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.”

“Why two?” Scotty asked carefully. “Why not one?”

“Because both wanted to move me to my own lodgings and take care of me,” she admitted quietly.

“And ye didn’t want that?” he asked.

“I . . . What if they changed their minds and threw me out?” Beth asked instead of answering directly. “Or what if, once they had me all to themselves, they became cruel and abusive?”

“Ye didn’t trust them,” Scotty said solemnly, and then added, “And why should ye, when yer own father sold ye into such a business.”

Beth nodded solemnly.

“So ye kept two, so that . . .”

“Neither could think they owned me,” she said quietly. “But those two were enough. For fifteen years I was basically a mistress to two men, but then one died and the other had a change in fortune, so I started making penny pies and going out to sell them as I had with my mother. I’d learned to make proper pastry by then,” she added with a smile. “Mouthy Mary showed me.”

“Penny pies in the market,” he murmured.

Beth nodded. “That’s where I found out that my father was dead. Our neighbor Mrs. Hardy still sold warm peas by the market, and she told me. He died just days after he sold me. He’d taken the money from the brothel owner and drunk himself to death.” Her mouth hardened. “I didn’t mourn him.”

Scotty nodded in understanding, but simply waited. He knew how this story ended, just not all of the particulars.

“Life went on like that for another decade. A couple of the girls saved every penny they made, pooled it together and managed to buy a small pub to run together. Two more married and moved out of the house, and one died of pneumonia, but eventually all of us began to slow down. The girls took in less business, and I went to market less, especially in the winter. And then Dree convinced us to retire. She bought a house on the other side of London in an area where no one knew us and we could introduce ourselves as respectable widows, or simply old spinsters . . . whatever we chose. We could make friends and play gin and do needlepoint and be little old ladies.

“Dree put the house in our name. She said she’d recoup the money for the new house from selling the brothel, but she didn’t sell it for years, and I suspect she probably only got half her money back when she finally did. Though, I didn’t know it at the time. None of us had any idea how expensive that new house must have been. But we were so pleased with it,” she said with a smile. “Charming it was, and beautiful. Dree had it decorated magnificently. She had come to love each and every one of us over the years and spared no expense.

“Once we were settling nicely into our new respectable lives, we suspected she might start to feel at loose ends, so we suggested she take a vacation. Have a nice long visit with her family in Spain, and maybe take a tour of the Continent or the like. It was something she hadn’t been able to do while we needed her protection. She had hired a man named Cyrus to help protect us so that she could take short trips here and there over the years, but she’d never been gone for more than a couple days or a week or two before that. We felt she deserved a long vacation. So Dree decided she would go. She’d visit her family in Spain first and then perhaps take a short tour . . . but she wouldn’t be gone long, she assured us. She’d come back to check on us soon.”

Beth chuckled softly. “Now that I am immortal, I understand that time passes differently. Those decades she spent with us, while the better part of our lives and long in our minds, were not so long to her. But we didn’t know that then, and Dree’s short tour seemed interminable to us, though it only lasted a little less than two years. She wrote often, about once every week or two, and we wrote back if she said she would be somewhere for more than a couple of weeks. Anything shorter and she would be gone before our letters arrived,” Beth explained.

Scotty nodded, but asked with curiosity, “In all the time ye’d known her, had none o’ ye ever thought ye’d like to be immortal yerselves?”

“Oh nay,” Beth said at once, and then frowned and considered it for a moment more before admitting, “Well, mayhap. On those mornings when I woke up sore and achy with age, or when I noticed I just wasn’t as strong as I used to be and it wasn’t as easy to lift that bucket of water, or cart those logs to the fireplace. And sure, once or twice when I caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror on passing and blinked in surprise at the gray hair sprouting and the wrinkles multiplying and then turned to look at Dree who was still as young, strong, and beautiful as the day we met her . . .” She smiled wryly. “Mayhap I considered it for a moment or two then, but the whole drinking blood thing quickly made me shake my head.”

“And the others?” he asked.

“Ah.” Beth nodded solemnly. “There were several of them who wept at the loss of their youth and looks and would have happily accepted immortality. But there were just as many who didn’t want it at all, or only briefly considered it but feared it like me.”

“Feared it?” he asked with a frown.

“This was the eighteen hundreds, Scotty,” she said dryly. “Dracula may not have been out in print yet, but Dorian Gray was, and we were a superstitious lot. Nothing so fine as remaining young and healthy forever could be a good thing and without a steep cost.”

Scotty smiled faintly at the words and nodded in understanding. He had lived through that era as well.

