Chapter Twenty-Two
Diana had expected Lucas to get into his carriage and immediately begin an expert interrogation of her. She had braced for it, for it seemed impossible to hide her feelings from him. They were too powerful. They boiled in her like witch’s brew and burned her from the inside out.
And yet he had not done that. Not for the entire ride from the Abernathes’ London home to his own. No, he’d only watched her. Silent yet focused, his dark gaze always following her every move, planning his reactions for the right moment.
She had been so foolish to let herself love a spy. She knew the very calculation and the manipulation that would follow were part of who this man was. She’d known it from the beginning, and yet she had believed in him. She’d slipped into a blissful confidence that it could be different. Tonight had slapped her in the face with the truth.
Everything between them had all been part of a deeper goal of his. She was a piece on his complicated chessboard. Perhaps that was all she’d ever been.
And yet she still loved him.
The carriage slowed as it entered his drive, and stopped. Still he said nothing as his footman helped her down. He didn’t even try to take her arm as they walked up to the house and into the foyer, where Jones took their wraps.
“I’m going upstairs,” she said, refusing to meet his eyes. Meet his eyes and the pain would follow. She knew that now.
He nodded. “I’ll go with you.”
“Why?” she asked before she could stop herself. Immediately she regretted it, for he leaned in and brushed his fingertips across her cheekbone. That gentle touch made her heart flutter, her body react, her anger dissipate for a brief moment.
“Do you really think I’m going to let you pretend that things didn’t change?” he asked. “We are not finished, Diana. I want to talk to you.”
She let out her breath in a burst and turned toward the stairs. She felt him watching her as he followed her up. But what could she do? Her emotions were so close to the surface, if she let them out she could lose control. This was not a man to lose control with.
He was always in control.
She opened her door and turned back to him. “Can’t we leave it be?” she asked. Her voice trembled.
“Fight,” he said softly.
She tilted her head, for the whispered word was no answer. “I beg your pardon?”
“Nothing,” he said. “I can’t leave it be.”
She clenched her jaw in frustration and walked into her chamber. She threw herself into the chair at her dressing table and began to tug the pins from her hair. She had been so happy to have it put up—she’d felt like a princess when she looked at herself in Meg’s mirror all those hours ago. Now she recognized it for what it was. A mask. A costume.
As fabricated and false as any moment between her and Lucas, now poisoned by his conversation with Stalwood.
He shut her door and leaned against it, but made no move to come to her side or touch her. At least he gave her that. “Tell me.”
“Am I your foot soldier now, Your Grace?” she asked, tossing a pin on the table and watching it bounce off the surface and clatter to the floor below.
He recoiled. “What?”
She pivoted in her chair and looked at him. “That was an order, was it not? To report?”
“Diana,” he said, pushing off the door. His face was twisted with pain, with confusion, with desperation. All of it seemed so real. Like her anger and her heartbreak actually moved him. She had to force herself to remember that what she’d heard earlier proved his expression wrong.
“I thought you were going to tell me when you were meeting with Stalwood,” she snapped.
His eyes widened. “Is that what this fit of pique is about? That I didn’t tell you that Stalwood and I were meeting? Diana, you have been a great help to me, I appreciate that more than you could ever understand, but let me be clear: this is my case. I decide what I should share and not.”
She glared at him. “Yes, that is patently obvious. As is the fact that I am an idiot for thinking we shared anything more than a few nights in a bed.”
He recoiled. “You cannot be this upset about a meeting, Diana. To think that nothing else mattered because I went into a parlor without you. That’s madness.”
“George Oakford is the traitor,” she said softly. “That is what you told the earl, isn’t it?”
He froze, his expression going blank because he’d spent years learning how to do that. How to turn emotion off and on. How to lie without blinking.
“Tell me to my face that it wasn’t,” she continued, rising to her feet and stepping toward him. “Lie to me, Lucas, as you have been for weeks.”
He lifted his chin. “You eavesdropped on my meeting.”
She folded her arms. “Do not turn this on me. I followed you because I was stupid enough to believe I was a part of your investigation. A partner, you said. I would have come into the room and never hidden, except I heard my name. And then his. And all those ugly words you said about him.”
He shut his eyes briefly and all the air exited his lungs in a long exhalation. For a flash of a moment, he looked exhausted. Overwhelmed. Devastated in a way she never would have expected.
Then he opened those same dark eyes and held her steady with them. “I would not have had you hear those things,” he whispered.
She barked out a humorless laugh. “I assume not, Your Grace. After all, they revealed me to be a fool for believing in you, in us. I’m certain you would not want me to know that you seduced all my secrets from me, things I would never have told another person, and then cavalierly handed them over to Stalwood. Will they be included in the report, as well? Passed around to the other agents?”
He moved to her now in three long steps and caught her arms, drawing her up against his chest. She caught her breath at being so close to him, at the passion that flashed in his eyes.
“That is not what this is about!” he all but shouted. “I struggled with giving Stalwood even the skeletal information I did.”
“It didn’t seem like a struggle,” she whispered as she carefully extracted herself from his arms and backed away once more. “You seemed to hand him my life on a platter like it was nothing more than another piece in a puzzle. Like my heart didn’t matter.”
“Of course it matters,” he said softly. “Diana, when I began to suspect your father, I didn’t tell you because I knew it would break your heart.”
“You knew I wouldn’t believe it,” she corrected, anger bubbling up in her chest and making her clench her fists at her sides. “And I don’t.”
“You don’t have to,” he said quickly. “He’s your father, and if you can hold him innocent, keep your memories as only positive, I would want nothing less for you.”
She stared at him. “But you will continue to investigate him.”
He hesitated, and she knew the answer even before he slowly nodded. “Yes.”
