened on hers at the thought of anyone hurting her.

She shook her head, looking away. Her cheeks were flushed.

“Just a pair of young … jerks. Loyalist jerks, no less.” She told him about the louts who had defaced the tavern’s sign and attacked her and Marsali.

“They didn’t really hurt us. They knocked me over—one of them pulled my feet out from under me, the bastard, and then they started dragging me toward the river, saying they’d thr—throw me in.” Her voice had thickened suddenly, and he heard the rage in it.

“There were two of them, Bree. You couldn’t have stopped them, together like that.” Jesus. If I’d been there, I’d have—

She shivered briefly and squeezed his hand hard.

“That—” she started, but had to stop and swallow. “That’s what Da said to me. After Stephen Bonnet raped me. That I couldn’t have stopped him, even if I’d fought.”

“You couldn’t,” he said at once. She looked down at her hand, and he saw that he’d squeezed it so hard that her fingers, which had been grasping his, had sprung loose under the force of his grip and were sticking out of his solid grasp like a bundle of crayons. He cleared his throat and let go.

“Sorry.”

She gave a small laugh, but not with any sense of humor in it.

“Yes,” she said after a moment. “That’s pretty much what Da did, only a lot rougher and on purpose.” The color had risen high in her cheeks, and her eyes were fixed on her hands, now clasped in her lap. “I wanted to kill him.”

“Stephen Bonnet?”

“No, Da.” She gave him a wry half smile. “He didn’t care. That’s what he was trying to make me do—try to kill him—so I’d believe I couldn’t do it, and so I’d have to believe that I couldn’t have done it. He humiliated me and he scared me and he didn’t mind if I hated him for it, as long as I understood that it wasn’t my fault.

“And I understand what you’re telling me, too,” she said, “I do.” And met his gaze straight on. “The thing is, though, I can usually make even men back up a little, or at least stop for a moment, and then I can either steer them into something else or make them go away. I mean—” She looked down her body and waved a hand. “I’m taller than most men, and I’m strong. When I’ve had trouble with some man on the Ridge, I’ve been able to face them down. So when that didn’t work this afternoon, I was—I didn’t expect that,” she ended abruptly.

It wasn’t a situation where tact would be helpful. He’d got a grip on his own fury; he couldn’t do anything about the boys—unless he saw the little bastards, and God help them if he did—but Brianna … he could maybe do something for her.