In the Dark with the Duke by Christi Caldwell Page 0,78
up. “You saw the benefit in teaching me how to fight.”
“Yes,” he hissed. “But not so you could go about teaching others.”
“I don’t know why you can’t see there is good in this idea, Hugh. If you read what I intend for us—”
A hiss exploded from between his clenched teeth. “I read your damned notes, Lila.”
Lila briefly studied the tips of her bare toes. What had she expected? That he’d not be horrified at the prospect of her, a woman, entering into the world he inhabited? Unwilling to be deterred, she tried again to make him see reason. “The world of fighting is good enough for you and your partners, so why should it be different for me?”
He cursed roundly. “This has nothing to do with the fact that you’re a woman.”
“Doesn’t it, Hugh?” Wasn’t that what it always boiled down to amongst society, and of every station? There was the view of what was men’s work and what was women’s, and never were women permitted those same freedoms and opportunities. “If I’d come to you as a man intending to make a life in the fighting world, would you have this same response?” After all, he’d agreed to work with his partners, who were undeserving of him.
“I would,” he said unequivocally. With one hand, he snapped the book shut, the angry little snap sounding like a gunshot in the quiet. “This isn’t about your gender, Lila. It does, however, have everything to do with the fact that you see fighting as a sport. When it’s not. It’s only violence and bloodshed, and you’d see its propagation.”
“And yet, it’s a world fine enough for you to be part of?”
He paled. And she immediately longed to call the words back because she didn’t want to hurt him. But she also wanted him to understand and believe in her vision, and be a part of it with her.
“I’m not different in what I do,” he said quietly. “I despise fighting, and yet I don’t have a choice, Lila. While you?” He came close, his hand coming up, and her heart pounded in eager anticipation of his light caress, but he only held her book up between them. “You don’t have to, and yet you’re choosing to.”
That’s what he believed. He couldn’t see past the end of what he did to the other side of what she intended. What her goals were. “I’m not looking to spread love for it as a sport.”
Hugh took her by the shoulders, his fingers digging lightly into the softness of her arms, and brought his face close to hers. “It is the same damned thing. Even as innocuous as you make it sound, a fight club is never going to be innocent. That is what you, with your privileged life, could never understand.”
Her lower lip trembled. “You don’t know anything about me or my circumstances.”
“I know you were likely born with a team of nursemaids and had the finest of cradles with the softest of mattresses, and that you’ve lived a life of luxury.”
She bit down hard on her still-shaking lip. He was right, and yet at the same time, he knew nothing about her. “My life has not been the perfect one you think.”
His gaze slid to the scar down the middle of her forehead, and the need to look away from Hugh and his scrutiny was a physical one.
“No,” he murmured, touching a finger to that hated scar. “I don’t think your life is perfect. Regardless of station, I don’t believe any of us are free from strife. But at the end of the day, Lila? Where are you?” Hugh spread his arms wide. “You close the doors to your palace, and even as you might have your own demons, you still don’t have to worry about where you’ll rest your head for the night or whether you’ve the funds to maintain apartments that can’t even keep the damned rain out.” He dropped those long, magnificent limbs back to his sides.
Lila’s feet may as well have sprung roots and kept her fixed to the cold, hard floor.
For Hugh spoke of a world she knew not at all. His world.
The one that the men and women and children had been assembled on St. Peter’s Field to protest, asking for more.
And as for Lila that day? She’d been perched atop a well-sprigged curricle, with her pretty parasol up to shield her until-then-unblemished skin from the hot summer sun. She and Annalee had watched on as if that