Scotty peered at her curiously, noting that she was more animated now and seemed almost chatty as she said, “Dree at first tried to convince us all to leave the house and return to our families, or find a different line of work. But most of us didn’t have families, and I wasn’t the only one who had been sold into the business by family members. None of us had an education, or training. We would never be maids or shop girls—none of us knew the first thing about either—so we did the only thing we did know.”
Scotty frowned at the realization that she’d stayed a prostitute even once she could have left it.
“But it was better now. No one beat us, not even the customers. Dree wouldn’t let them. She lived with us, protected us . . . She even put her money into fixing the house for us. Everything was fine. Well, at first anyway,” she muttered, her expression changing to dissatisfaction. “I suppose I knew things were going too well and it couldn’t continue.”
“What happened?” Scotty asked when she paused and stayed silent for several minutes.
“Oh.” Beth glanced to him with surprise, as if she’d been so lost in thought she’d forgotten he was there. Giving her head a shake, she said, “Well, the girls were afraid Dree would leave us. And why not? Nothing was holding her there. She wouldn’t take our coin. She wouldn’t take payment in trade even from the girls who were willing. There wasn’t anything keeping her with us, and none of us understood why she hadn’t already just up and left. The girls were scared and started to . . . act up,” she said finally.
“Act up?” he asked, now curious.
Beth grimaced. “Getting all catty, and nasty and fighting . . .” She rolled her eyes. “Dear Lord, the fighting!” She shook her head with remembered disgust, and then said, “But then one night, three drunk men attacked one of the girls as she was coming home. Dree was there at once to protect her, of course, but was terribly injured in the doing.
“All of us rushed out when we heard the cry and carted her back inside. We got cloths and water and such and the like, but every minute we were all sure she would die. We had seen the wound she’d taken. It was a wonder to us she’d managed to finish off the attackers before she died, and then a wonder she didn’t die before we got her back in the house. But we were all positive she would die there with us . . . only when she didn’t and we finally got around to cleaning the wound, it was already healing.
“Uneducated we may have been, but we knew there was something wrong with that. It just plain wasn’t normal. We surrounded her and demanded answers. What we didn’t know was that she was weak from blood loss and we smelled like mighty fine steak to her at that point. Desperate to get us away from her so that she could go find blood, she told us everything, all about immortals and that she was one.”
Beth grinned. “I suspect Dree expected us to all be horrified, consider her a monster now and flee. No doubt she figured that later, after she’d found a blood source and recovered, she’d have to hunt us each down and wipe our memories. But not a one of us ran away, or screamed or even fainted. Instead, we were all oddly relieved.”
“Relieved?” Scotty echoed with surprise, and she nodded with amusement.
“Yes. You see, finally here was a way we could repay her. She had taken care of us, and taken nothing in return. But she needed blood to heal, and we could give her that. When Mary asked, Dree admitted she needed to feed on blood regularly and hunted to get it, and again, we could give her that and save her the need to hunt. It could be an exchange instead of us being beholden to her and terrified she might up and leave one day. Dree would continue to keep us safe and we would keep her fed. Everyone was happy,” Beth said as if it was simple logic. “And so we went for the next nearly twenty-five years.”
“Ye were happy selling yerselves?” Scotty asked with a sort of bewilderment. That hardly seemed to fit with a woman who had repeatedly risked being beaten to death to escape.
Beth hesitated, but then blew her breath out and finally said, “No. I mean, it was not the life I expected to lead. As a child I thought I’d be like my mother, grow up, marry and have children,” she admitted and Scotty suspected from her expression that it might have been the first time she’d ever admitted that, even to herself.
“But of course,” Beth assured him, “I’d marry a good man, not someone like my father. I’d marry someone like our neighbor Mr. Hardy, who was always ever so kind.”
“Then why did you not do that once Dree had saved ye from Danny?” he asked with confusion. “Dear God, ye risked being beaten to death to escape, and then simply settled into the life afterward. Why?”
“Because, as you know, no good man would want a whore for a wife.”
Fifteen
Beth’s words echoed in his brain. “Because, as you know, no good man would want a whore for a wife.”
She’d sounded neither angry nor sorry for herself. She had said it as a simple statement of fact, and Scotty felt like she’d punched him. After all, it was exactly why he had hesitated to claim her, wasn’t it? And they weren’t merely two mortals who’d fallen in love. They were life mates with all that encompassed, and yet he had struggled with it. He was such an idiot.
“Yes. I tried to escape over and over,” Beth said now. “But I knew I couldn’t. I knew he’d drag me back. There was really nowhere for me to go. I think in truth I hoped he’d beat me to death, because I—no, not even just I—all of us felt like we were damaged goods. We were the refuse of society. We had been sold like cattle, abused and treated like trash. We felt sullied, not fit for a respectable life anymore, and everyone around us seemed to agree and made sure we knew it. The family members who sold us, the brothel owners and Danny who peddled us, the men who bought our time and then used and abused us, even the children who spat on us in passing for fun. And then there were the ‘good women.’ With never once a kind word or smile, they’d move as far to the side as they could in passing, sneering down their noses and gathering their skirts close as if we were diseased and whoredom was catchy.”
She smiled sadly. “How could we even imagine that anyone would hire us for a respectable position? Or that a good man like Mr. Hardy would want a woman everyone else despised? Hell, after all of that, it was even hard to believe that Mr. Hardy was as good as he seemed. Perhaps he too beat and choked his wife at night because it was the only way he could perform.”
Scotty cursed under his breath, wishing he could find and punish every single man, woman, and child who had made her feel this way. And then he closed his eyes in shame as he realized he was one of them.
“Besides,” Beth said more cheerfully, “it did change. Now we could choose whom we accepted as our clients and were free to say no if we wished. And we did. We all worked much less than we had before. Dree somehow managed to have Danny’s house put into our names, so we never needed to worry about a roof over our heads. All we needed to concern ourselves with was coin for coal, candles, clothing, and food and such. And without Danny or anyone else taking all our money, we didn’t have to work as hard or as often. I myself was able to drop down to just two clients. Two of my regulars, who were kind men I liked, who were generous and who I knew would never hurt me.”