In the Dark with the Duke by Christi Caldwell Page 0,39

better suited to a child, the quality no better than the previous one he’d considered. “Here.” Loping over, he offered the garment, which Lila this time accepted from him. “You want to know why you’re wearing pants when you’ll only be wearing dresses in society.”

“I do.” Because even as it was no doubt freer, moving about in trousers, the places her family hoped she’d go and the world she intended to rejoin required her in those cumbersome articles.

“It wasn’t a question,” he said dryly, and she found her cheeks ablaze with heat again. How had it been possible to lose every nuance of discussion? How could one event have erased that ability to speak?

“Now, fighting, Lila, is about knowing the feel of one’s body.” He glided around her, not unlike those figures she’d seen sliding around at the Frost Fair nearly fourteen years ago, the last time the Thames had ever frozen.

“It is about learning how and in which ways to move. Touch me.”

Touch me.

Her mouth went dry, and every part of her caught fire at . . .

“If you’re going to learn to fight and have the strength to use those skills, Flittermouse, you’re going to have to bring yourself to touch me.”

“I know,” she said weakly. Lila darted a hand out.

Hugh arched away from her touch, his back curved, and the muscles of his chest and stomach rippled.

She followed him with her eyes.

“Footwork is just as important as any punch you land, Lila. You cannot fight unless you know how to move your feet.”

And then he moved.

Good God, he moved.

Swaying on his feet as he spoke, gliding back and forth with more mastery than any dance instructor or . . . or . . . anyone she’d ever seen waltz upon a ballroom floor. And here she’d believed herself incapable of living or feeling anything beyond fear.

“Try again,” he urged, the cadence of his breathing even, when her own? Her own came ragged to her own ears.

For reasons that had nothing to do with any exertion on her part and everything to do with the man before her.

Do something.

Touch him.

Oh, God. Her heart catapulted to a different place in her chest. Touch him?

“Well, now,” he said impatiently, wholly unaware of the battle that raged within her.

Forcing herself to concentrate on Hugh as he dipped and shifted, she again stretched her fingers out, but he’d already spun away, anticipating and evading that touch. And as he wove about her, waltzing and gliding, her breath caught in what was far from fear and only an awareness of him and his body’s skilled movements.

And when he abruptly stopped, she found herself mourning the end of that magnificent display.

“Now, until you learn the feel of your body, you’re never going to learn how to use it in the ways it is intended to be used. And you’re never going to properly feel anything in those skirts, Lila.”

There was a beautiful poetry to his explanation, one that drove back some—not all—of her inhibitions. His words made sense in ways she’d not have considered.

“Very well.” Before her courage deserted her, Lila gathered up the garments, hugging them protectively against her chest as the ramifications of what he required, and what she’d agreed to, sent a familiar panic knocking around her breast. “Where do I . . . ?” Oh, God. “Where . . . ?” She couldn’t get the words out.

He lifted a brow. “What’s that?”

He was enjoying this. The Devil.

But then, when one made a deal with the Devil, one found oneself burnt.

Lila lifted her chin. “Where do I change my garments, Hugh?”

He angled his head, and she followed that gesture over to the four-paneled ebony screen in the corner; the dark wood had carved into the panels the same dragon and coiled serpent that marked Hugh’s chest.

“What’s the problem now, Flittermouse?”

Everything.

“Nothing.” The lie rolled off her tongue with a surprising ease. Maintaining the proud angle of her neck and head, she marched across the room. “There is no problem.” There was really all manner of them.

The moment she stepped around the ominous screen, her shoulders sagged.

This is reckless. Absolute recklessness.

An erratic giggle worked up her throat and spilled from her lips.

“Something funny, Lila?”

Quite the opposite. “Is humor disallowed here?” she shot back, the four-paneled screen making her bold. Or stupid.

“Yes.”

Hmph. Well, what was she to say to that?

“Get on with it, then.”

Get on with it.

Before her courage deserted her. Lila started on the laces at the front of her gown. Her hands