can do it,” she blurted. Except she lingered there, watching as he wiped the blood from his hands. “Do you do that often?” At his questioning glance, she clarified. “Fight.”
His mouth hardened. “What do you think?”
She wetted her lips. “I think . . . you conduct yourself . . .” Precisely as the papers had painted him: as a ruthless street fighter, known as the Savage Gentleman for his fine talk, but who could bring a lesser man to his knees. “I think you conduct yourself like one who fights often.”
“Then that’s the answer.”
But was it the true one? “So you and your partners, in addition to running your club—”
“It’s an arena.”
“Where boxers fight?”
His eyes sharpened on her face. “Do you have a notepad? Are you some reporter wanting to know about the owners of Savage’s?”
Lila touched a hand to her chest. “N-no. I’m not.”
He continued on relentlessly. “Have you come to talk about how we run our establishment?”
He was mocking her. “Perhaps we should get to the heart of my visit.”
“Let’s.”
Holding up the hem of her cloak and dress, she attempted to hoist herself onto the high seating.
And failed.
Hugh pressed his eyes closed, and his mouth moved as if in prayer, which, if she was hearing him correctly, also contained intermittent curses, too.
Suddenly, he shot his enormous hands out.
Lila gasped and brought her arm back to land a reflexive blow, but it merely grazed the air above his shoulder as he set her in her chair.
The notorious fighter smiled mockingly at her; the half tilt to those impossibly hard lips said he’d caught her response and found humor in her futile attempt at properly throwing a punch.
Lila tightened her jaw. She wasn’t one to be hurt or offended by Hugh Savage’s response. In fact, that pathetic attempt on her part accounted for her presence here even now. “I take it you caught that.”
“Your punch?” he asked drolly, coming around to the other side of the bar. “Just the opposite.”
And coward that she was, Lila was besieged with relief at the distance he’d put between them. “Yes.” Lila shifted on her bench, and caught the edge to keep from sliding off. “Which brings us back to my reason for being here.”
“You want to be a street fighter?” he asked, bringing a bottle out from behind the counter. He held the brandy aloft.
“No. No,” she said, and waved off his offer of spirits. “Women aren’t bare-knuckle fighters.”
His expression darkened. “Just because you haven’t seen them, doesn’t mean they aren’t. Women fight.”
Women fight.
He spoke of a world of primitive violence and chaos.
Lila’s gaze slid to that ring where he’d been embroiled in battle just moments ago.
“Get off me . . . Please, I beg you . . .” Her own pleas pealed around her mind, and she took a deep breath and forced back the memories. “I don’t want to fight,” she clarified. Rather, she wanted to be skilled should she so need it. “Does anyone really wish to?” she asked quietly to herself. As soon as the question left her, a memory slid in of Mr. Bragger and Hugh, who’d been so wholly in his element, a man born to war with his fists, and a master of it.
He pulled his lips back in another of those mirthless grins. “Did you see me and my partner? Did that look like two men who didn’t wish to fight?”
“You didn’t strike me as one who was enjoying himself, Hugh.”
It was a realization that had come to her as she’d stood and watched him. In the same way she was haunted and hunted, she recognized those same primitive responses in this man before her.
His eyes darkened. “You don’t know a damned thing, Lila.” He spoke the truth, and that truth was also the reason she was here even now. “You think like a damned lady.” Once more, he proved far more insightful than was safe.
“Do you expect a lady of the peerage would find herself in a hack to the rookeries, and to your club even now?” she countered, her voice climbing a notch.
“All I know is I don’t trust the nobility, and you certainly don’t sound like any woman from these parts,” he said with a finality to that pronouncement.
“Do you have many ladies come to your club?”
“Yes,” he said bluntly.
Well, that wasn’t what she’d expected.
Steepling his fingers, Hugh stared at her over the tops of them. Studying her. Probing her with those penetrating eyes which could surely pluck the deepest secrets from