Chapter Twenty-Three
It had been two days since Diana left. Well, thirty-seven hours and twenty-three minutes. He could have probably guessed to the second, but there seemed little meaning in that exercise. She was gone and everything in his body and soul hurt.
Now he stood in the hallway, staring at his parlor door, and he struggled to find the strength to open it. Not because of his injuries. The time with Diana had eased those so much that he could function. No, he hesitated because facing what was inside without her felt…impossible.
Slowly, he pushed the door open and drew a breath as his mother pivoted from the portrait of his father hung above the fireplace. Her dark gaze snagged his and then darted away as her lips pursed.
“You have summoned me,” she said, and folded her arms. “And I have come. What is it you want?”
He flinched at her coldness but entered the room regardless. Diana had made him promise not to run from his life. To do that, he had to face the past.
“Good afternoon, Mother,” he said. “May I get you tea?”
She shook her head. “No.”
He sighed. “Can we not be civil?”
Her nostrils flared and then she shrugged before she settled herself into a chair before the fire. “I suppose we could try. Though I see little benefit from the exercise.”
“There has been little in the past, hasn’t there?” He took the seat across from hers. “There is so much between us.”
She drew back a fraction, surprise washing over her expression. “You cannot have brought me here to talk about that.”
He leaned forward, draping his elbows over his knees. “And yet I have.”
She recoiled, her hands gripping the arms of her chair until her knuckles became white. “I will not.”
“I understand why,” he said slowly. “The topic is difficult for you. But you must know that it is difficult for me, as well. We have avoided it for years. Avoided each other. To the point where I did not even have you sent for when I was shot, almost killed.”
Her lips parted. “Shot?”
“Yes.” He drew in a breath. “In protection of my country, my king, I was shot six months ago. You did not ask me about my limp when you last saw me, but that is how I got it. I nearly died and I did not call for you. Would you have wanted me to?”
She was silent a long time, but her expression had become less confrontational, less cold. “I-I don’t know,” she admitted. “As you say, our relationship has never been a happy one. Perhaps it would have been hypocritical to come only because you were…did you really almost die?”
He nodded slowly. “I did. And someone who helped me recover pointed out that I’d been running from my life. We both know why. Perhaps it’s time I stop.”
She stiffened. When Willowby had died, she had wanted Lucas to take his place, to accept the role he hadn’t earned. They’d had a terrible row about his decision to abandon that post. Even now he could see she was still interested in him doing his duty. To save face, perhaps. To make up for something. Whatever the reason, it made her lean forward in interest.
“You wish to take your father’s place?” she asked.
He flinched. “Willowby’s place, yes. But if I want to stop running, I need your help.”
She swallowed hard. “How?”
“Was it an affair?” he asked.
She turned her face, her cheeks growing pink. “You cannot ask me such impertinent things.”
Her harsh tone was back and he recoiled from it. It reminded him of too many times he’d heard it. Too many times he’d felt it cut him like a knife. Even now, it still stung.
“You act as though I had some part in your decisions,” he said. “I only suffered from them. Are you really so cold as to say that I don’t deserve to understand why you did what you did when it changed everything about my life?”
She glared at him and folded her arms. He drew in a long breath. Part of him wanted to keep pushing, but that was the emotional part. Perhaps it was time to treat this like an interrogation with a reluctant suspect. And the best way to do that was often to do…nothing.
He settled back in his chair, holding her stare evenly and said nothing. Time ticked by between them and he saw her grow uncomfortable. Saw her shift. Saw her blush.
Finally, she let out her breath in a huff. “It was an act of war!”
“That was why you chose my father’s servant,” he said.
Her shoulders sagged and he could see he had her surrender now. “He never wanted me. Your father, he made that clear. He wanted my father’s money, he wanted…propriety in public. But me? He could barely look at me. I grew to hate him for it. Like a poison that crept into every corner of our life together.”
Lucas stared at her. All these years, how he had resented her for what she’d done. For the parentage she had stolen from him, for the way she’d pushed him away. And yet now he saw her pain. She hid it well. Perhaps he’d inherited his own ability to do the same from her. But beneath that cold mask she wore, that lady-of-the-manor chilliness that kept a wall between her and everyone else, there was the pain. The regret. The loss.
“I made a mistake. Once.” She shook her head. “And then there was you and there was no denying it. Especially when that cad of a valet decided to blackmail me for it.”
Lucas lurched. “He did?”
“Yes.” Her voice was thick with disgust. “He threatened to bring my world down around me.”
“You must have been terrified.”
“Indeed. I even tried to…” She blushed deeper. “Well, I tried to soften your father to me. To make it not so obvious that you weren’t his. It did not work.”
Lucas shut his eyes, pained by the idea of his mother, so alone as she tried to seduce a man who didn’t want her to cover up being seduced by one who had used her. That rejection from the duke had sealed her fate, sealed his own.
“When you came, it ended it all,” she said, lifting her chin. “And yes, I grew to resent you for it. Despise you for it. For your chin, which was like that other man’s. For your laugh that was like his.”
