In the Dark with the Duke by Christi Caldwell Page 0,95
carriages out the floor-to-ceiling windows that lined the room. Those sounds muted by the drawn curtains.
She proved braver and bolder than him once more, speaking first. “Why is it so important to you that you attend Lady Prendergast’s masquerade?”
He hooded his eyes, but Lila was already shaking her head. “I’ve a right to know.”
“No, you don’t,” he said flatly. She’d lost all rights with her lies of omissions and future intentions.
“Is she in some way connected to . . . your past?”
God, she was as tenacious as she was clever.
“And if I said she was, would you express your shocked disbelief that a peer could be connected to such atrocities?” he taunted.
Except the saddest of smiles ghosted her lips. “I’d say in return that nothing about any gentleman could surprise me.”
Unnerved by that response, which was as cryptic as it was unexpected, Hugh tapped his leg. “Well?”
“I’ll help secure your entry to Polite Society, Hugh.” Joining him, she pressed the newspaper clipping into his hand, forcing him to take it. “I’ll see that my family opens doors previously closed to you.” There was a “but” there. He waited for it . . . and when it did not come, he pressed her for more.
“You’ll speak to your brother on my behalf, then.”
“As soon as he returns, you have my word.”
Bloody hell. So that was how she’d been able to sneak about . . . and why she resided with her sister. “When?” Neither he nor Maynard nor Bragger could begin to find the information they sought without the entry Lila and her family provided.
“He’s not due to return for several weeks.”
His brow shot up. “Several weeks.” Time they didn’t have. Soon details of his past and his connections to Savage’s would be dug up, and all those lords involved in the Fight Society would see Hugh barred from their households. “That is insufficient.”
“My sister-in-law has just delivered their child, Hugh.”
“No.”
Her lips dipped at the corners. “I assure you, she has.”
He swiped a hand over his face, and despite himself, despite the struggle of being back here with her, a rusty chuckle shook his chest. “I’m not disputing the birth of the babe.”
Understanding filled her clear gaze. “You were speaking of the timeline of my brother’s return.”
“I was,” he said, his expression deadpan.
“I . . . see . . .”
A stilted awkwardness hung in the air.
“In the meantime, you and I can begin our . . .”
She stared at him, a question in her eyes. “Our what?”
He bounced on the balls of his feet, riddled with the same energy that coursed through him before a match. “I’ll court you. It will lend an air of believability to our conn—” connection.
Lila collapsed into a paroxysm of coughing, her cheeks turning florid, and she opened her mouth as if trying to speak through her fit. She held an arm out.
He thumped her hard between the shoulder blades.
“Wh-what?” she at last managed to strangle out.
“I believe you call it a ‘courtship’?” he drawled. “And here, given your tendency of dashing around the rookeries, enlisting aid from a fighter, I’d have thought the courtship of a duke would be mundane.”
She’d no intention of joining him out and being seen with him. It was there in her eyes.
As a boy, in exchange for coin, he’d wiped dung from the boots of lofty lords. He’d returned from war a grown man with his hand out, still begging for funds from anyone who could spare it. None of those shames felt anything like this rejection. “Tsk. Tsk. Nothing to say?” he taunted.
“I’m not joining you.”
“Anywhere?”
She shook her head. “Well, the masquerade . . . I will be there.”
He flicked the snow-white lace that dripped from her yellow sleeve. “Too good to be seen about with the Devil Duke.” As society had taken to writing of him in their shite gossip columns.
Indignation blazed in her eyes, and she slapped his hand away. “My, what an ill opinion you have of me.”
For a moment he thought he might have actually seen hurt there.
She clasped her hands behind her back, but not before he caught the slight shaking of those digits. “I don’t . . . take part in ton functions.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Isn’t that what ladies do?”
“Most,” she said calmly. “I don’t.” Her gaze dipped to the floor.
He waited for her to say something more.
But she offered him only her silence.
Hugh set his jaw. She’d not help him in this. This, his one opportunity to repay a debt to