Hugo and the Maiden

for weeks. He’d been a whore since he was fourteen, and—with the exception of the few times in his life when he’d been too ill to work—he’d rarely gone a day without engaging in some form of sexual activity.
Back when Melissa Griffin had owned Solange’s she’d ordered him to take brief holidays every year. What Mel never knew was that Hugo had spent those holidays at an expensive London hotel where he’d continued to work, taking those clients who were eager enough for his body and skills that they would risk coming to him outside the safe confines of the brothel.
Hugo gingerly lowered himself to his knees to grab a fistful of sawgrass to scour out the shitty pot. He held his breath as he scrubbed, thinking about Melissa, the closest thing he’d ever had to a friend—although he wasn’t sure Mel would say the same about him.
The gorgeous red-headed madam was also the only woman Hugo could recall ever lusting after—before now—although not for love or marriage.
Hugo had wanted Mel for the same reasons England’s most rich and powerful men had paid a king’s ransom for one night with her: not for her beauty—he knew a dozen women more beautiful—but because she was utterly unattainable, at least emotionally.
A man could buy Mel Griffin’s body—although she’d refused to sell it to Hugo, no matter how much he’d offered—but he could never have the rest of her: at least not until Mel met Lord Magnus Stanwyke.
Hugo snorted. The most sought-after madam in Britain caught by a bloody vicar. How was such a marriage even legal?
He shrugged away his annoyance: it was done now, Mel was married and disgustingly happy, with one brat and another on the way. Who would have ever believed that a whore could be so content as the wife of a clergyman—especially such a moralizing prick as Stanwyke?
Hugo tossed the shit-sodden grass into the pit and straightened his aching leg with a groan before limping over to the bucket of used wash water.
He still corresponded with Mel—even though she’d refused to give him any guidance when it came to running Solange’s because her husband forbade her to have any involvement with a brothel.
It would never cease to amaze him that there was a man alive that Mel Griffin would take orders from. But everyone, apparently, knelt to somebody.
Everyone except for Hugo.
Hugo enjoyed exchanging letters with Mel, and not only because he knew it drove her blond god of a husband half-mad to know his wife kept in touch with him.
He grinned at the thought, dumped some of the old wash water into the pot, and swirled it around before tossing it into the stunted foliage.
It was the last of the shit pots, so he limped back to the meeting house with the clean vessel, placed it inside, and then sat on the steps and watched the washing process that was taking place in the sheltered area between the tiny cottage and meeting house.
Devlin and Parker were stirring the steaming cauldron and talking in low voices like a pair of scheming witches. Hugo would have bet his left ballock they were discussing how to get the hell off this bloody rock.
It was a sign of Miss Martha’s innocence that she had told them when the authorities would come from the mainland with a prisoner manifest.
Young Lorn wasn’t in any shape to make a run for it, but the rest of them were healthy and hale enough. Although Hugo doubted the ginger-hackled man—Albert Franks—would try to escape.
It should have been obvious even to an idiot that Franks had never committed a crime in his entire life. He must have crossed somebody with enough money to have him scooped up and sent to the other side of the world. It fascinated Hugo to wonder what a mild-as-milk man like Franks could have done to so anger a person that they would have him kidnapped and transported.
Hugo extended his gammy leg and flexed it. He had no money, barely enough clothing, and no boat. There was only one way to acquire all three of those things: steal it from these impoverished rustics.
Hugo chewed his lower lip as he considered the little stone house the vicar shared with his daughter. None of the vicar’s clothing would fit him, Hugo knew they had no boat, and he doubted they possessed a single coin between them.
But the vicar must take a collection from his parishioners, mustn’t he? Even on an island as poor as this one there was a church near the little cluster of shacks they called a town.
Although he’d never stepped foot in a church in his life, Hugo knew about the concept of tithing—a way for the church to suck money out of their flock the way a poor man sucked the marrow from a bone. Ten percent of what they earned was the figure he’d heard. With Hugo’s luck the islanders would pay with fish or produce or livestock.
Hugo snorted. He could just picture himself heading south with a sack of mackerel over his shoulder and a laying hen tucked under his arm.
Miss Pringle came out of the tiny stone house. She ignored Hugo and went, instead, to the two men laboring over the caldron of laundry. The sleeves of her unfashionable day dress were rolled up to her elbows and her thick corn-silk-colored hair—her best feature next to those sinner’s lips of hers—had come loose in places and strands adhered to her damp temples. He’d seen no maid or scullery lass so Hugo knew she must keep house for herself and her father. And now there were the five of them—strangers she was feeding and tending.
At least one of whom was contemplating stealing from her.
It took him a long, disoriented moment to identify the sensation that crept over him: shame.
Since when had he been afflicted with such a loathsome emotion?
Hugo scowled and dragged his attention back to the business at hand: escaping. Besides, if he stole anything from the Pringles,