She spun away. “I heard what you told Stalwood.” She thought of each piece of evidence he’d laid out. And she violently pushed away the sliver of doubt that entered her mind when she considered them all put together.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I would not have wanted you to find out that way.”
“No.” She didn’t look at him still. “You wouldn’t have had me find out at all. When I heard you accuse my father, that was shocking. When I heard you hand over the most painful moments of my past to someone else when they were told to you in confidence, that was chilling. But when you told Stalwood that you would lie to me, keep me in the dark so you could continue to use me…that was devastating.”
She faced him at last and found him standing, his head bent and his shoulders slumped. “Would it make any difference if I told you I said it that way so Stalwood would not suspect my deeper feelings?” he asked. “That I was planning to keep the truth from you, for now, because I didn’t want to hurt you as you are hurt now?”
She clenched her teeth. How she wanted to believe that. To think that his lies were told to protect her. But she didn’t. She didn’t have any faith left. It had been whittled away, sliver by sliver, by Caldwell and his empty seduction, by the loss of her child, by the death of her father and now…this.
This final heartbreak that stole her breath and made her want to run. Made her need to run. That was the only way now.
She moved past him, careful not to touch him, and went over to her wardrobe. She opened it and began to remove her clothing.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
She glanced at him. “Now that I know the true purpose of your investigation, I cannot take part in it anymore. My father is dead and I won’t be a part of sullying his name. As for your injuries, we both know you are more than capable of healing on your own. You probably have been for days. Staying was…a mistake. And it’s one I can no longer afford to make.”
He opened and shut his mouth and she waited for him to argue. To demand. To refuse. But at last he simply nodded slowly. “I understand, Diana. I understand why you can no longer bear to be in the same space as me. I won’t stop you. It would be unfair to do so. But won’t you wait until tomorrow to go?”
She stared at him. If she waited for tomorrow, she might wait another day, and another. She might let herself be swept up by this man and all the things she’d secretly come to hope for. If she’d learned anything from her father’s pragmatic view of grief and loss, it was to ride away from both as swiftly as she could.
“No,” she said. “That would not be wise.”
He seemed to buckle and caught the back of the closest chair to maintain his stance. Then he nodded. “Very well. I’ll have one of my footmen accompany you back to your home. He will help you light your fires and see that you are safe.”
“You needn’t—”
He moved forward. “Please let me have that, Diana. Please.”
She caught her breath at the desperation in his tone. Pained and so very real. It felt so real. She wanted to trust it. She couldn’t.
“Fine.” She turned her back to him. “Let me gather my things, will you?”
“Yes,” he said softly. “Of course. I’ll make the other arrangements.”
She knew he hesitated, standing at her door for too long before he left her alone. When he did, she collapsed to her knees, covered her face and cried. For what she’d believed and hoped for. For what she’d lost. And for what she’d never had at all.
Lucas’s hands shook as he watched his servants place Diana’s very few things up into the carriage that would take her home. Far away from him. The “footman” he was sending to help her was actually one of Stalwood’s guards. He’d given the man strict instructions to stay and watch the house, watch over her.
It was the only way he could give her what she needed. The only way to let her go because she couldn’t stand to look at him anymore. No one’s fault but his own, and yet it felt like his entire being was under attack.
When he turned, he found her standing behind him. She had changed from her pretty gown, back into her plainer clothing, and yet she looked more beautiful to him than she ever had.
“That’s all of it?” she said, her voice barely carrying.
He thought she was asking him, but it was Jones who answered as he entered the foyer from behind Lucas. “Yes, Miss Oakford,” he said coolly. “That is all. May I do anything else for you?”
“Leave us,” Lucas whispered, for he could not dare speak harshly or he would scream.
The butler frowned and did as he was told. Slowly, Lucas shut the door and faced her. This was their last moment alone. Perhaps their last moment ever, and he could think of nothing to say. Not when she stared at him like she didn’t know him at all.
“I never meant to hurt you,” he said, and the words felt false. Like they were an excuse, when he had none.
She nodded slowly and let out a small sigh. “I suppose you didn’t. You are who you are, Lucas. And your duty is important to you. I know that.”
He wanted to tell her that he loved her. He wanted to shout it from the top of his lungs until she believed him. And yet he saw how self-serving that would be. It was a way to manipulate her. To try to erase the damage he had done with his lies.
And she deserved better.
She moved forward, and he stiffened as she reached out to him. But she didn’t slap him, though perhaps he deserved it. She didn’t demand she be set free, back to a life that could not include him.
She reached up and cupped his cheek. She stared into his face, and for a moment all the harm he’d done was gone. She was Diana again. His savior, his light, his life.
“Lucas, don’t—don’t let any of this push you from your future,” she whispered.
He wrinkled his brow. “You are determined to save me still?”
“I suppose I’m a fool, but yes.” Her fingers traced his cheek gently. “You’ve run from your life for a long time, because of mistakes that were not your own. But you’ve been brought back here, to your friends and your home and a future that you once let be stolen. I would hope that perhaps this will keep you from running again.”
He let out his breath. “If you would want me to try to make this life, then there is no way I couldn’t grant you that boon, Diana. I owe you that. I owe you much more.”
She leaned up then, her lips coming to his. Everything in him wanted to drag her close, to claim her with the kiss she granted, to force her to feel what he had stolen from her heart. But he didn’t. Somehow he just let her brush her lips to his, feather-light, like a butterfly’s wings. And then she was gone.
“Goodbye,” she said, reaching past him for the door.
“Goodbye,” he whispered in return, that one word like a sword being stabbed through his heart. He watched her leave his home. Watched her leave his life.
And knew that nothing could ever be the same.