bent over the latest notes he’d compiled for her future business. His pen flew over the pages, and where he usually spouted detail after detail of what he recorded, now he was silent.
“You are nervous,” she said softly, and Hugh paused midscribble.
Hers wasn’t really a question as much as a statement. He would venture out into Polite Society . . . despite his aversion for the ton, despite the fact that he knew no one at all, he’d do so.
Hugh rubbed at the back of his neck, massaging the muscles there, and she wanted to be the one who eased that tension from him. “I don’t get nervous,” he said matter-of-factly.
She tossed her notebook down and turned so her back rested against the arm of the sofa, and she faced Hugh at the opposite end. “Pfft. Everybody gets nervous about something.” Even before she’d discovered the true meaning of fear, there’d been plenty to be disquieted over: Her mother. Mrs. Belden, the dragon at her finishing school. Her Come Out. Her debut at Almack’s.
Hugh closed his book but retained a hold on it. “My first fight,” he began, momentarily confounding her with that unexpected turn in discourse. “It took place on a back alley in Hog Lane. I take it you’ve never been to Hog Lane?”
She hesitated, then shook her head. “I saw a sketch in a book once.” Even as that admission left her, Lila’s cheeks flushed with shame at knowing only from pages that which he’d lived. “Gin Lane, it was called,” she finished limply.
Hugh rolled his shoulders. “At Hog Lane, there’s lunatics cavorting about the streets. People screaming and chasing them off. All around, people drunk. It’s this absolute cacophony,” he said, his tone conversational about a hell so vividly described.
But for the impaled babe from that rendering, Hugh perfectly conveyed the squalor and desolation William Hogarth had sketched. “I went from being a common pickpocket for a gang leader to a child fighter. My handler dragged me deeper and deeper into St. Giles.” Hugh lifted a shoulder in a shrug. “I couldn’t tell you how old I was. Maybe nine . . . ten, perhaps. But I can tell you everything about St. Giles: the sights, the sounds, the smell . . . shite in the air, so thick you choke on your vomit.”
And with every word, her heart cracked open and bled all over again for what he’d known. And she would have taken that pain to have eased some of the burden he carried still. “What did they do?” she whispered.
“They pushed me into the ring.” The right corner of his eye ticked. A slight but visible indication that the memories haunted him still. “Another boy, one of their best child fighters, came at me. I was expected to fall that day. I was the underdog. All around me there was cheering, and my heart was racing, and all I knew was if I survived that fight, I could survive anything. Hmph,” he said softly, a sad smile on his lips. “I couldn’t have imagined any hell could be worse than that. And with every day that came and then passed, I realized how damned naive I was in thinking that . . . because every day, in every way, life was worse. And once you understand and accept that, Lila? Nothing else is going to make you nervous again.”
With that, as if he’d recounted a cheerful remembrance of his youth and not a story that had ripped apart her very soul, Hugh finished his telling and went back to work.
Restless, needing to give herself something to do, Lila picked up her book and flipped through the pages of notes he’d compiled this week. From layout and design, to the academy she’d create, to the best way to find staff, to the salaries to be paid them, he’d so very effortlessly put it all together for her.
All the while she absently skimmed his writing, Lila considered that story he’d shared—the misery no man, let alone a child, should ever know.
Hugh, the Duke of Wingate, had proven stronger than any person she’d ever known. And outcast as he’d been made by the ton through no fault of his own, he’d still go and face them down . . . in an attempt to find information that would see justice.
Could he face down the vipers of Polite Society? From all he’d shared, she’d no doubt that he could and would do anything, and give the world