In the Dark with the Duke by Christi Caldwell Page 0,113

system than being the arbiter of their fate, Hugh.”

Hugh looked to their joined hands.

The air came alive between them. As it did whenever they touched . . . or whenever they were close. It had been this way from the moment he’d first come to speak with her outside his arena.

She caught the slide of his throat muscles as he swallowed. The darkening in his eyes. “Lila.” Her name fell from his lips like a prayer.

Leaning up, Lila slid her fingers into the tangle of his dark, satiny curls and tasted him once more as she’d wanted to. For so long. Every moment of every day since the one morning they’d made love, she’d yearned for his mouth . . . on hers, on her, everywhere.

Then his hands were on her. Drawing her tight at the waist, he pulled her closer so their bodies touched. And it still wasn’t enough.

It would never be enough.

Hugh’s lips played with hers. Every bold slash of his lips a tease, a promise for more. And she wanted it all.

For in his arms, she was home.

Chapter 26

Hugh rode his mount through the unfamiliar streets he now called home to his Grosvenor Square residence. As he navigated the crowded thoroughfare, the lords and ladies out for their afternoon strolls and affairs stared boldly back.

It wasn’t an unfamiliar state he now found himself in: An object of interest. An oddity. Both curiosity and mistrust followed him where he went.

And oddly, he’d never been more at peace.

There’d never be complete peace, but there was a semblance of it. More than he’d ever believed he’d know. More than he’d ever believed himself worthy or deserving of.

Continuing down Park Lane, Lila’s words from their earlier meeting stayed with him still.

“It tells me you’re a complex man with many layers to you . . . You’re not some caricature of what society believes a man should be . . . It says you’re a man who is honorable.”

Honorable. He rolled those four syllables silently in his head.

All these years, following his time fighting Boney’s forces and then Peterloo, he’d fashioned in his mind what that word meant. Ultimately, it had always connected to loyalty and Hugh’s making redress for failings in his youth. Only to now realize . . . there’d never be proper penitence. Nothing he ever did or would ever do—for Maynard, for Bragger, Bragger’s sister, Valerie, or any of the other boys and girls he’d left behind—would ever be enough.

The decisions he’d made and would continue to make would bring forth only more regrets and greater degradation, and a continued search for redemption and peace . . . that would not come.

I don’t want revenge . . .

He uttered that truth in his mind, owning it, and extraordinarily, there was no shame in that.

For so long, he’d simply gone along with the plan hatched by his partners, out of a sense of debt and obligation for all they’d done for him, when he’d only been faithless, putting himself first. But repayment also didn’t mean that he had to trade his soul to appease Maynard and Bragger. Only, he realized now . . . his partners? They wouldn’t be content until their foe was dead, and at their hands.

And Hugh didn’t want that. Oh, he wanted justice. He wanted Dooley and the rest of them to pay for their sins and crimes. But Hugh didn’t want to be the one responsible for meting out that justice.

There were other ways to see justice done.

Lila had helped him realize that.

Now it was a matter of making Bragger and Maynard see as well.

You’re a bloody fool if you expect you can do that . . . a voice silently jeered.

Hugh guided his mount, Pax, to a halt outside the redbrick townhouse. Constructed from three units joined together, it ran the length of the street, and though he had lived here now for three weeks, it was still foreign. But then he suspected that would always be the case.

A servant rushed forward to take his reins. “Your Grace.” More boy than man, the groom dropped a bow.

“Thank you,” he said gruffly, earning the same surprise he usually did from nothing more than an expression of gratitude.

It was a state he understood, being invisible.

But no longer. As he climbed the five stone steps, the double doors of the townhouse already hung open in wait.

Hugh had gone from being unseen by all, to having his every move waited upon. It was a state he didn’t