Chapter Fifteen
The color had gone out of Diana’s cheeks as she stared at him from his bed. The hand that held a sheet over her body shook as she processed what Lucas had just told her.
In truth, he was having trouble processing it, himself. The bandaged leg had been an unanswered question from that day, of course. But it had been chalked up to something that had happened in the chaos of that horrible afternoon. Something a kind servant might have done, or a fellow spy when they came upon him after the guard had been called in.
Now, though, this new information slid into the puzzle of his mind and fit in to a blank space. Only it created more questions than answers.
Answers Diana had begun to provide in unexpected moments.
“How or why would someone know my father’s methods?” she pressed. Her voice was shaking.
“A very good question,” Lucas said. “He did have acolytes. Trainees. But if one of them was there, then it would mean…”
Her lips parted. “That they were the traitor?” she burst out.
He shrugged. “It’s a possibility. One I hadn’t considered. Only, if they were the one who attacked your father and me, why would that person then bandage my leg? It saved my life, I’ve been told that multiple times in the past six months. Why would the man who attacked me want to save me?”
He asked the question and the moment he did, an answer came to mind. A terrible, horrible answer that he’d never even considered until that moment.
An answer that had nothing to do with anyone else in the world but Diana’s father. Only he couldn’t believe that George Oakford would be involved in the attacks on the War Department.
Not Lucas’s friend. Not Diana’s father.
“What is it?” she whispered, her bright green gaze snagging his. “Please tell me why your expression is like that.”
He stared at her. She had already gone through so much. Lost so much. He couldn’t tell her about this niggling feeling that now took root in his chest. He refused to do that to her.
Not until he knew for sure that he was right.
“I’ve shut you out,” he said softly. “I know that hurt you.”
She folded her arms now and he saw a lonely flash of anger across her lovely features. “I do understand it on some level, even if I hate it,” she said.
“What if I didn’t shut you out?” he asked just as softly. “What if I…what if I needed your help? Would you be willing to provide it?”
She opened her mouth, and he saw the emphatic yes in her eyes even before she spoke. Still, he raised a hand to hold off her answer. “Before you reply, you must know that you’ll get details, Diana. Information that may greatly pain you.”
She lifted her chin, and that core of iron that ran through her had never been so obvious. “I have felt pain greater than you can imagine,” she whispered. “I can face it again, especially if it means finding the truth and bringing whoever did this to you, did this to my father, to justice. If you think I can help, then let me.”
He nodded slowly. “Let’s get dressed then. The full case notes are in my study. We’ll go over them together.”
Darkness had begun to flood into Lucas’s study, and Diana looked up to find him lighting lanterns and stirring the fire to make her reading easier. In his chamber back in her cottage, she hadn’t gotten to read quite so much of his materials. Now she’d read them all and her chest hurt as she shoved the papers aside and drew a ragged breath.
“I’m sorry,” Lucas said as he sat in a chair beside hers. He was studying her face closely. “Is it too much?”
“No,” she said, though in her heart she didn’t completely feel that it was true. “Yes, it’s hard to read these things. To picture my father lying dead, cut down by an assassin’s bullet, likely fired by a friend to you both. But it isn’t only that. It’s the high emotion of the past few days. It’s the time of year…”
Lucas tilted his head. “The time of year?”
She pushed to her feet and paced away. She had not meant to say that out loud. Something in him brought it out in her, though. Something that told her to whisper her darkest and most painful secrets.
Even though he gave nothing back in return.
She pushed her shoulders back at that self-reminder and faced him. “It’s nothing. Have you ever created a timeline for the events leading up to that day, the day itself and after?”
He nodded. “Certainly, but it never hurts to do it again. I can write it down if you’d like to give me your impressions.”
He pushed from the chair and moved to the desk, where he pulled out parchment and laid it out across the width of the desk. He dipped his quill into the ink and looked at her in expectation.
“When were there first suspicions that a traitor was in your midst?” she asked. “The papers were not clear on that.”
“Three years ago,” he said, scribbling down the date at the far end of the paper. “Some information went missing and our enemies had it. It was obvious it had been stolen, sold.”
“And there had been nothing before that?” she asked.
He shrugged. “A few minor incidents here and there, but nothing too suspicious. We do not think our traitor was in action for more than a month or two before the first large incident.”
“You say minor incidents. I assume it wasn’t obvious at first that you were dealing with a traitor?” she asked.
A shadow drew down over Lucas’s face. “You do ask the right questions. No. We recognized strange things were happening here and there, but it took us about six months to determine that we had a traitor in our ranks. The information stolen could have been taken by someone outside our universe. Infiltration from outside, rather than a turn from within. Even when the truth became clear, there were multiple agents working on multiple angles of the case. No one was working well together. That’s why, two years ago, I was put in charge of the entire operation and took over regarding everything to do with our traitor.”
He was adding dates to the timeline, and Diana moved to stand beside him and look at it. Her stomach turned. Here was the beginning of the end for her father. For herself. The point where a boulder had been positioned at the top of a very high hill and begun to roll out of control toward her life.
