“He needs hiding, too,” Stalwood continued, his words in a rush like he was trying to keep her from fully digesting them.
Of course she did. They were shocking words and Diana almost laughed at the ridiculousness of this conversation. “Hiding,” she repeated, letting the word roll from her tongue. “So he is in danger. Heisdanger.”
Stalwood bobbed his head once. “Yes.” His voice was soft but firm.
“And you’ve come to me, despite all that. Despite what that kind of danger has cost me.” He flinched and so did she. This man didn’t know the half of it. “Why?”
Stalwood took a long breath as she poured his tea at last. Only when she’d set the pot down did he say, “Because this man was injured the same day your father died. They were together.”
Diana’s ears began to ring and she sat down hard in the chair across from Stalwood. She gripped her hands into fists against the tabletop and stared at him. She knew so little of her father’s death. Only that he’d died in the field. Only that she would never see him again or hear his heavy footsteps on the stair.
She longed to know more. She feared it too. “My father was with someone else?”
Stalwood shifted. “Yes,” he said softly.
“I have never asked you for details,” she said, dropping her chin so she would not have to look at him. “But I want them. You are asking me to endanger myself, I want to know how.”
“I can give you some information,” he said after a long and heavy pause. “Your father went against orders to help this man. He was…he was investigating a traitor from within. It went very wrong. My spy was badly hurt and many servants and your father were killed.”
Her stomach turned. Her father had made a life out of saving the lives of those in service to their king. And now to hear that one of them had betrayed her father? Killed him?
She wanted to scream. She wanted to break everything around her. She wanted to find the man who had killed her father and she wanted to destroy him as he had destroyed her.
Instead, she glared at Stalwood. “How do you know the man who was injured was not the betrayer, himself?”
“He isn’t.” Stalwood shook his head. “We’ve extensively researched. And I know him. He is not the one.”
“Who is he?” she asked.
Stalwood cleared his throat. “When I say his name, it is with the express understanding that this will never leave this home. Never leave your lips.”
“Am I being indoctrinated as one of your spies, my lord?” she asked.
He shrugged. “In a way, yes. Am I clear on the subject?”
She nodded. “Yes.”
“It is the Duke of Willowby.”
Her lips parted. “A duke. Do you mean the Undercover Duke?”
Stalwood drew back in surprise. “You know of him?”
“My father spoke of him by that nickname sometimes,” she said. “Never by his formal title or his given name. I knew nothing more than that. And that Papa cared for the man.”
Stalwood was quiet, and she knew he was letting her ponder the information before he said, “Does that mean you will help Willowby?”
She straightened and glared at him. “As I said before, this business of yours, of his, it has taken more than enough from me. More than you can imagine.”
“I know that, Diana,” Stalwood said. “And I hope you know that I would not ask this of you unless we had a dire need.”
Diana pushed to her feet and walked away from him, breathing in the fragrant scent of herbs that always filled her kitchen. He was manipulating her, of course. As much as she liked Stalwood, it was in his nature as a spy to do so. To get what he wanted.
Worse, it was working, no matter how she recognized the truth of it. She thought of her father, dead now for half a year. She knew what he’d say if he were here. She could almost hear him, whispering to her in that voice she hadn’t heard in months.
He would talk to her about honor and courage. About duty. Always duty, above all else.
She bent her head. “Very well,” she said on a sigh. “Bring him here, then.”
