it cynicism on his part, but rather a whole life’s worth of exchanges with those same men.
He found himself wavering, and fought against all his better judgment.
Hugh didn’t help people. The last time he’d tried . . .
Please, sir, won’t ya ’elp me. Please . . .
Lila stared back at him with those same haunted-yet-hopeful eyes. It was a contradictory mix of life-hardened and innocent that went together not at all, that bespoke a woman with secrets. The last thing Hugh could afford was a woman like that in his life.
Hugh came out from behind the bar, and at his approach, she stiffened.
She’d both fear him and ask for his aid. The lady must be desperate. There was no other accounting for her presence here still. Hugh bent down and rescued her forgotten book on flittermice. He weighed the small volume, his large palm dwarfing the title. “What’s your name?”
“I already told you—”
“You gave me a first name. I want all of it.”
She eyed him carefully a moment before volunteering, “Lila March.”
Lila March.
Hugh turned it over in his mind.
Feminine and soft, and yet at the same time, direct and succinct . . . it suited her.
“I’ll give you your lessons, March,” he said.
Lila’s long throat moved wildly. “Thank you. Thank—”
“Don’t thank me yet. There’ll be conditions and . . . Nothing is free. Nothing. Not in these parts.”
She eyed him apprehensively. Her tongue darted out to trace that wide seam of her lips. Had she been any other woman, and had there been something other than unease rippling off her slender frame, the gesture would have been construed only as seductive. “Let us begin with the conditions.”
“My rules. They’re mine. I’m not in the business of turning out fighters. Don’t go telling your friends. Don’t go sending anyone else to me, thinking I’ll make them into fighters to take on the world.”
Something shifted in her eyes. Fear. Having known that emotion best above all others, he recognized it in this woman.
Good, she was realizing the kind of man she’d sought out.
“Next, I don’t go by ‘Hugh.’ I’m Savage.” It was a name that aptly suited him, one he might not have been born with but that his handlers had assigned to him, and that had proven apt in its assignation. “Next—”
She was already shaking her head.
Shaking her head?
“I’m not calling you ‘Savage.’”
“It’s not negotiable,” he snapped.
“Is it because you think to remind me or others of your ruthlessness and the violence you’re capable of?” She peered at him, those fathomless depths that penetrated as if they could see into a man’s soul. Or worse . . . the field of carnage that lay at his feet. “Or,” she asked pensively, “is it a reminder for you?” And mayhap with those too-apt words, she could. “Either way,” she went on almost conversationally, as if they were two passersby in her fancy end of London, exchanging pleasantries on the day, “did you know the origins of the word ‘savage’ come from the early fourteenth century?”
“No, and I don’t—”
“In fact, the earliest usage didn’t refer to one who was brutal or barbaric. Its roots, salvaticus, are Latin in origin. In ancient times, people greatly feared the untamed land, the forests, and the woods. And with good reason,” she said, “when one considers the unfamiliar and ofttimes dangerous creatures that lived there. Eventually, the word went through an evolution in meaning. It came to be used to refer to those who were indomitable and valiant. The negative connotation we now associate with your surname, in fact, didn’t come until much later.”
He narrowed his eyes. She’d come here, romanticizing his damned name?
Her etymology lesson was met with a muffled snickering outside the room.
Hugh glared in the direction of the doorway. “Get the hell out,” he thundered, and there came distinct footfalls as Bragger and Maynard retreated.
“Are they your partners?” she asked.
He ignored her question, again leaving her to the erroneously drawn conclusion that he was an equal to the men who owned this place. “I’ve already told you, I don’t answer questions about my past, and I don’t want to know a damned thing about yours. I don’t want to know who you belong to. How you take your tea. What your favorite color is.”
She scraped a frosty stare up and down his person, and by God, even he, street-hardened, emotionally deadened bastard that he was, found himself hard-pressed not to be embarrassed by the ice there. “I don’t belong to anyone, Hugh.”
“Yes, I can