In the Dark with the Duke by Christi Caldwell Page 0,106

around.”

A knock split the quiet.

“Enter,” Sylvia called.

Lila’s maid ducked her head inside. “Forgive me, His Grace, the Duke of Wingate? He’s called for Lady Lila.” Lila’s heart bumped around her chest, and she sat up straighter.

He is here . . .

Adelle nodded, confirming Lila had voiced her disbelief aloud.

“Aye. I took the liberty of showing him to the Gold Parlor.” When neither lady spoke, Adelle looked between them with a question in her eyes. “Should I not have done that?”

Both sisters exclaimed as one: “No!”

“That is, yes,” Sylvia said quickly. “That is fine. See that refreshments are readied.”

“Yes, my lady.” Dropping a curtsy, Adelle pulled the panel shut and took her leave.

Sylvia was immediately on her feet. “He is here.”

He’d come.

Lila’s heart lifted. Even as he’d made a hasty exit yesterday, he’d not been scared away. As if Hugh Savage were a man to be scared of anything . . .

Grabbing Lila’s hand, Sylvia pulled her forward, dragging her up. “Come now. Despite your thoughts he wouldn’t be here, he is. Now run along and greet him.”

Lila hurried to the door.

“Oh, and Lila?”

She paused with her fingers on the handle.

“Perhaps . . . you and His Grace? You might help one another.”

Perhaps they could . . .

Lila found her way to the Gold Parlor. He stood precisely as he’d been yesterday. Attired in dark garments and with his hands clasped behind him, the moment may as well have been frozen in time yesterday, before she’d shared . . . everything.

His muscles strained, rippling along his broad back.

And as he turned, she braced for that same cold smile, further confirmation she’d stepped into the past.

He smiled. “Hullo, Lila.”

Her heart pattered at an uneven clip. It was a smile, but one as she’d never before seen it. Soft and tender.

She wet her lips. “I thought . . . you might not come.”

“Of course I’d be here.”

Of course.

And then she remembered.

His request. Her repayment.

“Oh . . .”

Because what else was there to say?

She pulled the panel closed behind her and leaned against the oak for support. “I understand why you’ve come.”

His lashes dipped. “Do you?” he murmured, slipping closer.

She nodded, her head knocking awkwardly against the door. “The marquess . . .” Mindful of her maid, who lingered outside the room, Lila took care to withhold the identifying name.

Hugh stopped before her. “That’s not why I’ve come.”

Lila frowned. It wasn’t?

“It isn’t,” he said softly. “I’ve come to see you.”

Hugh had come to see her.

For reasons that had nothing to do with the Marquess of Prendergast, or probing for information on the part of Maynard and Bragger. Rather, it had been only about seeing her.

“Me?” Lila blurted. “For what purpose if not . . .” Her gaze slid to the door. “If not . . . that?”

She was suspicious of him and his motives. But then, after he’d called her out a fortnight earlier about her intentions and met her plans and confidence with only disgust and disdain, what other opinion should she have come to?

And guilt around this woman, an altogether increasingly familiar and ragged sentiment, took root in his chest again.

Bouncing on the balls of his feet, Hugh looked around him. “My earliest recollections in life all revolve around the one thing I was trained to do—fight. There was no family.” He grimaced. “At least, not one that I remember,” he added softly. No matter how he strained or struggled to call forth some happy remembrances of the people who’d given him life, there was only . . . emptiness there.

Restless, he wandered the same path he’d traveled in this room yesterday. Except those cheerful blooms woven within the carpet merely brought him back to what she’d revealed . . . what she’d shared.

Hugh found a spot at the drawn chintz curtains.

With his hands tightly clenched at his back, he stared out to the bustling streets beyond those panes. “The children fighters were not friends. It didn’t make sense to have relationships.”

There was a noisy whish of her skirts. “They were . . . discouraged?” The floorboards groaned under the slight depression of her weight as she walked, and then he felt her there. At his shoulder.

“We, the fighters, that is, learned not to bother with them. After all, what kind of relationship can one truly have with a boy . . . or girl . . . he’ll be expected to pummel bloody in a bare-knuckle match? How can one punch a friend in the face or . . . inflict