“Anyway, as I say, nearly two years passed. I know Dree didn’t mean to stay away so long. Time flies when you’re having fun, as they say, and there was no reason for her to think she had to come back. And although we missed her, we were also feeling guilty for how we’d monopolized her all those years. So in our letters we told her we were having a grand time and she should too. And we were,” Beth assured him with a grin. “We enjoyed our new respectable rank. We made friends with the neighbors, had them in to tea and were invited into their homes as well. We did needlepoint, read books, played cards, and made up the most fanciful and tragic tales for each of us as to how we’d ended up widowed and in that house together.

“It was lovely,” Beth said with a wistful smile, and then the smile faded, and she added, “Right up until the day Jimmy came.”

“Jamieson Sterne,” Scotty said solemnly.

“Aye,” she murmured. “Apparently he’d seen Mary at the market. He’d considered making a meal of her, but when he slipped into her mind, he saw Dree there.” Beth paused and focused her gaze firmly on him. “You must never tell her this, but he said that seeing her there in Mary’s head was what made him follow her home rather than just feed. He used to be a privateer, you see, like our Dree, and they’d had something of a rivalry, but our Dree always beat him to the finest plunder. He hated her for always showing him up like that, and the way he saw it, by tormenting and turning us into his lackeys, he’d finally win.”

“The turning ye part may have had something to do with Dree, but the tormenting was all him,” Scotty said grimly. “He tortured all his victims. ’Tis what set us onto him. He had cut a wide swath of blood and terror through England forty years before.”

“Odilia?” Beth asked at once.

Scotty wasn’t surprised she’d recognized the similarities in their stories, and nodded grimly. “Jamieson killed her family and several others forty years earlier, and then disappeared. But we knew at once it was him when it started up again. He had slaughtered half a dozen families this time around ere he encountered yer Mary. If anything, finding Dree in Mary’s thoughts may have kept him from simply slaughtering ye all outright and not turning ye. It was his habit to pick up on someone and follow them home and slaughter the whole clan in front o’ each other, causing the most torment.”

“Aye,” Beth breathed. “And that’s what he did, but without the killing. He just followed Mary in the door and said, ‘Good evening, ladies. My name is Jamieson, and I’ve come for dinner.’ And then, quick as a snake-like, he grabbed Mary, dragged her back and tore into her neck.”

Beth swallowed, her eyes swimming with the memory. “It was nothing like when Dree fed. Blood squirted everywhere. More splashed on the walls than could have got in his mouth I’m sure, and then he slurped like a child at a Popsicle.”

Scotty winced, his jaw tightening as he saw the remembered terror on her face.

“We were all too stunned to move at first. We were a gaggle of old ladies who’d seen and been through a lot, but this was . . .” She shook her head, took a deep breath and continued, “Then he tore open his wrist and pressed it to Mary’s mouth for several seconds before dropping her like a rag doll and reaching for the next woman. It was only then that we regained our senses enough to start to move. Some simply made a run for it, some grabbed for anything that could be used as a weapon, but we were all screaming and shrieking and running about. In the end it didn’t matter what our choice was, whether to run or fight. He was wicked fast, seemed impervious to our blows, and if anyone got close to the door or a window, he just took control of them. In no time at all, every last one of us was rolling on the floor in our own blood, screaming in agony as the turn began.”

“His bleeding you first would have sped up the onset of the turn,” Scotty said quietly. “The nanos would have recognized that your systems were in distress, needed urgent repair, and they would have started duplicating rapidly to attend to that.”

Beth nodded, but told him, “Things got blurry after that. All I remember is pain and blood and terrible nightmares. It went on for a really long time. Dree said it goes much more quickly when the turnee is given blood, and we obviously hadn’t been given any, which drew out the process.” Her mouth flattened briefly, but then relaxed again, and she continued, “When I woke up, I was lying on the parlor floor, covered in dry blood with no idea how I’d got there or what had happened or who the women around me were.”

“Ye did no’ recognize them?” Scotty asked, thinking that the horror of the mass turning must have been what had twisted her mind and made her mad, for the Beth he’d first met all those years ago had definitely been a madwoman. Her next words made him pause, though.

“No. Well, how could I?” she asked. “I may have lived with them for nigh on thirty years, but it had been a long time since I’d seen them young and healthy . . . Of course I did not recognize them.”

“Oh, aye,” Scotty said, smiling wryly.

“Except for one,” Beth said suddenly, her expression turning sad. “Nelly hadn’t survived the turn. She must’ve had a heart attack early on, because she hadn’t changed much.”

“I’m sorry,” Scotty murmured.

“Yes, well, she may have been the luckier of us,” Beth said quietly.

