questioning eyes.
“Is that what you think, Lila? That I pity you?” he asked, focusing on the earlier part of her rejection.
“Yes. Everyone does.”
“Not me. I never felt anything but admiration for you.”
Her plump rosebud lips formed a perfect moue of surprise.
How? How did that come as a shock to her?
“Lila March,” he murmured, having no right to touch her, and yet he was weak against her pull. Hugh glided his knuckles along the curve of her cheek. “How is it possible you don’t have any idea how strong or special you are?”
She trembled. Was it his words? His touch? A combination of both? And yet . . . how could she not know? “The minute you came to me, everything in me said to send you away, and yet you braved the rookeries, alone in the dark, time and time again. You’d not accept anything but my capitulation.” And she’d pointed out, rightly, that he’d blindly gone along with his partners’ quest of vengeance. And in that she’d proved more honorable, more in control, than he’d ever been in the whole of his life. Hugh brought his fingers to a halt, stopping that slow caress. “What reason would I have to pity you?” He answered his own question. “Because you had the misfortune of being in a place, at a time, when the world was on fire? Because you managed to survive and, from there, have been clawing your way back? Imagining something better for the future?”
She leaned her head back against the door and studied his face, this time with a tenderness radiating from those chocolate depths that he was also undeserving of. “Something you’ve already said is wrong for the violence it perpetuates.”
He would always abhor fighting, but after he’d taken his leave of her yesterday, he’d had only time in which to think about how he’d lived his life and the absolutes he’d held himself to after he’d quit the 15th Hussars.
Someone hauled me to my feet. I don’t know who he was. And I felt this overwhelming relief, but then he had this crazed look in his eyes, and he was holding on to me, and I couldn’t get him to release me . . .
“You wouldn’t be turning out fighters, Lila.” Oh, he wasn’t any sort of optimist to trust that all the people she equipped with those skills would use them for good, or even strictly defensive purposes. For one could never truly understand or trust another person’s motives. However, he now understood what her intentions were. “You would be turning out people skilled in fighting who might use those abilities to defend themselves.” Invariably, in her venture there’d be a man . . . or a woman . . . who came to that society she built, learned the art of war, and used it for evil.
And that was the piece he had to separate in his mind in offering her what he did.
Lila tipped her head in that bewitching little way she did, the one that sent her loose curls bouncing about her shoulders. It was a tangible curiosity she’d never been able to quell, and one he hoped she never would attempt to.
That when she married, she’d find a gentleman worthy of her, who supported her and her inquisitive spirit.
And how I wish it could have been me . . .
It was fate, or God, or more likely, Satan below, dancing with delight over Hugh discovering now that he wished there could be a future with Lila.
With her elbows, Lila pushed herself from the door. “Very well.” She held her fingers out. “I accept your offer, Hugh.”
He stared at those long, slightly crooked digits a moment, and then slid his palm into hers, all the while unable to shake the feeling that he was the Devil on the other end of their arrangement.
Chapter 25
Nearly a week after Lila had accepted Hugh’s offer of assistance, he’d visited every day.
Every day, they spent hours closeted away, giving life to the vision that had previously been only jumbled notes on a page.
And now, because of Hugh, Combattre la Société was becoming more and more real.
“You cannot do that.”
The tables moved to the perimeter of the room, Lila lay sprawled on her stomach with her legs kicked up behind her. Shoulder to shoulder, in like repose, Hugh studied her notebook.
She frowned. “And whyever not?”
“That’s”—he jabbed a finger at the paper, his lips moving as he silently counted—“one, two, three, four . . . twelve rooms.