me about still, are you?”
Her smile deepened. “Always.”
Always, which implied forever together, an impossibility.
He’d no right to the gift she offered.
None at all.
Tell her. Tell her everything. So that she could take back that offer, and that truth could be between them. He didn’t want her there . . . not for him.
And yet, at the same time, she was the only person he wanted beside him . . . for not only the damned masquerade . . . but for everything.
Hugh took her hands and drew them close to his chest, near the place his heart beat. For her. There was only her, and there’d only ever be her.
Her features softened, her lips parted ever so slightly . . . as distracting as this woman had always been. But it was time. It was long past. “Your hands,” he said softly, forcing himself to focus on the words, which required a physical effort.
“I don’t . . . ?” She stared at him with confused eyes.
“Strengthening your hands is the first part of any training you should learn, or expect of your clients.”
Her eyebrows dipped. “Are we fighting?”
“I’m teaching you to fight,” he corrected, bringing her hands up. “When you’re learning, when you’re using them for the first time, some boxers will have you wrap them. Don’t. Not until you condition your hands and knuckles.” Undoing the buttons of his jacket, Hugh shrugged out of the garment and tossed it onto the grass.
Lila followed its descent. “We’re doing this here . . . now?”
They were running out of time. Before he left, he’d see her properly equipped to fight and defend herself. “There’s no other place to do it.” Not anymore. Not with him now belonging to the aristocracy and destined to leave. “Now, you can’t expect to know when you’re going to be attacked.” It was the first lesson Hugh had learned as a boy in the rookeries. “That’s why you have to practice any response so that it becomes intuitive. So that in the heat of battle, you call forth the skill you require to break free or . . .” kill or maim or hurt . . .
Lila’s fingertips came to rest on his sleeve. “We don’t have to do this, Hugh.”
She’d be generous in this even now. She’d turn down the lessons she sought, all because she knew precisely how he felt about the art of battle.
He’d never been worthy of her.
“First,” he went on, as though she’d not allowed him that reprieve, “know the most vulnerable parts to strike in order to weaken your opponent: The eyes. The nose. The ears. The groin. And then there are other areas . . .” His stomach churned, and he made himself continue through the nausea. “The most lethal place to strike a person is at the base of their skull. Their neck. At your height, if a man has you in a hold . . . it will likely present you with an awkward angle. In the middle of an attack, that will lead to panic. Your two surest places?”
Hugh touched the side of his neck. “And here.” He shifted his fingers to the middle of his throat. “These places . . . they’re vulnerable. They’ll kill a grown man.”
It was time.
“Do you remember your stances?”
How long it had been since she’d first come to him . . . to the day when they’d snuck off to his apartments. An entire lifetime may as well have elapsed.
“I do,” she said, all business as she got herself into Mendoza’s stance.
Hugh walked a slow circle about her, assessing Lila’s form, the angle of her arms. “Show me your fists.” Even with the time that had passed and the briefness of their lessons, she still managed to perfectly angle her wrists slightly down with her knuckles in front of her fingers.
And even hating fighting as he did, he still could feel only pride at her proficiency.
Hugh brought his arms up. “Now, hit me.”
She wavered. Before throwing a punch.
Hugh danced out of her reach and circled around her.
“You’re too fast,” she said, adjusting the positioning of her fists.
“Align your wrist with your forearms,” he instructed. “That will prevent you from accidentally bending it back and breaking it. And in the middle of a fight, your opponent isn’t going to slow down because you need it.”
Lila came at him again, pushing forward, throwing an impressive right, and then left, jab.
One of her blows bounced off his arm.
She blanched and stopped in her