Scotty remained silent. He for one was glad that Beth had survived the turn. And while he’d already determined that her past wasn’t important, hearing more of her history had sealed his acceptance of it. It wasn’t learning that she’d been sold into the business as a child of ten. Or the fact that she’d tried to escape over and over again despite the beatings and abuse it brought on. What had finally sealed his acceptance was the reason she’d given for why she’d continued after Dree had arrived on the scene. Not because it was easy coin, or because she enjoyed the power of controlling men with her body. She’d continued in the business because she hadn’t been able to envision another road for herself. Beth had seen herself as too damaged to be accepted as a wife and mother, or anything but the prostitute she’d been forced to become. She and the other women had all been made to feel that way by people like him, he realized with shame, and vowed never to be so judgmental and holier-than-thou again. All flowers did not have thorns, and all prostitutes were not heartless gold diggers. Elizabeth Sheppard Argenis was nothing like his mother.

Scotty closed his eyes briefly. God, he loved this woman. Unfortunately, everything she’d said had merely made him more determined than ever to convince her to agree to having her memories removed. He hadn’t been there to protect her from her father’s betrayal, or the years of rape and abuse. True, he had saved both her and Dree from the murderous Jamieson, but he hadn’t been able to do so before the man had turned her home into a house of horrors and ensured the deaths of her friends, who were essentially her family. Scotty’s heart ached for what Beth had gone through, and he wanted nothing more than to take that pain away for her. A three-on-one mind wipe would do that. It might also change her so that they weren’t life mates anymore, as Matias had suggested, but he would risk that, for Beth. She deserved a future free of such horrors.

“Anyway,” Beth continued on a sigh, “the others woke up just as confused and terrified as me . . . a state that didn’t last long. Jimmy was quick to tell us that now that he’d made us all young and beautiful again, he owned us and we would do his bidding.”

“Which was?” Scotty asked when she paused.

“We were to lure mortal men to the house with the promise of sex. But once there, we were to rob them and feed on them until dead,” she said grimly. “Of course, none of us was willing to do that, but Mary was—”

“The infamous Mouthy Mary who told Dree she had to protect ye all?” he queried gently.

“Aye, Mouthy Mary,” she said with a sad smile. “She was the only one brave enough to stand up to him. She said we’d not do it, and he could go to hell. She would go find Dree, who would fix him real good for what he’d done.” Beth released a sigh. “The last word had barely left her mouth before Jamieson had crossed the room and ripped off her head. Quick as that,” she added, sounding a bit bewildered. “None of us had ever seen anything like it. And none of us . . .” She shook her head. “In truth, I think we all just kind of shut down. Sank into shock or something. But none of us had the nerve to protest further at that point.”

“What happened next?” Scotty asked solemnly when she fell silent again. The sooner the story was done, the sooner she could forget it. Hopefully forever.

“Jimmy had us clean ourselves up, make ourselves presentable, and then sent us out with the order to each bring back a man,” Beth said and then admitted, shamefaced, “When I left that house, I was too scared and shocked to think anything but that I should do what he said. That anything was better than having me head torn off like Mary. But after walking half a block I began to regain my senses. My body was crying out for blood so bad it was hard to think, but I simply couldn’t bite anyone, and I couldn’t—I wouldn’t—lure anyone back to that house of hell to be tortured and murdered. I decided I was going to run away, that I would find Dree somehow, but in the meantime, I would hide and not return to that house.”

“And the other women?” Scotty asked, though he knew the answer.

“I tried to convince the others to come with me, but they were too afraid. They were going to do exactly what he ordered them to do. But I should go find Dree, they said, and bring her back to save them.”

Beth sighed unhappily. “I tried so hard to convince them that doing what he said was the wrong thing to do, but they were all so terrified of him after what he’d done . . . and the bloodlust was on them too, I think.” She looked down as if in shame, and murmured, “So I left them and fled.”

“Where did you go?” Scotty asked quietly. He’d known some of what she’d told him, but not all of it.

“The only place I could think to go,” she told him. “The old house, the brothel. I knew Dree wouldn’t be there. She was still off on the Continent somewhere, but I needed to think, to figure out how to find her. And that, to me, seemed the safest place. At least it was somewhere familiar, and Dree hadn’t sold the place yet, so I knew it was uninhabited at the moment, which seemed a very good thing indeed.

“That was a terrible trek,” Beth admitted solemnly. “It was night, people were everywhere, and I was so hungry and they smelled so good. There were times I didn’t think I’d manage to get to the house without attacking some poor passerby and biting them. But I did,” she said, lifting her head proudly, and then a wry smile curved one side of her mouth and Beth admitted, “The problem was, I didn’t know what to do once I got there. The bloodlust was so bad I could barely think. I certainly couldn’t figure out how to contact Dree. I couldn’t even remember which country she was visiting just then, or what her next stop was. I thought if I just had some blood, just a little, my mind would clear enough that I could figure things out. But I simply couldn’t bite another human being.”

