In the Dark with the Duke by Christi Caldwell Page 0,13
her steps.
And then her feet touched the bottom.
Hands on her hips, she peered back at the stairs she’d just descended.
She’d done it! She’d left the protective fold of her family’s household, hired a hack, journeyed to the rookeries, and battled back her demons.
After making her way to the windows that looked into the arena, she wiped a small space in the filthy glass, and then, with her nose against the window, peered inside.
Her brows came together. A crush of spectators crowded about; they tossed their arms up, shaking their fists as they cheered for a pair of men who approached the center of the room.
A bell rang, and those men . . . those fighters proceeded to trade jabs and blows. The shorter, stockier of the pair let fly a quick punch, but the spectators surged, concealing that inevitable strike.
Lila’s smile froze on her face.
There were so many people.
So . . . many.
Her skin went clammy.
Screams from a time long ago crashed about her in a cacophony with the shouting on the other side of those murky panels.
And Lila bit her lower lip until the metallic tinge of blood flooded her nostrils and senses.
“Kill ’em,” someone bellowed in a booming voice that shook Savage’s dirtied windowpanes.
“Stand down! I’ll kill the lot of you . . .”
Lila spun so quickly she staggered, and came down. She shot her hands out, managing to keep from pitching forward on her face. She balanced on her haunches and stared at the now slightly ripped gloves. Under that smooth leather, her palms grew moist. Perspiration dotted her brow and wound a path down her face as she was once more that girl in Manchester.
Another wave of shouts went up from the establishment five paces away, and she bit the inside of her cheek to keep back a moan.
The noise.
Sweat slicked her skin, and she concentrated on breathing.
And yet, as fresh as the memories were still, she may as well be trapped in the past, where darkness dwelled and screams ricocheted like the recoil of gunfire. Repeating over. And over.
Do not think about it.
Do not let the thoughts in.
Because when she turned herself over to these memories and emotions, there was no saying how long she’d be trapped in that hell . . . and she could not afford to lose her wits, particularly here. Not when her visit to this place represented a pathway to being the protector her sister and nephew needed.
Lila concentrated on drawing in small, slow breaths until the memories retreated.
She’d not expected the noise. Nor, for that matter, had she expected at this early-morn hour there’d be a crowd within.
For if she had, she couldn’t have come. Not even in the name of protecting her nephew or sister.
Closing her eyes, Lila spit; her saliva darkened the stone, and she stared at it to give herself something to focus on rather than the nausea churning in her gut.
“Kill ’em . . . Kill ’em dead!”
The screams from Manchester melded with the rougher Cockneys of Savage and his patrons. They all rolled together so that Lila couldn’t untangle which voices belonged to her past, and which to this moment.
She clamped her hands over her ears, curling her fingers hard into her head in a bid to claw out those distractions. They were ones she didn’t need now. Not ever, really, but certainly not now.
Time crept by, and through it Lila warred with herself, searching in a vacuous void for strength and courage.
She’d been wrong. She couldn’t do this.
This is a mistake.
Chapter 4
The stranger had returned.
And it wasn’t, as his partner had predicted, a patron.
Hugh stiffened. The voyeur’s pale, whitewashed face stood in stark contrast to the mud-splattered windows, long in need of cleaning. He sharpened his gaze on his subject.
Many of the spectators who set foot inside Savage’s were as fascinated as they were repelled by the violence on display between fighters.
This would not be the first time someone had thrown up at the establishment.
It would, however, be the first time a woman got sick outside that window, watching a match.
The arena erupted into another roar, calling Hugh’s attention back to the fight in progress. And by the way the small, scrappy fighter, Robert Tibbs, stumbled around on his feet, the match was nearly at an end. That hint of an end only added to the fervor belting throughout the room.
A shout rose out higher than the others in the arena. “Punch ’im, you bastard. Knock ’im on ’is arse.”