In the Dark with the Duke by Christi Caldwell Page 0,45

excited pitter-pattering of a heartbeat from a mere glance had been just more gifts taken from her. All that had remained after Manchester was a scared, scarred mouse of a woman.

Hugh’s gaze scorched her from the inside out, touching her to the quick, and she reveled in a new discovery: she was a woman, and even flawed and marked and weak as she was . . . this man desired her.

“Shall we?” he murmured, his baritone washing over her like so much warmed chocolate.

“Yes,” she whispered.

“All right, then,” he said, no-nonsense, walking to the center of the arena.

Humiliation scorched her, and she gave thanks that he’d not noted her response to him.

When he looked back questioningly, she affixed a grin.

“Why are you smiling like that?”

Oh, God.

“Like what?” she asked through her teeth.

He peered at her. “Odd-like. Silly and”—Oh, that was really enough—“dazed.”

She bristled with indignation. “Dazed?”

“Like you took a punch to the solar plexus.”

Yes, well, Hugh Savage did have that effect on a woman. “Given your edifying lesson on the use of time, I hardly think a lengthy discussion on what I do with my lips merits.”

The blue of his eyes turned a shade very nearly black.

What in her words was behind that sudden darkening, or was it just his customary annoyance?

Lila shifted on her feet. “What now?”

He grunted. “Let’s begin.”

She joined him in the middle of the arena.

“If you’d sought out your Gentleman Jackson—”

“He isn’t my Gentleman Jackson. Nor—”

“Pay attention,” he chided. “Jackson follows the rules he created: only use one’s fists in a fight.” Hugh sneered, his disdain palpable. He lifted his arms into perfect ninety-degree angles and sank his weight back over his legs, demonstrating a fighting form. Hugh threw a punch at the air, and she took a reflexive step away. “They teach boxing as a gentleman’s sport. They erase the ruthlessness from bare-knuckle fighting to cater to those fine lords because of their nobility. They don’t have to scratch and claw in the streets to survive. Their existences are safe, unthreatened.”

Their nobility . . . Their existences are safe, unthreatened . . .

Lila stared blankly on as Hugh displayed several more positions of a gentleman’s fighting pose.

That was what he believed. That was, in fact, what most of the world did—the peerage included. Peril didn’t come to the wealthiest, ruling elite. Nay, they were safe. Insulated. Protected from the horrors of existing.

They—Hugh included—didn’t think women like Annalee . . . or Lila . . . or any of the other men and women who’d fallen or been scarred at Peterloo, could ever know what it was to suffer.

That when the world had been set ablaze, she’d been trampled and dragged.

Hold the line . . . Hold the line . . .

Mooove, you whore . . .

“Lila?”

A heavy palm settled on her shoulder, and gasping, she brought an arm up to fend off the attack . . . that, this time, didn’t come. She struggled through the quagmire of the past, creeping back to the present.

She was here. Not in the open fields of Manchester, running from slaughter, but here in the rookeries.

Oddly safe, in the place where one would expect there to be a greater peril than in St. Peter’s Field.

“Hugh,” she said dumbly. At some point, he had ceased his lesson . . . and offered this quiet concern in place of his usual annoyance. Her eyes pricked with tears, and she blinked several times in a desperate attempt to hide those drops. A man such as him would only look with loathing upon that weakness. “Forgive me.” A lone tear trickled down her cheek, and she discreetly dashed at it. “I was distracted.”

He caught her chin in his hand, angling her face toward his.

Damn him for not allowing her to keep her tears a secret. What did you expect? That Hugh Savage should show you any mercy? She tipped her head back and dared him with her eyes to say anything about the telltale sign of misery.

And then he flicked the pad of his thumb out and wiped the damp trail the tear had streaked down her cheek.

Lila sucked in a soft, little breath at that gentle caress . . . and the unexpected tenderness from him.

His gaze went to that hideous scar that ran down the middle of her forehead, and for one horrifying moment she believed he intended to ask after its origins. He moved a callused finger along the jagged slash of skin. Time had faded it, but every day