“What did you do?” Scotty prompted gently when she fell silent.

“I fed on rats,” Beth admitted with disgust. “That was how desperate I was. We had cats when we lived in the brothel, but we took them to the new house when we moved. Without the cats there, rats had moved in. For two weeks I stayed at the house, sleeping during the day and then waking up to feed on any rats I might be able to catch in the house, before slipping outside at night to try to find other small animals. Usually all I found were more rats or the occasional bird, once even a mangy old cat. None of it seemed to help, but I still couldn’t bear the idea of biting another human being.” She shuddered at the very thought.

“And then one night I was chasing a rat around the corner of the house when a carriage drove by. It slowed as it passed, and I glanced up and gaped at the woman peering out the window. It was Dree. For a minute, I couldn’t believe me eyes, but it was her riding by, and the carriage had nearly passed the house. Terrified she would leave without seeing me, I just shrieked. Fortunately, she heard me and had the carriage stop. When she got out, I rushed over and threw myself at her.”

Beth paused briefly and then said, “She’s told me since that she didn’t even recognize me at first, I was so filthy and haggard. But she said I was babbling incoherently about Mary getting her head ripped off and Nelly dying, and she sorted it out. She said she tried to get me to go to the retirement house right away, but I kind of freaked out. I don’t remember that. Actually, it’s all kind of blurry from my seeing her until a day or two later, but Dree told me that when I refused to let her take me to the new house, she ushered me into the old one and took care of me there.

“I was in a really bad way. Even so, I wouldn’t feed when Dree brought a man in off the street for that purpose. She had to control both myself and him to get me to feed. She brought several people in over the next two days and did that again and again. Then she had me rest. I slept all day and most of the evening, but when I woke up I told her everything. About Jimmy coming and what he’d done, what he’d wanted us to do. I told her I tried to get the others to leave, but they’d feared if we all left he’d hunt us down one by one and do what he’d done to Mary, and that they were waiting for us to save them.

“Dree wanted to go to the house alone, but I wouldn’t let her. I insisted on going with her. Once we got there, though, I was almost sorry I had.”

Sighing, she leaned her head back against the headboard again and said, “You know what happened there. We thought we were only going to have to deal with Jimmy, that the women would be happy to see us. Instead, the things Jimmy had made them do broke them, and the women had given in to madness. The house, our beautiful charming house, was a blood-spattered mess littered with corpses and body parts—not just of men, but of women and children too. And the stink . . .” Her nose wrinkled with disgust at the memory, and then she sighed unhappily. “Jamieson said ‘Attack,’ and they attacked at once. Women who had been friends . . . family for decades. They came at us like Valkyries, eager to rend us to shreds.”

Beth turned her head and met his gaze. “We would have died that day had you and your men not rushed the house just then. You saved our lives, that’s certain.”

Scotty nodded. “We’d been tracking the man since his first attack on this second round of killings, but the trail had gone cold a couple weeks before that night. We realized afterward that it was because he’d gone to ground in yer house and sent the women out to hunt.” Shaking his head, he continued, “The only reason we were there that evening was because we had intel that something was going on. People were disappearing in the area, many of them last seen entering that house, and there was a stench coming from it that was apparently unbearable and very telling. We were in a carriage across the street, just arming ourselves when the two o’ ye arrived and traipsed in. We suspected ye had no idea what ye were walking into and followed quickly.”

“I know I didn’t have the presence of mind to say it at the time, but thank you for that,” Beth said quietly.

“Me pleasure,” Scotty said softly, and then cleared his throat before saying, “And I apologize if me suggesting the three-on-one mind wipe fer ye upset ye at the time.”

When she merely nodded and closed her eyes, he added carefully, “But I still think it would have been—and might still be—best fer ye.”

Much to his relief, Beth actually smiled at the words. But she didn’t open her eyes and all she said was, “Do ye?”

“Aye,” Scotty said. “Ye have so many horrible memories, Beth. I know they pain ye. A three-on-one would take them away so that they could no longer hurt ye.”

“Do ye dislike me so much that you’d rather I was completely wiped, my personality completely removed, than to be the way I am?” she asked sadly, her eyes still closed.

“What?” Scotty asked with dismay. “Nay, I—”

“The way I see it, I’m exactly who I was meant to be,” Beth said, grimly now. “And everything I went through? I wouldn’t change a thing.”

