In the Dark with the Duke by Christi Caldwell Page 0,96

Bragger and Maynard . . . and every last child he’d failed the moment he stepped away and attempted to make a life for himself.

Regardless, she represented the surest way to gain, if not acceptance, entry to households. “Well, I’ve information for you, Lila March.” Hugh drew the pair of leather fawn riding gloves from his jacket and tugged them on. “Now you do. I’m afraid I’m unable to remain for refreshments but look forward to our outing tomorrow.”

“But—”

“Ten o’clock tomorrow morning. Be ready.”

With that, he headed for the door.

“Hugh, I can’t accompany you.” His legs ground to a stop midstride, and he slowly wheeled back to face her. She turned up a shaking palm. “I don’t go outside.”

He waited for her to say something more. And she didn’t. A muscle ticked at the corner of his eye. “With me.” A common street rat. A fighter. A murderer . . .

“No. I . . .” Lila scrabbled with her skirts before catching his gaze on those frenetic movements, and she stopped herself. “I don’t go out,” she repeated, the same meaning, the words slightly different, but their message the same.

His mind tried to slog through exactly what it was she was saying. He scoffed. “You’ve visited me and—”

“In the morn.” Her quiet murmur vibrated in the thick air.

And then a memory trickled in. Of the day he’d put her in a hired hack, the terror that had brimmed in her eyes as she’d scoured the bustling streets. And his earlier confidence, the internalization that this had been all about him, wavered.

Drawing back her shoulders, she looked him square in the eyes. “I’m a recluse.”

Chapter 23

Lila’s mouth went dry.

She’d told him.

Because she’d needed to. Only, she’d owed him the truth before this. And it should have come not because he’d put a request to her that she could never fulfill. He’d spoken of his struggles and suffering, and all the while, Lila had kept her demons close, shutting Hugh out.

Now, the one thing he sought . . . The one repayment he’d ask was the one she couldn’t give. And as such, he needed to know. He deserved those answers more than she deserved the secrecy that protected her pride.

But how she hated that he had been the one person to see her for more than her past . . . that a man who’d been wholly unconnected to those darkest days should now see her and that day as one.

He turned his left hand up slightly at his side. The hand now holding that newspaper article. “I don’t . . .” He shook his head.

Restless, Lila wandered over to the gilded wooden pedestal table. The pale-yellow urn overflowing with flowers infused the air with a sweet scent. Closing her eyes, she drew in a breath and let that floral smell fill her nostrils, one that harkened back to the country and open fields and land she’d sought to avoid. When she opened her eyes, the crimson flowers her sister filled the household with met her gaze. Of their own volition, her fingers reached for one of those stems, plucked free of its thorns, and brought it close to her face.

God, how she despised that color.

In it she saw only blood, and fields slicked with that sanguine flow of life . . . and death.

With her fingers shaking, Lila returned the bloom to the water, to the center of the arrangement, interspersed with pink, ivory, and white roses. She fiddled with the flower . . . several moments? An hour? A lifetime? As she sought to right her thoughts and searched where to begin, time had ceased to make any sense.

But then time hadn’t really meant anything in so long.

There’d been no obligations, no commitments. No gatherings or places she’d promised to be. Until Hugh. Hugh had brought order and thought back into her life, had required her to be human again, and to do things that living people did—to honor appointments, to engage in discussion. To think.

To feel.

She felt his presence there. Silent and unmoving as he was, he remained all-powerful in his presence.

She continued to search for a way to begin, and finding there’d never be any perfection in this because there’d been no perfection in that day, she settled on the easiest place to start.

“Do you have any remembrances of being outside London?” she quietly asked.

He gave her a look, and then slowly shook his head. “Not in . . . a long time.”

“I don’t think your life

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