She could see it now. She could not stop it. It was horrifying to see it laid out as such, and she shivered as she paced away from Lucas. He caught her hand as she did so and drew her back. He was looking up at her from his seat, his dark eyes filled with understanding and empathy.
“Is it too much?” he asked.
She reached down and traced his cheek with her fingertip. His pupils dilated, but he didn’t draw her closer. “No,” she whispered. “Well, yes, but not too much to stop. It’s just hard to see the path of destruction that led to my father’s death. To your injuries.”
He released her hand as he looked at the growing list of dates and events. “Yes. It’s always been difficult for me to see it like this. To wonder what I could have done to stop it all.”
She pressed a finger at the first date on the timeline and shook her head. “Only this man could have stopped it all,” she said. “Only he could have turned back to the right path and kept that terrible day from happening.”
He nodded slowly but his expression was incredulous. Like he understood but did not believe.
“Let’s carry on,” she suggested, moving away from him. “Were there any big moments in your case once you took over?”
“Yes.” He shuffled papers around on his desk and then motioned to the one before him. “We look for patterns in cases, you see. And the first one I found in this case was here, right after I took over.”
She looked at the paper he indicated and caught her breath. “The cases that led to shared information with enemies, the things that the traitor did, all came after cases were taken over by other agents.”
“Every case was one where one agent had taken over from another. Now, the agents who came off cases and the ones that took over, there’s no pattern there that I can find. Different men. But somehow our traitor was aware of the transition and used it to his advantage.”
Diana glanced over at him. His face was lit up in the same expression she could feel her on her own. She smiled gently at him. “I can see why this is so thrilling to you. For the first time I understand it a little better.”
He wrinkled his brow. “Well, there are times it is exciting, certainly. Finding a pattern like this one is a thrill unlike any other. Moving forward in an investigation and knowing you’re one step closer to uncovering the truth, it’s…”
“Intoxicating,” she whispered.
He nodded. “Yes, that’s the word for it. There is no other drink or drug or vice that I’ve found that feeds my soul like this one.”
“It did the same for my father,” she whispered as she traced her finger along the length of their timeline.
Lucas was quiet for a beat, and then he said, “Did he tell you much about what he did for the department?”
“He was a surgeon, of course. It’s all I thought he did until he showed up with…with that man two years ago. It was obvious there was more to it. So I don’t know, perhaps Stalwood put his mind in use when his hands were not.”
Lucas looked away, and something in her heart dropped at the unexpected expression on his face. Like he had something to hide.
“What?” she asked.
He shrugged his good shoulder. “I never knew him to be assigned to cases. Stalwood said he didn’t, either. It surprises me, is all, that he would…would be working on something neither of us knew.”
Diana stared at him. There was a cautiousness in his demeanor now. She didn’t like it. “You live in a world of secrets. I’m frankly shocked that you think you know them all.”
“You’re right, of course,” he said after a long hesitation. “But—”
He didn’t get to finish whatever thought was in his head. At that moment, there was a light knock on the door and then Jones put his head into the room.
“Your Grace, you have received a missive. You said you wanted it the moment it arrived.”
Diana watched as all of Lucas’s confident bravado faded, replaced by an almost boyish nervousness. He rose from the desk and crossed to his butler. Jones held out a folded sheet and Lucas took it, his hands shaking slightly. “Thank you, Jones. We will come in for supper shortly if Mrs. Cox is ready for us.”
Jones inclined his head. “She will be within the half hour, Your Grace. Is there anything else you need?”
“No,” Lucas said, still staring at the letter in his hand. “That will be all.”
Diana shifted as the butler shot her a look, that same judgmental one he’d given her every time he saw her, then left the room. Once he was gone, she shoved her discomfort aside and focused on Lucas. “What is that?” she asked, taking a cautious step toward him.
He jerked his head up, like he’d forgotten she was there. “I-it’s from the friend I wrote to today. Simon Greene, Duke of Crestwood. I didn’t expect for him to respond so swiftly, but this is his hand. I would recognize it anywhere.”
He made no move to do anything else, and Diana now took the remaining steps toward him. “Are you going to open it?”
He glanced at her again. “In truth, I am…I’m afraid to do so.”
She drew back at the unexpected honesty of that response. There was an intimacy required for a man like Lucas to admit he was afraid to anyone, but certainly to her. She longed for more of it, for that connection she had been seeking all her life and yet knew was foolish to look for in him.
“Because you pushed them away for so long?” she asked, her throat suddenly dry.
He turned the letter over and over in his hands. “Yes. It wasn’t always like that. I was the youngest of the group, some would say the most sober. But it never kept me from being included, cajoled, loved equally.”
She smiled at the description. “That sounds lovely, to have such friends as that.”
He swallowed hard, and she thought she saw a faint glimmer of tears in his eyes before he blinked them away. “It was. But it changed.”
“How?”
He shifted, and for a long moment he was silent, fighting a battle within about what to say. She prayed she would win that battle. Win a glimpse into the truth of him.
“It started…oh, it started a long time ago,” he choked out, his voice thick. “I was sixteen. Something happened.”
“Something?” she pressed, wishing with all her heart that he could find a way to confide in her. He knew so much about her and she knew…nothing.
