“He was able to teach me more than anyone else had, but there was nothing to be done for the fact that I’m simply lacking. I don’t have the capacity to read and learn the way other men do. The way ladies do. My sisters are far my intellectual superiors, but they had to marry and have children. Susanna would have excelled at Cambridge or Oxford. Alas.” Still gripping the book, he cleared his throat. “Mr. Chisholm tried everything to teach me, but it was hopeless. He made sure to drill me in vocabulary. Made sure no one in society would ever know from a drawing room conversation. It was all he could do.”
Hawk stood there in the face of Plum’s defeat and found he hated it. He’d worked for days to cow him, but now Hawk was decidedly—most inconveniently—unsettled. “How can this be, when your mind is not diminished?”
Plum laughed, a harsh bite of sound. “I wish I knew. Here, I’ll demonstrate.”
Opening the book again, he struggled through the first part of the scene, his voice lacking any inflection, mixing up small words and stumbling over others, with names especially garbled. He didn’t pause in the proper places, all the words streaming together in a slurry as if they held no meaning, as though he was reading a foreign language.
Hawk held up a hand. “Enough.” He sat back heavily on the side of the bed, his stitches straining, fire in his thigh. He ignored it. “I believe you.”
“Thank you,” Plum muttered, head down, still holding the book to his chest like a shield.
“What does your father make of it?” He had a feeling he knew the answer. Not that he should care. It’s merely curiosity.
Plum raised his head, expression grim. “As much as my father wanted me when I was an idea, the reality has been a marked disappointment. Susanna and my tutor did their best to shield me, but of course my father found out the truth. He was furious.” He shuddered. “He insisted I wasn’t applying myself. He…”
After a few moments, Hawk pressed, tension stringing tighter through him. “What did he do?”
Plum stared at his feet. “When I was ten, he rapped my knuckles with a ruler until I was able to read a verse from the Bible without stumbling, until I could say every word properly. After an hour of failure, he’d broken my hand. It swelled up terribly. Susanna and Jane were horrified. I think he was too, because he left me alone after that. He accepted I was a useless dunce. The truth is, he probably won’t pay a penny to get me back.” As soon as the words escaped, he jolted, eyes wide.
For a moment, Hawk couldn’t quite catch a breath. Bainbridge would pay. He must. Before Hawk could respond, Plum added, “I didn’t mean—no, you see, of course he’ll pay the ransom. Everyone will know about it, and he’d never be able to abide seeming weak.”
Acid roiled Hawk’s stomach. If Bainbridge didn’t pay and the men were denied their prize, it would be a bloody mess.
“And he always speaks highly of me outside the family, boasting of my fictitious accomplishments. He won’t let me be killed by pirates. He does value me. In—in his own way.”
“He’d better.” Hawk’s fervor for the ransom remained strong, while the urge to strangle Walter Bainbridge with his bare hands had intensified intolerably.
It was nonsense to be affronted for Plum’s sake that Walter should treat him so poorly because of his difficulties reading. After how determined he’d been to father a son, Walter still wasn’t satisfied, even though Plum was smart and capable and—
Enough. Hawk quelled the absurd urge to offer some reassurance. The boy was his prisoner! He was satisfactory. Nothing more, and nothing mattered but getting the money. Exacting revenge.
Hawk remained confident that Walter Bainbridge’s pride would rule the day. “He will raise the ransom or face far too much ridicule and scrutiny from his peers in the New World.”
Plum nodded eagerly. “Yes. He hates to be seen as lesser in any way. Even if I have to work myself to the bone to repay him, he’ll find a way to raise the money. Susanna and her husband will see to it. Susie loves me truly and is impossible to resist when she sets her mind to something. She has always had a way with our father.”
Hawk grumbled, “Your father had better pay.” They sat in awkward silence as he cursed himself for engaging with his captive in the first place. Then he said, “I suppose I’ll just have to read myself to pass the time.”
Holding out his hand, Hawk waited for the book. Plum passed it over, then retreated to his corner. Hawk stretched back on the bed gingerly, his wound aching. He opened the book, its pages slightly yellowed and delicate, the binding beginning to come loose. Plum sat with his legs pulled in, his forehead resting on his knees.