A whore? That certainly brought him back a degree of sobriety. Eyes trailing her like a cavalry saber that could cut at any moment. He was bewildered to put it lightly.

He knows another minute here will only bring scandal, he can hear his reverend father’s reprimand.

Yet, there he lays, though treasonous to his own conscience, trailing a finger along her cheek and nudging her forehead gently. There’s so much he wished to know, but he wasn’t sure where to begin.

He would try.

“Why me?” Ben asked, heart pounding in his chest.

Audrey didn’t answer. Truth be told, she isn’t yet certain she knows yet, either.

“Where are we?” He questioned. For the third time. Finally breaking an oddly gentle silence.

“I am capable of knowing the truth, madam, in fact, it is encouraged,” he said, breaching no argument in tone.

Audrey at long last reels in her cries of pleasure, she is a screamer, she knows no shame, or that’s what she insisted.

“A bawdy house in the French quarter, New Orleans,” she said, almost cheerfully. She hadn’t yet had anything to hide, yet.

“It’s about a two day ride to Guilford, North Carolina, and four days to Yorktown, Virginia,” she says gently. “You must forgive me ma chér,” she says preemptively. “I have been here only a handful of months, I’m a stranger in a strange land. I have been what I am. Less than a year, though, winding up in some noblemen’s bed or charming enough soldiers was never off the table. Better than marriage and false propriety, I tried three times. It’s never different. But I assume you don’t wish for me to justify what we’ve done to you.”

What we’ve done?

That snapped him back just a bit, though his head was still spinning.

He sighed and sat up.
“I don’t understand,” he said.

“Madam, I.. I, thank you for your time, and services but, I must be back at camp,” he said, trying for gentleness.

A deathly quiet overcame Audrey. At last, she speaks.
“To answer your inquiries, I doubt I’d be believed, but I shall answer, nonetheless,” a soft sigh. She seems overcome with emotions, the dangerous in her experience and flowery sort.

“I married different men, three times, everytime ended badly. That doesn’t concern you, I’d mary a fine lady if I could, if she’d have me.”

“Next,” she laughed. “Either your repressed or your memory is lacking, I am merely a whore, and a whore needs clients. To answer the last, again, I doubt you’ll believe me, but, I shall answer. I did not ask for this, not truly. I was turned against my will, by an auburn haired bastard in the year 1780.”

Benjamin didn’t recall that, she had to be bluffing, it was the only explanation.

“If this a trick, and you want money, you need only ask,” he says, trying not to tremble. He had done wrong, but never something so… demonic.

Audrey offered a small fanged smile in return, he can no longer deny it now.

A silence follows. Words, in this circumstance are meaningless and forgettable.