I swayed, flinching in pain. “Will you spank her after you marry her?”

With a hand on my arm, he escorted me toward the sleeping cabin. “A gentleman does not spank a lady.”

He only spanks his whores.

Indignation steamed from my ears, but I kept my voice soft as syrup. “While you spend months or years away at sea, your lady sits at home alone, waiting, starving for attention. Left to her own devices, she’ll find ways to pass the time. Delicious, devious ways that involve ungentlemanly spankings from handsome footmen and burly gardeners.”

“The nuptials will proceed, with or without her maidenhood intact.” He released me in the aft chamber. “Go to bed.”

I searched his tone and features and found only the prosaic, unimaginative facts.

What did he feel? It was not fear or dread. Perhaps he felt a whole lot of nothing full of nothing.

Or perhaps he cared very much about his sweet lonely virgin and her potential transgressions. I wouldn’t know until I found a way to lift that cold mask. I was tired of seeing it. So goddamn tired.

I peeled off the stays and crawled into bed, face down and bottom up—a bottom that would be black and blue by the morrow.

Ashley left the cabin and returned moments later with the salve. He removed his clothing except the breeches and stood over me, his irresistible physique straight and proud with all those muscled indentations.

I turned my head and faced the wall.

He knelt beside me and, with the dispassionate hands of a doctor, applied more cooling medicinal ointment to my buttocks.

“Lieutenant Flemming treated my wrists last night.” I closed my eyes, melting into the glide of his touch. “As the ship’s surgeon, shouldn’t he be the one doing this?”

His fingers paused on my hips, and a tremor rippled through them.

“I am the only man who touches you here.” He splayed a huge palm over my sore backside.

The possessive declaration hitched my breath. I expected that nonsense from Priest’s mouth. But Ashley’s? What the unholy hell?

He yanked down my shirt and climbed off the bed, leaving me whirling in bewilderment.

“What about the forty pirates in the hold?” I listened to him move through the cabin. “Does the threat of them touching me still stand?”

“From Monday to Sunday.” He dimmed the lanterns and stripped off his breeches.

The bed sank beside me. I kept my face turned away, eyes closed. The coverlet tugged and stretched as he settled. Then silence.

Replaying our conversations, I slipped into drowsy introspection. The matter of his betrothed didn’t concern me. If he loved her, he would’ve put me in another bed. Or on the floor, for that matter.

No, his heart didn’t beat for her. If anything, he was looking for a reason to avoid going home.