"You did what?" Leopold Denyer jerked to his feet. He looked at the other men in the room. His brother Rupert shrugged. Omar sat straight faced. His son Mathew and nephew James looked at him wide-eyed. "What pray tell were you three doing, while Sammy was making the biggest mistake of his life?"

"Uncle Leo!" Samuel shot a glare across the room. "You over step your bounds. The biggest mistake of my life, happened three years ago, when I didn't watch my back, and walked into a trap. Asking for a woman's hand in marriage is not a mistake."

"I'm sorry, Your Grace." Leopold tipped his head. "I did not mean to overstep, Samuel, and yes, you are correct in regard to both of your statements, however this girl is a no one. Even if her father, or rather adoptive father, is a man of wealth, he has no title. The girl was a street urchin for God's sake. Is she even untouched?" He held out his hands. "I implore you to reconsider your offer before the bans are read. You will be the laughing stock of the country."

Samuel sneered and moved from behind the desk in three predatory steps. "Do you really believe marrying this girl, is going to humiliate me?" He sighed and tried to relax his body. "Uncle, I have been humiliated and stripped of every ounce of pride I ever had. If nought else, these experiences taught me that nothing matters. In the long run, everything we hold dear, is worthless, except family. I have lost my father and my brother. I am the last of my branch. I love you dearly, Uncle, as I love you all dearly, but I will not marry a woman because of her blood line. You insisted I find a wife, so I have found one."

"Do you even know this woman? How much time have you spent with her?" Leopold ran both hands over his skull. "You could be making the same mistake as your father. Plans could be in place to take everything from you."

"Leo." Rupert stood and shook his head. "Please stop over thinking this, and let Sam enlighten us." He cocked his head. "Sammy. If you would please explain your choice to your uncle, or rather to all of us, we might understand it better. Did you know this girl in the past? James said her sister married your best friend. Is this part of the reason?"

"No, Uncle Rupert. In fact, I don't know her at all."

"What!" Leopold threw his hands in the air and paced the floor. "This is insane."

Samuel chuckled and scratched the back of his head. "Yes. I guess it is a little insane, Uncle."

"Well then..." Leopold spun in mid stride to face his nephew.

Samuel held up his hand to stop Leopold from speaking. "Sit down, Leo. Rupert has asked me to clarify my reasons, so please allow me to speak." Sam leaned his backside against the desk, with his hands gripped, either side, to the polished timber edge, and waited until his uncle sat. How was he going to explain this? He smirked. This was madness, but he couldn't help feeling that he had made the right choice. He took in a lungful of air, and looked at each face. "I first met Shay when she was a child. Just rescued by Thomas Lytton. She was extremely underweight, and her hair had been shaved so she was bald. Shay has very expressive green eyes. It is important that you understand this, because what I am going to tell you will not make sense to you otherwise. In fact, it baffles me still." Samuel gave them a forlorn smile and pushed off the edge of the desk. He took an arm from the sleeve of his coat. "For me to continue, to have you understand fully, I need you to understand my years away." He slipped the coat from his other arm and laid it over the desk. "You need to see me as I am today." Samuel took a breath and looked at each person.

Omar gave him a slight nod, and closed his eyes briefly in approval.

Samuel drew his shirt off and over his head.

Leopold gasped and stared at the scar that ran across the left side of Samuel's rib cage, and then up at his nephew's tattooed flesh. "Sam?"

"This was given to me by my master because I would not allow him to abuse my body. I killed two of his guards in the struggle." Samuel ran his finger over the scar, and then touched his face. "This was also a gift from the same man, because he wanted me to rape a young girl in his presence, so he could watch for his pleasure. If I didn't, he was going to cut her throat in front of me. He wanted me to watch her die. Instead of doing what he wanted, I tried to kill him." He touched the scar on his hip, and ran his finger along it to his waist. "This was made by a cat-o-nine-tails while I was on board the slave ship, which George Somersby organised to have me taken to Algiers." Samuel smirked. "I did not like being spat on the face each morning by the captain's second. I tried to break his neck. This, along with three others, were my reward." Samuel touched the tattoo on his arm, shoulder and pectoral. "This is my master's mark of ownership." He turned around so they could all see his back, and then dropped his trousers. "The brand on my arse is to show others that I was a disobedient slave."

"Oh, Samuel."

"Good, God son."

"Sammy."

"What did they put you through?"

