Bewildered, trying very hard not to let her fear show, Regan did her best to ignore the ever-increasing crowd of men gathering around her. Some of them, grinning toothlessly and stinking of fish and worse, stuck out filthy, trembling hands to touch the velvet of her dress.
“Ain’t never felt nothin’ so soft,” they whispered.
“Ain’t never had me no lady before.”
“Think ladies do it the same way as whores?”
Faster and faster she began to walk, weaving away from the hands and the bodies placed in her way. No longer did she think of keeping the sea to her back; all she thought of was escape.
The men of the docks seemed to toy with her just as they had the night she’d been wearing her nightgown, but it was when the young, virile, hungry sailors from the ship found her that the relatively gentle games ceased. When the sailors realized there was only one woman and not fifty as they’d been told, they grew angry, and their anger was directed at this one frightened-looking female.
“Here, let me at her. I need more than a feel of her pretty dress,” leered one vigorous young man, reaching out and grabbing the shoulder of Regan’s dress.
The fabric tore all the way to the top of her breast, exposing one fat, soft mound that made the men laugh delightedly. “Please stop,” Regan whispered, backing away from the sailors, only to have three pairs of hands lift her skirt and slip up the back side of her legs.
“She may be little, but there’s a lot of her in the right places.”
“Stop larkin’ about. Let’s have at her.”
Before Regan was aware of what was about to happen to her, just as she seemed to hear Travis’s words about men forcing her to do what they had done together, one of the sailors gave her a firm push, and she fell backward over the men behind her. With one futile effort at a scream, she tried to right herself, but the men under her, scrambling away, held her under an ocean of grabbing, exploring hands. Over her, grinning wildly, were the sailors.
“Now, let’s see what’s under those pretty skirts.”
The man put his hand on her skirt, and Regan kicked him in the face, sending him sprawling. Her arms were pinned above her head by the men behind her, and the second after she kicked her ankles were grabbed, legs pulled wide apart.
“You won’t kick me, missy,” laughed another sailor, grabbing the edge of her skirt.
One second he was above her, smiling at her terror, enjoying her struggles against the hands that held her, and the next he was flying through the air, and grabbing his shoulder, which was quickly reddening. The sound of the shot seemed to come after the sailor flew away.
Two more shots rang across the tops of the men’s heads before they began to react to something besides their vicious sport.
Regan, still held by the men, was first aware of their silence, and when she felt their grip loosening she kicked out, freeing one leg. The next moment an angry, violent Travis stepped over her, and before the men could comprehend what was happening, Travis grabbed arms, necks, belts, whatever was available, and sent sailors and waterfront riffraff flying through the air.
Shaking with fear, Regan lay still as, one by one, every hand was taken from her body. Travis straddled her hips, his back to her, a pistol in each hand. “Anyone else like to try for the lady?” he challenged.
Backing away, looking like the untamed, cowardly scum they were, they muttered at Travis for spoiling their fun, but no one openly opposed the dangerous-looking American.
Sticking the pistols into his belt, Travis turned and looked down at Regan, watched her panting with fear, and quickly noted that most of her clothes were intact. With one swift gesture he bent and threw her over one shoulder like a sack of flour.
The breath nearly leaving her, Regan slammed against the back of him. “Put me down!” she demanded.
Travis gave her buttocks one hard smack, which was fortunately padded by the thick velvet, before nodding to the two other men who still held pistols on the cowering crowd, and started back toward the inn.
One of the sailors, the one Regan had kicked in the eye, yelled after Travis that Yanks certainly knew how to treat women, and the others laughed, glad they’d had no fight with the angry man. The sailor Travis had shot limped away, back toward the inner structures of the waterfront.
Regan didn’t say another word to Travis as she bounced along in the awkward, embarrassing position, and she was glad her long hair hid her face from passersby, especially people at the inn. By the time he’d climbed the stairs and reached the room they’d shared, she was ready to tell him what she thought of his treatment of her, that he was little better than the ruffians on the street.
But her courage left her when Travis slammed her into the bed so hard she dove through a foot of down-filled mattress, striking the rope lacing below. Gasping for air, she surfaced, pushed her hair out of her face, and looked up into Travis’s livid, raging temper.
He didn’t give her a chance to speak. “Do you know how I found you?” he said through clenched teeth, the muscles of his jaw working vigorously, hands on hips. “I hired men to walk the waterfront and to report to me when there was a commotion. I knew if I waited you’d show up, and when you did they’d be all over you.” Leaning forward, he snarled at her, “You lasted longer than I expected. What did you do, hide somewhere?”
Watching her face, he saw that his guess had been correct. He threw up his hands in frustration while taking heavy steps across the room. “What the hell am I going to do with you? I have to keep you locked up to protect you from yourself. Don’t you have any idea at all what the world’s like? I told you what would happen if you left here, but you didn’t believe me. No, instead you had to get yourself nearly ra
ped and possibly killed. The first time I found you, you were being chased by men, and now, through your own fault, it’s happened again. Did you think it would be different the second time?”
Holding the torn top of her dress together, she toyed with the luscious velvet of the skirt. Her mind was working hard to block out what had just happened to her, to make it seem like one of her dreams. “I thought because I was dressed like a lady, they wouldn’t….” she whispered.
“What!” Travis bellowed, then sank into a chair. “I cannot believe anyone could truly, actually think—.” He cut himself off to look at her, so small, probably unaware that she was shivering, a long scrape down the side of her face, and once again he felt possessive about her. “There’s no question about it now. Tomorrow you leave with me for America.”