have the haunted eyes this woman before him did.
This woman, who now implored him to teach her to fight. And yet ironically . . . “There’s nothing I can teach you,” he made himself say.
Nor did that rejection come from a need or desire to get rid of her. The truth was, he’d never really trained to fight. He’d never instructed anyone to fight. Everything he’d learned had come from being tossed into a ring and battling other children.
Her face fell.
“I don’t teach people how to fight.” And he never would. The last thing he wanted to do was turn out more fighters on the world.
She stretched a palm across the scratched and nicked bar surface and gripped his forearm. “There must be something I can do or say?”
“Is that an offer, Flittermouse?” Hugh looked pointedly at where she touched him, her unwitting caress slight and oddly more enticing than the outrageous, bold ones of the women he’d kept company with over the years.
“Of course not.” Color flooded Lila’s face, bathing her slightly pointy but dainty chin, high cheekbones, and forehead in a bright shade of red . . . That vibrant blush heightened the whiteness of the scar. “You’re trying to shock me.”
“Are you attempting to reassure yourself with that, Flittermouse? To convince yourself I’m something other than what I am? That I’m somehow safer?”
She dipped her gaze down, and he followed it all the way to her clenched fists; they were curled into visible balls that had left her knuckles white. Unbidden, his eyes went to that scar once again.
It doesn’t matter . . .
How she’d come by it wasn’t his concern.
She didn’t matter.
Hugh didn’t need to be responsible for anyone’s well-being. The people he did keep company with were those who were capable and adept at survival.
And his earlier resolve wavered.
The young woman caught his focus on that mark, and she tipped her chin at a proud angle, one that both dared him to ask a question and also sent him to the Devil with the fire there, all at the same time. Not for the first time, he wondered after that damned scar. Was that what accounted for her being here? Was she, despite her earlier insistence, the miserable wife to some brutal nobleman? After the violence and evil Hugh had witnessed from them over the years, nothing about what those men were capable of did or would ever surprise him.
“How did you learn to fight, Hugh?” she asked quietly, laying command to his name as no one else had ever dared. That left him vulnerable in ways he’d never been.
Hugh leaned in. “You don’t want to talk about your past”—and it only fueled his questions about the obstinate woman—“and I don’t talk about mine.”
Hope lit her eyes. It was a sentiment he’d not seen in more years than he could remember, and he almost failed to identify it for what it was. “That is fine. I’ll agree to those terms.”
And he, who’d never been given any reason to believe in God, found himself closing his eyes and praying for patience. When he opened them, he found her wary-once-more gaze upon him. “They aren’t terms. I’m explaining to you why I won’t provide—”
“But not can’t,” she said, pouncing on that choice of words.
He spoke over her. “I’m no Gentleman Jackson. There’s no program I offer to teach you or anyone to be a great fighter.”
“You’ve never been beaten, they say.”
“You make more of it than it is.” The whole world did. Hugh’s gaze moved beyond her shoulder. “I just survived—and there aren’t lessons for that.”
She scoffed. “You can teach me how to have a good stance so I don’t fall if I’m hit or pushed. You can teach me how to distract or disarm an attacker.” Lila came closer, and with her every word, he became further intrigued . . . by her. By what she proposed. “And you can teach me how to strengthen my body.” Unwittingly her words drew his gaze down her slender frame.
He swallowed hard.
And as he stood there, considering the request she put to him, he contemplated everything he’d already come to glean about the woman in a short time. If he didn’t agree to help her, she’d find another.
In these streets.
Someone who thrilled at the fight and had no compunction about raining one’s fists down until one’s opponent was dead and bleeding at his feet.
And she’d be taken apart by whichever street fighter she presented that request to. Nor was