. . . and himself, she also possessed an innate ability to know when he didn’t wish to say more.
And she honored that.
Perhaps that was what made it so very easy for him to converse with her. Perhaps that was why he’d not fought her when she returned and asked him for lessons, and why he defied his partners’ wishes even now in bringing her here.
“Do you keep horses, Hugh?”
Keep horses? “No.” Aside from the horse he’d ridden in battle, and the one loyal mount he’d purchased when he had enough funds to do so, there’d never been a collection of anything—let alone prized horseflesh. “Not a collection. Just one.” The great chestnut mount flashed to his mind. He’d been closer to his horse than any person in the whole of his existence. His chest spasmed with a pain that would always be there. For a loyal steed cut down too soon in a battle that’d won them nothing. That’d succeeded only in watering the earth with the blood of the innocent. His skin burnt with the heat of Lila’s gaze upon him; it probed and pierced. He cleared the emotion from his throat. “I’ve just always had an . . . appreciation for them as creatures,” he finished woodenly. Restless, fearing more questions, along with this wave of emotion he didn’t need to feel, he pushed away from the wall. “We should get started,” he said, dragging the fools chair to the side of the room.
“What was his name?”
“Hmm?” He curled his fingers around the side of his half table.
“Your horse.” Setting down the wood figurine, she hurried over and caught the other side of his table. “What was his name?”
“Her name. She was a mare. I called her Winfred.” He waved off her effort to help carry the table. “I can see to it.”
“I’m perfectly capable of helping.” Her eyes twinkled. “At least half.”
Together, they set to work carrying the mismatched furniture, depositing each piece alongside the front wall, until they’d formed a row that framed the lone window which looked out at the dangerous streets below.
Thinking better of it, Hugh caught the shutters and brought them closed.
“Winfred is an odd choice for a mare.”
“Aye, that it is.” And yet, it’d seemed somehow right for her. “She was a wonderful, loyal mount. Fearless.” And in the ultimate betrayal, she’d been cut down, not when they fought Boney’s forces, but on what should have been peaceful fields of Manchester. “Her name meant friend of peace.” Bitterness brought his lips curling into a sneer, while rage and grief, potent as they’d been that day at Peterloo, burnt like acid in his mouth.
“What happened to her?”
“She . . .” had a blade thrust into her side. Screamed her agony, that high-pitched wail penetrating the cacophony of men, women, and children being cut down around him. Sweat slicked his body, leaving him first hot, then cold. Until he managed to right his breathing and return to the moment. “She died.” The details of Winfred’s end and that day at Manchester weren’t topics for one like Lila March. Hugh reached for the work stool in the middle of the room, but Lila rested her hand on his, stopping him.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, giving a light squeeze, in the first-ever meaningful contact he’d had with any woman. With any person.
Emotion stabbed at his throat, and he gave an uneven nod. “Thank you.”
Together, in silence, they finished shifting the furniture about the room.
He’d not talked about Winfred to anyone. In fact, he’d not thought of her in at least two years. Nay, he’d not let himself think of her, and that day that he’d failed her in the name of honor. So why did he share that detail with Lila now?
And what was more . . . why did it feel so natural to do so?
Mayhap it was because after almost thirty-three years of keeping himself closed off from the world . . . protecting himself from all people, he’d tired of this constant need to be on guard. And Lila was the one person with whom he could relax those barriers without fear of being destroyed for that weakness.
Catching the last article, Hugh lifted the bench, a dilapidated piece he’d found and kept for carving, over his head and positioned it atop the half table. “Now, let’s begin.”
Chapter 14
Lila was in Hugh Savage’s apartments.
Her joining him at his household, in the dangerous streets of East London, had it been discovered, would have seen