In the Dark with the Duke by Christi Caldwell Page 0,35

hanging in the Venetian armoire. That hated, stained, and ripped article.

Giving her head a shake, she tore her focus from the familiar dress and returned to the more recent, brown and grey dresses her family had commissioned at her request.

In the end, Lila settled on a dark grey that almost shimmered when the light touched it.

After she’d dressed and plaited her hair, Lila made her way through the doorway that had served as entrance to the original servants’ corridors. Walled in but not closed off, they afforded Lila a secret path throughout her family’s household. One that allowed her the freedom to avoid everyone’s company.

The narrow space, nearly pitch black, would have once roused terror in the girl she’d been. Her eyes, however, had become adjusted to dimly lit rooms and places. Either way, time and life had taught Lila it wasn’t the shadows and dark one should fear, but rather the world around them. The dark acted like a cloak, offering a sanctuary to hide within. Stepping out amongst the living, one was at the mercy of the people around one—the hungry crowds, demanding food. The guards and government, determined to oppress. In short, a world at odds, which would always be at odds, and because of that eternal conflict, there would forever be uncertainty to any person who moved about society.

When she reached the last step, Lila let herself out to the shared, narrow alley between her family and Lord Crossley’s residence. She stole a wistful glance over at the townhouse. How many times had Lila run back and forth between these two homes so she might see Annalee?

Annalee, whom she’d been visiting with in Manchester, had flourished where Lila had wilted after Peterloo.

One fact remained: neither woman was the same person she’d been.

Lila kept her gaze trained forward, focusing on the flicker of light from the streetlamp ahead.

A short while later, she found her way to the hackney waiting at the end of Mount Street, just where she’d instructed him to be yesterday morning. Beneath the thin layer of black paint, the previous owner’s coat of arms was visible on the doors of the hired carriage.

“Good morning, ma’am,” the driver greeted in his street-rough Cockney. “Same place?”

“The same.” Lila inclined her head, and opening the door, she drew herself inside the ancient conveyance some nobleman had sold off that had now become the cornerstone of the hack driver’s business. She settled onto the bench, stripped of its upholstery but for pieces of pink fabric that had proven too difficult or bothersome to remove.

The carriage lurched forward and started a slow roll through London.

As they traveled, she pushed aside thoughts of Annalee and focused on her impending meeting.

I don’t go by “Hugh.” I’m Savage . . .

Was Savage even his surname? Or was it one he’d taken on to mark his place in the underworld of London?

Either way, in that moment as she’d rambled on with her lesson on the root word of the name “Savage,” she’d not known whether she’d sought to enlighten him or reassure herself.

Though a man nearly six inches beyond six feet, his body dripping chiseled muscles and adorned in black-and-crimson paint, was hardly one to inspire calm in a lady, particularly a lady who’d made it her way to never seek out any company.

Only, if she were being honest with herself, there hadn’t been solely fear on her part—an all-too-familiar sentiment she’d become quite adept at identifying. There’d been something even more powerful: desire. Heat fanned her belly, as welcome now as it had been during their meeting yesterday morn.

There was something freeing in her body’s response to him. For in feeling something other than fear, Lila relished the truth that she was not a completely empty shell of a person. That if she was capable of feeling desire, then surely she was as capable of feeling joy and hope . . . and living again.

The carriage hit four consecutive pits in the street, and Lila caught the edge of the bench and gripped it hard to keep herself from pitching around.

They were nearly arrived.

To give her fingers something to do, she peeled the moth-eaten curtain back a fraction and peeked out at the darkened streets . . . until several moments later when the hackney rolled to a jerky stop outside Savage’s.

Lila remained fixed on the bench.

I can do this . . .

She could do this. She’d done it before. Not in the same way, necessarily. Having journeyed to meet Clara that