In the Dark with the Duke by Christi Caldwell Page 0,131

at her even being here now. “You came here to share this with me.” It was a statement of wonder. She had braved the crowds she’d so avoided over the years . . . for him.

Just not necessarily to see him. Rather, to help ensure Hugh was able to do that which was right. It was everything he’d been searching for.

Nay, Lila was.

When Hugh still didn’t say anything, Lila spoke in more urgent tones. “Your partners may feel you denied them vengeance, but you have something else you can give them in repayment . . . a gift far greater.” Bragger’s reunion with the sister he’d loved and lost.

Who’d not really been so very lost, after all.

“I . . . see . . .”

This was the reason she’d come.

Hugh closed the book with a soft click and looked over the aged leather.

“I expected you might . . . be more excited.”

All elation he’d felt had come at finding her here with him. And he wanted to be suitably overjoyed at what she’d managed to secure . . . but even justice was empty . . . hollow . . . without Lila in his life. “I am . . . grateful for what you’ve given me,” he finally brought himself to say.

A little frown puckered that space between her brows, wrinkling the bottom of the jagged scar that ended there.

They stared at one another a long while in silence. “You left.”

He didn’t pretend to misunderstand. “I didn’t think there was much point in staying,” he said gruffly.

Hurt flashed in the expressive depths of her eyes. “I wasn’t a reason to stay?”

His heart found a normal cadence and then accelerated once more. Her charge, that question she leveled at him, suggested she’d wished to see him. But that was impossible . . .

“I saw how you looked at me, Lila. It’s how I look at myself.” Every morn of every day.

She drifted closer. “Did you take part at Peterloo?” she asked with her usual frankness.

Hugh’s eyes slid shut, as that name, her question, ushered in a host of all the darkest nightmares.

“Please, I beg ya . . . Help me, good sir . . .”

And he’d tried. God, how he’d tried. But in just being there, he’d failed. The nameless men, women, and children. And now the one woman whose name he did know. Whose name meant more to him than even his own life. “I was there.”

“That’s not what I asked,” she said before even the last syllable had left his lips.

They’d already held enough from one another. He’d not have partial truths between them. Not anymore. “We’d been positioned away from the fields. When L’Estrange called us for a forward charge, I galloped at those fields just as the rest of the 15th did.” He felt her eyes boring into him. “It didn’t take long to discover it was an impossibility for anyone to move . . . or that the innocent were under attack.” Hugh tightened his hold upon the diary the late earl had discovered. “I attempted to help.” His chest hurt from even the retelling of that hated day. “Everywhere I rode, the innocent rushed off and only fell at the hands of another soldier. But I charged the field,” he repeated, needing her to hear that. “And I was present.” Hugh sighed. “When the dust had settled, I left. I left my mount. And with nothing but my uniform and satchel, marched from Manchester to London, where I started begging again.”

Shame squeezed at his insides. At even that ignominy.

“And Bragger and Maynard found you then,” she accurately speculated. “It is one of the reasons for your loyalty to them.”

Precisely. He managed a nod but could add nothing more to the telling. Because there really was nothing more . . . to say.

Soft fingers covered his, and Hugh started. Her callused fingers, so tender and delicate, felt like . . . absolution.

“You are so much more than that day, Hugh McCade. You are more than you ever will give yourself credit for being. And I love you. I would never hold your being there against you.”

There was a buzzing in his ears, and he clung to just one admission: “You love me?”

A little laugh escaped her. “Of course I love you, you daft man. I have loved you since the day you put a cheroot in my fingers and helped me through my nightmares.”

A joy so dizzying, so beautiful filled Hugh. “I love you,” he rasped.