He stopped pacing and turned to face her. His gaze held hers, but he said nothing. Admitted to nothing.

A frisson of uneasiness made Julia hesitate. She considered dropping the matter altogether. After all, what difference did it make? The two of them weren’t going to end up together. But she wanted to know. She had to know.

“I wonder how many of those stories are true,” she said.

Captain Blunt appeared strangely unmoved. “All of them, very likely.”

She stared at him. “But . . . you don’t even know what this person said, or how terrible it might have been.”

“I don’t need to know. If the actions described to you were brutal, cruel, and entirely lacking in humanity, I probably committed them at one time or another.” His scarred mouth twisted in a sardonic smile. “I told you, Miss Wychwood. I wasn’t a very nice man.”

Twelve

The fine hairs lifted on the back of Julia’s neck. She hadn’t anticipated Captain Blunt admitting to the behavior Lady Heatherton had accused him of.

Perhaps he didn’t fully understand the crux of the accusations?

“You can’t have done those things,” she said.

His black brows lifted a fraction. “Did you not hear me, Miss Wychwood? I deny nothing.”

“But you don’t know the—”

“What did this person tell you? That I was a monster? I freely own to it.” A faint thread of bitterness colored the captain’s voice. “Surely, you don’t require the particulars.”

Julia frowned. She didn’t know what response she’d anticipated from him, but it wasn’t this scathing admission of guilt. It was too frank. Too brazen.

Something about it wasn’t right.

It was that hint of bitterness. That, and something else. An odd glint of iron-forged resolve in his eyes, as if he were a man who was willingly—almost determinedly—confessing to a crime he hadn’t committed.

“Ah. I see that you do,” he said. “Where to start? Shall I begin with the way I executed prisoners who were trying to escape? Or with the manner in which I dealt with cowardice and insubordination in the ranks?”

He came to stand in front of her. His posture was vaguely combative.

She drew back from him, her fingers gripping tight to the bench.

“There were floggings. Brandings. Other punishments—as creative as they were cruel. Naturally, I insisted on carrying the sentences out myself.” He came closer still, his legs brushing the swell of her skirts. “The deserters I sometimes shot, depending on my mood. And for minor infractions—”

“You don’t have to tell me,” she managed at last. “I don’t want to know.”

“Don’t you? Forgive me. It seemed you were curious.”

“No. That is, I am, but only because . . . Because I can’t believe—” Julia struggled to give voice to the worst of it. The accusation that he’d been not only excessively harsh in his punishments but unjust, too. Unchristian. “Is it true you beat a soldier nearly to death for giving bread to a dying prisoner?”