“Reckless and indecent.” Priest’s eyes flared. “I was always the one thing in your life you couldn’t polish or beat into obedience. So you ended two decades of friendship like a coward in a letter.”

A letter that destroyed Priest’s marriage. I’d left Priest that same day, crushing him beneath a double layer of pain.

“Two decades…” I did the calculation in my head. “You’ve known him since you were twelve?” I turned to Ashley. “And you were fourteen?” Good God, I would’ve only been a year old. I rubbed my head, overwhelmed, uncertain. “How did you meet?”

“Here at Ashley’s childhood home.” Priest gestured around us. “This was his bedchamber until he joined the Royal Navy at age twenty. When my whore of a mother sent me to England for work, the first Viscount Warshire, hired me as a hall boy.”

“Ashley’s father.”

Priest nodded. “As I showed steady ambition, I worked my way up to a footman and ultimately secured my position as the Groom of the Chamber. I was Lord Ashley Cutler’s personal valet and whipping boy for six years.”

Tingles of shock swept through me. I knew Priest had held various jobs as a boy, doing this and that for the gentry. It wasn’t until he was eighteen that he found Reynolds and joined the ranks of the Brethren of the Black Flag. So hearing he’d been a male servant was no surprise.

But Ashley’s servant? Here? That was difficult to process. By God, was that why the household staff knew Priest so well? Because they’d worked together?

“He’s twisting the truth,” Ashley said to me, his bearing stiff and severe. “Priest was my companion.”

“The companion of the master of the house. I saw to your every personal need.” Priest cocked his head, idly rubbing his chin without a trace of resentment in his gravelly accent. “I dressed you and styled you, accompanied you to every tedious formal engagement, and attended to your private arrangements. All your private affairs. How many times, my lord, did I personally wash that sizable cock between your legs?”

My indecent mind hungrily grasped at the sensual image he evoked, my insides fluttering and knotting.