He shut his eyes, and pain flowed over his face like a waterfall. And then it was gone. Tucked away because he was a spy and capable of masking anything important.
“It isn’t important what. It changed me, that is all. I started to push away from everyone then. My family, my friends, everyone. When I was eighteen, my father died. Instead of taking over my title, I enlisted in the military as an officer.”
She lifted her brows in surprise. “A rare thing for a man of your station.”
“My family was furious. I was the duke, damn it. I was not meant to risk my life and line for king and country.” He shook his head with a derisive snort. “I didn’t listen. Within two years I’d started at the War Department. I wrote to a few of my friends, but every year it was less often. Every year I pushed further. And now…well, I haven’t written to anyone since at least a month before the attack.”
She nodded slowly. She didn’t understand the particulars of what had sent Lucas away from everyone he loved and that still troubled her. But she did perfectly understand the utter pain he clearly felt at the action. The loss and the grief at having no one.
That she understood perfectly.
“The distance cannot have meant as much as you think,” she said softly. “Your friend has written to you now, an almost immediate reply. Surely that means something.”
He stared at the letter once more and still didn’t open it. “I fear it will tell me to sod off,” he admitted. “I’d deserve no less.”
She reached out and wrapped her fingers around his. She felt the warmth of his skin and the crunch of the paper, she felt the slight tremble of his hands. “I could look,” she suggested gently.
He looked at her, holding her gaze for a moment, two moments, an eternity. Then he released the pages into her care and nodded silently.
She leaned up and kissed his cheek, then broke the seal on the back of the pages and opened the letter. It was two pages long, and she scanned the first page briefly before she smiled and began to read it out loud.
“Willowby,” she began, and Lucas flinched as he always did when someone used his title. She thought this time was also about his friend, his fear. Swiftly she continued, “You do not know how long I have waited to hear from you, or how much fear our group as a whole has felt since you stopped writing months ago. To know that you are well and in London brings a joy to my heart that is only surpassed by recent happinesses in my own life, of which I long to share with you.”
With every word she read, she watched the tension bleed from Lucas’s shoulders, the fear leave his face, replaced by relief and joy. She watched every twitch and change, reveling in seeing the hardness go out of him, replaced by something gentler. Younger. Something untouched by whatever had changed him that he refused to share.
“Shall I go on?” she asked. “Or would you like to read the rest yourself?”
He held out a hand and she passed the letter over. He read over it and let out a long sigh before he read it a second time. Like the first was not to be trusted. Like he wanted to be certain it wasn’t a dream or a fantasy that his friend still cared.
“They are coming tomorrow,” he said at last.
She blinked. She had not read that far in the letter herself. “They?”
“Yes. Simon, his wife Meg and another of our friends, Matthew. He’s the Duke of Tyndale and was apparently visiting them when the letter arrived. They’ll be here for tea in the afternoon.”
“I-I should not be here for that,” she stammered.
He stared at her. “Not be here?” he repeated, like she had spoken some foreign language. “Why in the world would you not be here?”
She wrung her hands and moved away from him. “I-I am not fit to meet two dukes and a duchess. Not before our arrangement, certainly not since I am being labeled as your mistress.”
“Why would they care about that?” he asked.
She spun toward him and threw up her hands. “Don’t be obtuse, Lucas, it is beneath your intellect. Your servants look at me like I am a whore. What would a duchess think?”
Lucas’s jaw set. “If my servants dare to be rude to you, I will sack them at once. As for the duchess in question, I’ve known Meg nearly all my life. She has never been anything but kind, generous and accepting. At any rate, she’d be a hypocrite if she had anything to say about the matter. I may no longer be directly informed about the details of my friend’s lives, but I hear enough. She and Simon were embroiled in a terrible scandal not a year ago. She would never dare to judge someone else.”
Diana shook her head. Those words sounded lovely, but she knew they were likely untrue. Ladies could be cruel to one another. “I don’t know,” she whispered as she looked down at herself in her plain, serviceable gown. “She cannot like me.”
“If she does not like you, I will give you a hundred pounds,” Lucas laughed. “That is not Meg.”
She paced away, still uncertain. Still emotional thanks to the difficulties of the past few days, thanks to the anniversary about to come, the one she kept trying to push away, though she couldn’t fully do it.
“You are certain I should not just go…go home?” she suggested. “I could come back in a few days and give you privacy with your friends.”
He moved to her, turning her gently before he took both her hands. “I would like you to be here,” he said, holding her gaze. “Please stay with me.”
It was the “please” that hit her in the gut, made all her arguments vanish on the wind. She slowly nodded. “Very well. If that is what you need, it would hardly do to withhold my presence.”
He cupped her cheek. “Excellent. Now…” He drew her closer, molding her body to his as his arms folded around her. Her heart began to race, as it always did with him. “There is something else I require. And I think you require it too. Will you come upstairs with me?”
She hesitated for a moment, not because she didn’t want what he was asking for, but because she did so very much. She had become addicted to him. To his touch, his taste, his comfort. And she knew how dangerous that was.
Yet she didn’t resist him. She just pushed away her fear and her heart and let him take her upstairs where she knew she would feel nothing but pleasure once more.