Page 18 of One Night of Temptation
He moved to hold her chair. Their gazes connected briefly before she sat. He pushed her toward the table, then went around to take his seat.
She removed the cover on her plate and inhaled. “It smells delicious.”
“Con’s food is even better than his ale,” Hugh said. “I come in for dinner sometimes. He makes an excellent roast beef.” Which was what they had before them—immersed in an aromatic sauce made with madeira.
She picked up her utensils and forked a small slice of carrot. “Does he cook it himself?”
Hugh cut into his beef. “Not anymore, but he used to. Or so he told me. He came to work here years ago as a lad, and the owner adopted Con as his son. He didn’t have children of his own and sought to find someone who would carry on his legacy of good ale and food.”
“It seems as though Con’s done that,” she said. “Even if there’s violence along with it.”
Picking up the bottle of wine, Hugh filled each of their glasses. “Believe it or not, this is better than many places in the neighborhood. Con is well liked, and they respect his business.”
“He seemed to take the disturbance in stride,” she said. “As did the woman who brought our dinner. I assumed the tussle was a regular occurrence. Are you saying it’s not?” She cut a piece of beef.
“Depends on what you mean by regular.”
They ate in silence for a few minutes before she said, “You seem undaunted by the dangers of living in St. Giles.”
He lifted a shoulder before taking a sip of wine. “I’m used to it now, though I’ll admit to being uneasy at first. Bravado is exceptionally useful in the rookery.”
“I’ll try to remember that.” She picked up her wineglass. “Do you still employ bravado, or are you as confident as you appear to be?”
“I don’t know how I appear.”
Her gaze swept over him, and his body responded with a sharp surge of awareness. “Confident. Very, very confident.”
There was an admiration in her tone that made his chest want to expand. “In what way?”
“You are adamant that you’ll protect me—not that you’ll try. That youwill.” She took another sip of wine, then set her glass back down. “Have you failed at anything?”
He nearly barked with laughter. “I’ve failed atplenty. Mathematics was the absolute bane of my Oxford career. Thankfully I was good at all the other subjects, especially divinity.”
She smiled, and heat bloomed within him anew. He realized he was forever going to have a visceral reaction to her. “Naturally.”
Forever? He shook the word away from his brain.
“What else have you failed to accomplish?” she asked.
When he thought of the word failure, one specific event vaulted to the forefront of his mind. He universally ignored it, as he’d just done when he’d mentioned mathematics. But the memory persisted until it tumbled from his thoughts and out his mouth. “I couldn’t save my mother.”
She’d been about to eat a potato, but she paused, her forehead creasing. “You were eight. How can you possibly think you could?”
“My father sent me to fetch the physician.” A shudder rippled across his shoulders. “I was distracted by a whimpering dog. I stopped to pick it up, and when I got to the physician’s house, his wife said he’d just left to visit a neighboring town.” He couldn’t meet Lady Penelope’s eyes any longer and dropped his gaze to his plate. The food blurred. “I was too late. If I hadn’t gone after the dog…” He left the rest unsaid and blinked until his plate came back into focus. He didn’t need to voice the extent of his failure, not when it was plainly, and painfully, evident.
“Mr. Tarleton,” she said softly. “Hugh.”
The sound of his name on her lips, and not as a joke, drew him to look at her once more. Her gaze was warm and steady. “It wasn’t your fault. You can’t think that it was. You’ve no idea if the physician could even have helped her.”
He knew that. The physician had said she would likely die. But an eight-year-old boy doesn’t want to believe that can happen to his beloved mother. “I was desperate to save her, and I couldn’t. That is my greatest failure.”
She reached across the table and put her hand over his. It was precisely what he’d done to her earlier, but she could in no way cover his as he’d done with hers. Her flesh was pale and soft against his, and the need to protect and care for her nearly overwhelmed him.
“You shouldn’t carry this burden. Surely you’ve learned the importance of forgiveness?”
Of course he had. He preached it daily—forgiveness was for the forgiver, which made it especially important to forgive oneself most of all. And yet, he struggled to do it himself.
“I have. And I try. It’s not as if my family blames me,” he said. They also didn’t know the extent to which he blamed himself. No one had until tonight. “They don’t know that I feel guilty.” His voice was quiet. “I never told them.”