“So did Willowby. Even before I was told the truth, I knew the emotion,” Lucas said softly. “It was no life for a child, to feel that hatred and not understand it.”
She nodded slowly. “I know that. I knew it then, but I was incapable of anything else. In a way, it was a relief when you knew. When you left. When he died.”
“I imagine so. He no longer controlled your purse. He no longer withheld your future. And I no longer reminded you of what you had longed for and lost.” Lucas met her gaze. “And now, looking at me, with the years that have separated us, do you still despise me?”
She examined his face carefully. “When you said you almost died, I admit there was something in my stomach that…lurched. A great desire not to lose what I never wanted or cherished.”
Her words were frank and they still hurt. But he’d asked her for her honesty and there it was. He found, in this moment of calm that had been made possible by Diana’s pushing, that he could understand her. And see the hope that those words created for them.
“I was not his son,” Lucas said. “But I am yours.”
“So you want…what? Some kind of close bond?” She said the words like they were foreign. With a faint lilt of disgust.
“No, I don’t think that’s possible. We’re not built for it, are we, after so much between us?” He sighed. “But that doesn’t mean we must be completely estranged. There is something in the middle, isn’t there?”
He shifted as he said those words. As he felt them in his heart. No matter what else had happened, there was a place for his mother in his life. Small, perhaps. Distant. But not broken. Not entirely.
Diana had given him the strength to see that. To be able to take the leap to say it to his mother. It was Diana’s gift to him. Her last gift, perhaps, and that turned his stomach far more than the wait for his mother’s response.
“I don’t want to be estranged.” Her words came deliberately. “But how do we move forward?”
“Carefully,” he suggested. “Slowly and with a bit of understanding for each other. Something I don’t think either of us has ever given to the other.”
She nodded. “Very well. I think I can do that.”
He reached out and took her hand. She let him, and he realized it was the first time he had touched her in years—decades, perhaps. After a few seconds, she released him and got to her feet. He followed. The discomfort still hung between them now, but it felt less awful. Less permanent.
It was a start.
There was a knock at the parlor door, and they both turned as Jones entered the room.
“You have an urgent message, Your Grace,” he said as he handed over a folded sheet of paper. “I would not have normally intruded, but the man said it was most important and could not wait.”
The duchess smiled. “It is likely for the best. I’ll leave you to your urgent business. Perhaps you’ll come and call on me for tea in a few weeks. We’ll start with that.”
Lucas nodded and watched as she left the room, Jones on her heels. He turned the note over and blanched. It was Stalwood’s seal that closed the page. The man had a different one for different kinds of messages. This one indicated that the spy should come right away for a meeting. When Lucas opened the page, he was not surprised to find it blank. The seal was the message, nothing more.
He strode from the parlor and into the foyer, just in time to see Jones shutting the door and his mother’s carriage pulling away. The butler seemed surprised to see him so soon and said, “Is there something you need?”
“My horse,” Lucas said cautiously, for he had not ridden since the attack. “And quickly.”
Jones stepped out to call on the footmen with the message, and Lucas shook his head to clear it. This meeting with Stalwood had to be about Oakford and Caldwell. And he could only hope it would help him clear his mind to work on that case.
Because right now he needed the distraction.
Diana stood at her kitchen table, chopping dried herbs before she slid them into marked vials for future medicines and tinctures. Normally the work was pleasant, for it helped her clear her mind.
Today…well, today was different. In truth, she feared every day would be different for the rest of her life, because of Lucas. It had been nearly two days since she slipped from his home, away from his life and returned to her own. Only the London cottage was now haunted by thoughts and memories of the man. Here he had touched her, here they had kissed, here he had held her, comforted her.
She shivered and some of the dried herbs scattered across the table. She swore and swept them off the edge and into her palm to try to fill the vial again.
She had every intention of going back to the countryside, but hadn’t made the arrangements yet. “Not that it will be any better, I fear,” she said, jolting at the sound of her own voice. Her house felt so quiet now without Lucas in it.
“Still talk to yourself, do you?”
She pivoted at the voice in her door. It was one she recognized, as was the gentleman who owned it. The one standing there, staring at her.
Boyd Caldwell.
Out of instinct, she scurried away from him a few steps until she flattened herself against the opposite wall. She had not seen this man for almost two years. Not since he seduced and then left her. He looked the same. Tall, broad-shouldered, with dark hair and green eyes. He was older than Lucas. Older and far less alluring.
She thought for a moment of the accusations that had been made about him being the traitor. She’d been so focused on her father, she hadn’t let herself consider the other man.
Now she couldn’t stop thinking of it.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Boyd said, ducking into the kitchen and shutting the door behind him, though he had not been invited to do either.
She wiped her shaking hands along the front of her apron and tried to gather her composure. “You almost are. I have not seen you in two years, Boyd. What are you doing here?”
He smiled. Once, what seemed like a lifetime ago, she recalled being taken with that smile. Now she felt uncomfortable with it turned on her.
“I cannot come to call on an old friend?” he asked.
