rang, muting the quick throbbing beat of her pulse.
Hugh had been there.
He’d been at Peterloo.
Nay, what was worse, what was more . . . he’d been a soldier.
He’d been everything she’d feared that morn and had carried nightmares of since.
Lila hugged herself tightly, trying to slog through the heavy confusion that cloaked her brain. All these years, every last soldier and member of the yeomanry that day had been the Devil incarnate sent down to earth to smite the innocent.
She’d gone into hiding because of the fire they’d set to the world, and been haunted by the ghosts that had risen from those ashes. They’d all existed as monsters in her mind. All of them, together, one and the same, each man in uniform inseparable from the others. They’d been less-than-human beasts, and she’d hated each of them with a burning intensity that she’d feared would one day consume her.
Only to find they weren’t all the same. There’d been one man amongst the field of many, whom she’d come to know . . . and care about. Love.
And now, Lila’s breath coming in hard and fast sporadic spurts, she was unable to see anything beyond the stricken horror and grief in Hugh’s eyes.
For he wasn’t those violent soldiers at St. Peter’s Field. A man who abhorred fighting and imagined a world without that ruthlessness would never be one lifting his bayonet against innocent men, women, and children.
Unless it was because of what he’d done and what he’d seen . . . and the guilt he carried.
Nothing made sense. None of it.
Digging her fingers sharply against her temple, Lila tried to sort through her brother’s revelation . . . and Hugh’s flight.
On the other end of her shock came the knowledge that Hugh may have been there that August day . . . but he was not the man he’d been. Whatever he’d done that day, or whatever he’d not done, he’d been as altered as Lila and every other survivor of Peterloo.
For there could be no doubting the emotion that had blazed deep within his eyes.
It is why he left so quick after I shared about my time at Peterloo . . .
And also why he’d agreed to help her, even as her vision ran counter to every principle he held on violence.
Of course.
It all made sense.
It hadn’t been, as she’d first suspected, pity that prompted him to help her. Rather, it had been guilt.
“Lila.”
It took a moment for that quiet baritone to register.
Unblinking, she looked to her elder brother. Henry, who’d always meant well, and who loved her desperately. Desperately enough that he’d left his wife and new babe and run to London to assure Lila’s well-being . . . and had also run off the only man Lila would ever love.
“What have you done?” she whispered.
Confusion deepened the lines of his high, noble brow. “What are you saying?” he asked, confusion heavy in his tone. “Surely you heard . . . this fighter . . .”
“He’s not a fighter.” It was the only way the world saw Hugh, and the only way he wished to not be viewed.
“That is a hard argument to make, given your own admission that you were sparring when I arrived,” he said tightly. “Either way, this man, he’s ruthless. He’s done horrible things. According to his partners—”
“His partners would punish him because he’d not go along with . . .” She pressed her lips firm. She’d not break Hugh’s confidence, not even to defend him.
Her brother narrowed his eyes. “Go along with what?”
“It doesn’t matter.” He’d gone against them . . . what they sought, and in the end, they’d betrayed him to Lila’s brother. Nay, they’d never deserved Hugh’s loyalty. They may have saved him . . . they may have given him work, but a person needn’t sell their soul for those kindnesses shown. Kindness should be given without conditions or strings at the end to be pulled when favors were sought. “His past doesn’t matter to me.” He’d done everything he’d needed in order to survive.
“Surely you are not saying you are all right with . . . all of this, Lila?” her brother all but begged.
“I am,” she said quietly. “Because I love him.”
Her brother stumbled back several steps, and she may as well have shot him for the shock in his face.
Lila hugged herself all the tighter. “I love him, and it doesn’t matter to me that . . . he was there.” Except she had to say