Chapter 144 Rekindled Desire

• Layla moved a little nearer, her hand on the rail, her bare shoulders caressed by the soft glow of the lamp. Then Alfred said, "Ashley, I also don't like to be wrong about people. When you first asked for a passage on this ship, I thought you were a tramp, using Roy to smuggle you aboard, and having him in your cabin only increased that opinion. But the way you behaved afterwards, the way you looked, your freshness, and your courage in the storm..." He shook his head and put up a hand to grip a rigging rope.
• "I began to like you, respect you even. I thought I had been wrong about you, that I had done you a great injustice." He paused, then his voice roughened, "Help me, Mongodes, I even began to care about you. That was something I had vowed that I would never do again - care about a woman."
• He broke off and shook his head. "But that doesn't matter. I began to think that perhaps, in time..." He gave a raw laugh. "But then you made it plain that you were available, here and now. It was such an affront to what I had begun to hope... I was convinced that you were the tramp I had thought you were, and that made me very angry. So much that I needed to take my anger out on you. And then I repented and was about to apologize, only to hear you confessing to Mark again that you were the same person... the same reason behind my vow never to care about a woman again."