Samuel waited for a moment, so they could absorb what he was showing them. He took a breath, pulled up his pants, fastened the buttons and turned to face them. "The rest are from different beatings I received because I would not obey my master. On the day he cut my face he was going to cut off my penis." Again, they gasped. Samuel continued, "His Lieutenant stopped him. He saw something in me that he wanted to enhance." Samuel folded his arms across his chest, and hung his head. When he looked up, his face was stony cold. "He saw a killer. I was tortured over and over, until I did not know myself. I was forced to fight to the death against innocence men. Men who were enslaved, as I was. I was forced to slaughter these men, for the entertainment of the free. Men, women and children took pleasure in this."

"Samuel, please. You don't have to continue."

"I must, uncle." Samuel smiled sorrowfully at the stressed look on Leo's face. "With Omar's help I have learned to live with these memories. I learned to find who I once was." He tilted his head and looked at each one of them. "Omar saved me, but it was Shay who kept me alive."

"What? How?" Rupert looked from Omar to Samuel.

"She came to me each night." Samuel chuckled. "Or rather her eyes came to me. An emancipated girl's face with green eyes came to me in my dreams. Each night she reached out to me, and told me I was not an animal. That I was a man. I couldn't even remember her name until the day this happened." Samuel touched the scar on his cheek. "The day my master wanted me to rape the young girl. She was so scared of me. She clung to my neck for dear life, and all I could think of, was the child with green eyes. It was then that I tried to kill my master and he wanted to take my cock. His lieutenant saw the killer in me. He also saw my weakness. He could not have any vulnerability in me. I was stripped of my essence, until I no longer had a soul."

Samuel pulled on his shirt, and then continued to speak, "I was tortured every day until everything I saw, everything I touched filled me with hate." Samuel lifted his head and ran his hand over his skull. "The Sultan of Morocco sent his prize fighter to best me. Omar changed the terms of that fight from kill or be killed, to claim the loser. If I lost, I would become the property of the sultan. Omar had his fighter talk to me constantly throughout the fight. He kept telling me to lose and I would be saved. Eventually, I heard those words."

Samuel smiled at Omar with affection, and then said, "The green eyes stayed with me through my life of torture. They left me when I became human again. They disappeared completely until I returned to England." Once more Samuel looked at each man. "What I have to tell you now, is something I can never have you repeat, or speak of again." He waited until each of them acknowledged their understanding. "I returned to England on the same ship I was taken to Algiers. I killed the man who used the cat-o-nine-tails on me. I also murdered the captain who gave him the order." Samuel avoided his uncles and cousin's eyes by focusing on his feet. He would not tell them how he killed these men. "I arrived in London three months before I let you know I was alive. I needed this time to take my revenge on George Somersby." He lifted his head. "I could not risk having him know I was still alive. It was I, who murdered him, in Hyde Park."

Samuel watched each face. James smirked and nodded his head. Mathew shrugged. Leopold and Rupert looked at each other, and then looked back at Samuel without saying a word, so he continued, "At this time we were staying in Whitechapel. I knocked over a girl with green eyes. I did not recognise her. Because of this accident, again, those eyes came to me in my dreams, and then disappeared once more." Samuel smiled and looked at his cousins. "Until the day we came across three girls on the Ludgershall Road. I recognised the girl I had knocked over in Whitechapel. I also had an incident with her the next day. I pulled her from the stream."

"The morning you came back wet." James sat up straight and beamed excitedly.

"Yes." Samuel chuckled. "I did not know she was Shay, until the night of the ball." He shrugged and looked at them. "Shay has been with me for all these years. Once I knew who this girl really was, I understood, she was meant to be my wife. Though her father has given me his blessing, she does not want to marry me. You have no fear that she has agreed to be my wife for money." Samuel chortled. "In fact, I doubt very much that she would ever be willing, if it was left up to her. I have asked Thomas Lytton to put this proposal to Shay, as being a marriage of convenience."

"Is that what it is to you, Samuel?" Rupert asked.

"This girl belongs to me, Uncle. One day she will realise it. I could not risk another man taking her from me. She does not understand yet, but she will. To me, this is a marriage in the truest sense. I do not care where she comes from, or what blood flows in her veins. I do not care what the world thinks. I only care about what my heart and soul tell me, the heart and soul that was once stolen from me, and of which I have finally salvaged." Samuel's eyes darkened as he looked at each man in the room. "This girl is mine, as she was destined to be, and now, I have claimed her."

I'm not sure that Samuel realises what he's gotten himself into fully.  Hahaha 

Our Shay has the heart of a lion and she won't be pushed around easily ;)

Photo taken from the Victorian Web.