In the Dark with the Duke by Christi Caldwell Page 0,98
speaking the first words since she’d begun her telling.
“Eighteen, Hugh. Not so young.”
“But not so very old, either.”
She held his gaze. “And at eighteen, did you consider yourself a boy?”
His eyes went dark. “It’s different, Lila.”
“It’s not,” she insisted. “Not at all. Don’t use age to wash away my mistakes.” She thumped a fist against her chest. “That lack of awareness . . . that was my fault. I had every opportunity to be enlightened.” And she’d not been. “I’d been the lady reading fanciful romantic books.” Ones where love triumphed and damsels found happily-ever-afters with knights or reformed scoundrels. “All the while? I remained ignorant as to the plight of those outside the exalted ranks of the peerage.”
Needing to move, needing to escape but not allowing herself the coward’s way this time, she strode out from behind the table and began to pace. “My friend didn’t want to go. She didn’t see what the furor was over.” Lila dug her fingers hard against her temples in a contradictory need to both bring those memories forward and tamp them down. “Why couldn’t we go fish?” Because Annalee had loved to cast a line at her family’s river. “Why couldn’t we go spend the day at the swing?” Hung between two tall pines over that same river, they’d loved to soar over those smooth waters before jumping off and in. To the shame and horror of Annalee’s mother and self-indulgent father. “We didn’t do either of those things she exceedingly wished to do.” Why? “Wh-why?” Her voice broke, and she shook her head with sadness, self-disgust . . . and the all-too-familiar sentiment—regret.
Hugh brushed his roughened palm down the curve of her cheek in a caress she didn’t deserve. And selfish as she’d always been, she took of that warmth he offered. He didn’t put questions to her. He didn’t urge her on in her telling. He just offered her patience and an ability to freely share, as she would. And how very wonderful it felt. After all these years of not talking about that day to anyone, for the pain that came in the recounting, there was a peace in unburdening herself of all those details.
Tortured, Lila lifted her eyes to his. “Ultimately, Annalee? She always went along with whatever scrape I’d put forward.” The rumble within the crowd, like distant thunder, growing increasingly close echoed in her mind. “Just as she did that morn.” She spoke softly to herself of the friend who out of cowardice Lila didn’t allow herself to think about. Except when the guilt was strongest. Except when the nightmares were darkest.
Hugh had killed men.
Many of them.
The first had been for hire, a price to be paid for his freedom. The rest? A number so many that in the heart of battle, he’d not even bothered tracking because he’d been so very consumed with just living.
As such, having taken life, having lived a perilous life . . . he’d never considered himself a coward.
Until this very moment with Lila.
For in this instant, he didn’t want her story. He didn’t want to know what accounted for the heartbreak in her eyes.
Because it was easier to keep the world to strict, definable facts: she was Lady Lila March, the woman who’d tricked him out of lessons, all with the intention of building a fight society. And he, a man who’d disavowed spreading any further violence.
That was simple and clear. Just as when he’d set out to pay her a call and put his demands to her, his request had been clear in his mind: enlist her help, secure the information he needed, and then part ways with her once again.
But knowing more . . . nay, knowing what ghosts were responsible for the fear that so often sparked in her eyes, or the haunted desolateness there even now, left the world a blend of all those millions of shades of blues she’d so poetically spoken of.
Whatever she’d say would alter . . . everything. It would add a layer of understanding to her and all that had shaped her . . . And once discovered, it would forever alter how he saw her . . . and more terrifying for it, his every dealing with her.
As such, he should urge her to silence. Remind her that theirs was an arrangement and nothing more.
And yet he could no sooner do that than he could again willingly take another person’s life.