In the Dark with the Duke by Christi Caldwell Page 0,61
I’ve not been either of those things . . . in so long, with anybody.” Her eyes slid back to his. “Until you.”
Unnerved by that rawness of her emotion and her absolute lack of artifice, he yanked at his collar. “It’s just me who inspires you to talk nonstop?” he muttered.
“Yes,” she said softly. “I suppose you can say that. With you, it is somehow . . .”—different—“different,” she finished, her thoughts unnervingly in tune with his. “You don’t tiptoe around me.” It was one of the first real clues she’d offered into her life. “You’re real and honest.”
Those four words managed to kill whatever this moment was that had existed between them.
Hugh chuckled, the sound rusty and cold to his own ears. “That’d be the first in my bloody lifetime that any fool had made that accusation.” The only thing honest about him was the power behind each blow he’d thrown. He’d stolen, killed, and maimed, all in the name of survival, and he didn’t want that life anymore.
Just as he’d wanted a way out as a boy fighting in the rookeries, he was scrabbling for that same elusive gift even now.
Only to find himself saddled with a woman wholly determined to immerse herself in the very life he despised.
“It’s true,” she said.
He snorted. “That’s naive of you.”
“Is it?”
His jaw rippled. “I’m not a good man, Lila March.” She’d be a goddamned fool to see him as anything other than the ruthless bastard he was.
Lila looked at him a long while before responding. “I can’t determine whether you’re trying to convince me or yourself.”
His entire body recoiled under that charge. He snapped, “I know exactly what I am.” And yet this woman, this stranger, presumed to know him better than he did himself? Hers was an arrogance better fitting those masked lords who’d requested meetings with him and the other fighters before their matches.
But as Bragger had rightly pointed out . . . what do you really know about Lila March anyway?
“I know you’ve told me exactly what you think of me at every turn,” she went on, fearless and bold in her challenge. “I know you’ve been teaching me, even though you didn’t want to.” Her eyes caught and held his. “Even though others don’t approve of my being here.”
“You’d make me out to be something more than I am,” he said emotionlessly. A savior. “I’m not looking to be anyone’s savior, Lila March.” He was useless where others were concerned.
She paled. “That’s not what I was saying. I’m not—”
“And certainly not yours,” he hissed.
And if he’d been another man, the honorable one she sought to make him into, there’d have been guilt or pain at the effect his words had on her; she’d the look of one whose pup had been kicked.
A man couldn’t be a savior when all he had was the blood of countless men and boys on his hands. It didn’t matter that it had been as a bare-knuckle fighter whose life depended upon it . . . or as a soldier on the Continent. His sins were his sins.
“Charge the field . . . charge the field . . .”
Hugh briefly closed his eyes, warding off the memory. Willing it back. And ultimately triumphing over that abyss.
He forced his eyes open. “It’s the lie you want, Lila. You want to convince yourself that I’m somehow above the violence and evil. That you are above it. But the truth is? It’s part of you. It’s part of all of us.” Hugh had come to that realization of what the world was—what he was—long, long ago.
Her heart-shaped features spasmed. “You are wrong.” That denial came as though ripped from her chest.
His lips curled up in a cynical twist. “I’m not wrong about anything, Lila March.” Lords. Ladies. Street thugs and rats. Gentlemen in uniforms. They all possessed a primal savagery that couldn’t be erased from who they were. Proof stood in the men, women, and children who fought, and the spectators who came to watch. “Do you need me to give you examples of my evil?”
She shook her head. “Stop.”
“Do you want me to tell you how every morning I wake up, I look at numbers I had inked into my skin to remind me of my sins? Because I was a fighter. Because that’s all I’ll ever be.” Rage ravaged his voice.
Stop talking.
Why are you talking? Why are you saying these things to her, this woman?