“What?” He gaped at her with surprise. “But you were raped, repeatedly, from ten years old on, and Danny near beat ye to death, and what Jamieson did to you and the other women . . .” Scotty shook his head, and frowned when he saw that she simply rested with her head back and eyes closed. He didn’t understand why she wasn’t jumping at the chance.

“Have you ever made a sword?” she asked suddenly into the silence.

“What?” Scotty asked with bewilderment.

“A sword,” Beth repeated, neither opening her eyes nor moving. “I’ve never made one myself, but I gather they stick a steel rod into fire to soften it and then hammer it and hammer it and hammer it, only to stick it back in the fire again and hammer it some more. And they do that until they’ve made the finest, strongest, sharpest sword they can.”

Scotty waited, expression blank, not sure what this had to do with anything.

“Some years back I decided God is like a blacksmith,” she announced. “And I think all these horrible experiences are just him putting us in the fire and hammering at us, and then putting us in the fire again, and hammering some more until he makes us the strongest, finest, and sharpest we can be.”

Beth smiled to herself, eyes still closed, and then admitted, “It took a lot of years for me to come to that conclusion. It took a lot of time for me to come to like myself too, and accept my past as being partially responsible for forming me. But now, I wouldn’t change what happened to me for anything, Scotty. Not because I enjoyed it, for I surely didn’t, at least not all of it, but because I like me. I like who I’ve become. As a child I thought I knew everything, knew better than my mother. I was arrogant as youth is. In my life I’ve been stubborn and stupid and selfish by turn, but everything that happened to me made me stronger and better. And usually taught me a lesson of one sort or another. And now I like myself.”

Sitting up again, Beth turned to face him, meeting his gaze directly. “So, you see, I don’t want to forget. Because if all those things hadn’t happened, maybe I’d be a different person. Perhaps weaker, perhaps more selfish, perhaps defenseless and dependent, or perhaps stronger and a queen,” she said with a grin. “But I’d be a different person. I don’t want to be a different person. I am who I am and I really do like, even love, myself now. So, if your efforts to get me to agree to a three-on-one are purely for my benefit, you can stop. I don’t want that.”

Beth was silent for a minute, letting that sink in, and then said, “However, I know that’s not why. You were always cold and harsh with me, showing your dislike and disgust. I know it has something to do with your mother and your inability to accept my life before I was turned. And I’m sorry if the person I’ve become isn’t good enough for you, and you feel that a three-on-one mind wipe would make me more to your liking. But the person I have become is good enough for me, and I’m the one who has to face her in the mirror every day.”

“Beth, I’m no’—I just think—” he began, but she cut him off.

“It doesn’t matter what you think,” she interrupted, and then shook her head. “As I said, I’ve struggled with it this last century. It was hard work learning to accept myself for who I am. But I had got to the point where I had accepted myself. And then you came along and I started feeling not good enough again. I started hearing those taunts in my head—dirty whore, nasty slag. Who would want a dirty whore like me?”

Beth shook her head again. “I don’t want to feel like that anymore, Scotty. I don’t want to have to change to be acceptable to you. And I don’t want to have to erase the person I’ve become to be good enough for anyone. The truth is . . . well, maybe the truth is you’re not good enough for me. Maybe I don’t want someone so small-minded and judgmental in my life. I think I’m better off without you. Because I don’t want a life mate who makes me feel so small and soiled.”

Leaving him sitting there, stunned, Beth stood and walked into the bathroom, closing the door quietly behind her.

Scotty just sat there for the longest time, his mind in turmoil. He couldn’t believe the irony of it all. Finally he came to his senses, saw who she was and was ready to accept her, and she decided he wasn’t good enough for her. And the hell of it was, he couldn’t blame her. He had done everything she’d said. He’d looked down on her, and considered himself above her. Christ, he’d just added to her pain and suffering and made her feel small and soiled, and the knowledge shamed him. Scotty did not consider himself better than anyone else. At least, not normally. But . . .

But nothing. That’s what he’d done . . . and he might have lost her because of it. The thought scared the hell out of him. All this time he’d been so busy fretting over her past and whether he could accept her, it had never once occurred to him that she might not accept him. After all, he was a catch, wasn’t he?

God, he was an arrogant prick, Scotty thought with disgust. After all she’d been through, the last thing Beth had needed was him adding to her pain, and yet that’s what he’d done. He needed to fix this. He needed . . . her.

Standing abruptly, he moved to the door and then hesitated. Scotty suspected he would have only one chance at this, if he even had that one chance. He didn’t want to mess up . . . again.

Sighing, he took a breath, lowered his head and then knocked softly.