I think the problem might be the FL reaction to his good traits? "Oh he's a good person!" she thinks....Really? Ignoring how they really met, as a slave he was ready to kill her over a horse. Not punish her, kill. And then you add on top the earlier trauma and the fact that even now I doubt she'd be ready to reveal to him who she really is.
As readers we might see him a grey. The FL would realistically be more cautious and maybe even closed off. Like, yeah , he's nice now because I am no threat. Woo hoo he gave me a fancy old timey water bottle. But I have seen how that can change at the drop of a hat.
Showing being key. This is a visual medium. Show the kindness, don't just have a bunch of people without adequate justification deciding he's kind. I can say I'm kind all I want, but if I torture kitties and rape babies, I am not kind. Saying ain't the same as BEING/
DOING. HIs character makes sense as someone hard and ruthless with arrogance....not as kind. That's what has been established.
Chloe is not of this world. She's from a world where his behavior would be utterly villainous. Would someone from THIS world, a modern world, find this person kind?
I don't drop anything*I* don't wanna drop and I have every right to bitch on and hate the character "as is." Funny how people seem to take such personal offense to someone ragging on a character who has behaved like a textbook villain in the openings.
Perhaps what I am missing is that there is a segment of readers who have masochistic tendencies and love vicious bastards who abuse and starve them. That would explain a lot.
That's where the smart, resourceful FL turned into a needy moron. Here's this guy who has treated me worse than his horse, but wow, I got something to drink water out of. He's such a doll. Unless we're gonna tag it as some sort of Stockholm Syndrome, it makes not sense.
There was no grey in many, many, many chapters. Only black. To suddenly toss in several "oh, he's not so bads" without having any nuance of that in the direst of chapters (the prison opening scene) or in the next horse-cure segment (where he had plenty of chance not to look down on her lying n straw as if she was just another animal, and one less valuable than a horse), was BAD writing. A small, tiny sliver of indication that the black was actually charcoal or lighter was justified THEN, not just suddenly thrown in willy nilly.
Yep, sure Chloe, every good person has a bad day in which they hang out the heads of noble families to warn others to surrender territories, and sell the rest off as slaves. YEP. Surely a good person.
They are just washing up the character to make him look like a cool bachelor.