She swallowed past the lump in her throat. “We were never friends, Boyd.”
That smile broadened, became a little lewd as his gaze flicked over her. “No. I suppose we weren’t. We were much, much more.”
“If you have come here for that, you will be sadly disappointed,” she snapped as she folded her arms across her chest like a shield. “I know the truth about you now, Boyd.”
He arched a brow. “Do you now?”
She realized in that moment that there was a double meaning to that statement. She’d meant it as a reminder that she now knew he had a family, a wife, that his advances were self-serving and had no future.
But she also knew about the suspicions that surrounded him. If true, she knew he was a traitor. A murderer. A person who had stolen her father and nearly killed the man she loved.
She lifted her chin. “I know about your family,” she said. “Do you have other secrets?”
“As if you don’t.” The smile turned to a smirk, and he looked around her kitchen. “You are just like your father with all your weeds and potions.”
She stiffened. “Yes, you knew my father well,” she said, carefully testing the waters further. “If anyone was a friend to you in this house, it was him.”
“Once,” he said, the tone curt and short.
She tilted her head. “It is harder to be friends with a dead man, I suppose. And one whose daughter you seduced.”
“Is that the story you tell yourself?” Boyd asked, facing her again. “That you were the sweet innocent who was taken in by a dark and evil man? You batted your eyelashes at me aplenty, my dear. Don’t mistake the messages you sent.”
“Why are you here?” she pushed out past clenched teeth. “I don’t think we have anything to say to each other.”
He didn’t move, just remained in the middle of the kitchen, positioned between herself and both the door to the outside and the one to the rest of her house. Positioned between her and safety, she realized now with a creeping sense of discomfort and dread.
“You’ve taken up with the Duke of Willowby, I hear,” he drawled. “Become his whore, but a whore he takes to proper parties, so that is something.”
She froze and met his eyes carefully. There was something so feral in them. So dangerous, and in that awful moment she knew that all of Lucas’s hunches about this man were correct. That he was the person who had nearly killed him. That he’d been a traitor and a vile betrayer to everyone who trusted him.
And she also knew, in a flash of heartbreak, that her father was likely also guilty. There was no mistaking their connection, especially since Boyd was here. Menacing and cold and dangerous.
“He was injured,” she said, treading lightly. “I was asked to help and did so.”
“There’s a bit more to it than that,” he said, that wicked smile returning to his lips. “And who can blame him? I know the charms you possess. I was the first one to sample them. Do you think I should tell him about that when he comes to rescue you? Or did you already confess it all when you gave yourself to him?”
She caught her breath. His words were coarse and crude, but they were also terrifying. Rescue her. That meant she was under threat. And so was Lucas.
She shook her head. “You can tell him anything you like, I suppose,” she said softly, trying desperately to measure her tone. “I mean nothing to him. As you said, I was just his whore.”
“So you think he wouldn’t come for you if you were in danger?” he asked with a laugh. He reached into his pocket and slowly withdrew a small pistol. He pointed it squarely at her. “As you are in danger now.”
She sucked for air, but couldn’t seem to draw in enough as she stared at the weapon pointed at her. This man had killed before, in cold blood, and there was no reason to believe that he wouldn’t do the same to her. One twitch of his finger and she would never again smell the flowers in her garden or walk in the hills around her home. She would never see Lucas again or feel his touch or be able to tell him that she loved him.
Grief welled up in her for all she would lose alongside her life.
“Steady now,” he said. “No need to get ahead of yourself, my dear. You are a means to an end. A lovely piece of cheese for a rat or two.”
She shook her head. At the very least she could try to save Lucas in this. “I’m telling you, he won’t come for me. I don’t mean enough.”
“Is that why he put a guard on your house? Because you’re meaningless?”
She blinked. “A-a guard?” she repeated.
“You didn’t know?” he asked. “Well, it doesn’t matter. I took care of the lad myself. What’s one more dead spy now?”
Her stomach turned, but she forced herself to remain calm. “You are just trying to frighten me,” she whispered.
“I hope it’s working, for you should be frightened. For yourself. And for him. Because you’re wrong about his feelings, I think,” he said with a chuckle. “My people tell me that he cares for you. And even if he doesn’t, the man wouldn’t let a lover die. He lets his heart get ahead of his head that way. Besides, if he doesn’t come, the other one will. And that would be as good a catch for this cat as Willowby.”
“The other?” Diana repeated in confusion. “What other? Are you talking about Stalwood?”
His smile widened, impossibly cruel and callous. “No. I’m talking about your father, Diana.”
Her lips parted. This man was mad. “My father is dead,” she breathed.
He shook his head slowly. “No, no, my dear. Dead is what he wanted you to believe. I assure you, George Oakford is very much alive and well. At least he will be until I lure him to me with your life as bait and then put a bullet through his lying brain.”
Diana stared at him, unable to think or speak or breathe. The world began to spin. Her father, alive? After all these months of mourning and pain, was it possible? Her breath came short as she was overwhelmed by emotion, and then she did something she’d never done before in all her years.
She fainted.