She’d even refused his offer of help when she got ready. There had been no playfulness to it, nor seductive teasing. She had just left him alone and not returned for nearly an hour.
He had no idea what had set off the change in her. They’d made love for hours the night before and it had been magical. And yet today…
Well, today she was building walls. Walls that were for the best, of course. He knew full well they were getting too close, and yet he felt a desperate desire to claw those walls down, to gather her against him and demand that she give him more. Give him everything.
Utterly unfair.
She entered the parlor where she had put him some time ago. A tea service was balanced in her arms. While he watched, she set it on the sideboard and quietly went about arranging it.
“Stalwood will be here momentarily,” she said without looking at him. “I know you two have much to discuss, so I’ll leave you alone once you are situated with drinks.”
He arched a brow and moved toward her a step. When she stiffened, as if she had sensed his intentions, he stopped and stared at her. “What is this game, Diana?” he asked softly.
She jerked her gaze to his. “Game?”
“You are not a servant to me nor to him, yet you are playing at it. What is going on? Have I done something wrong?”
He found himself holding his breath at the answer, waiting for her to reveal some way for him to scale this wall between them. But she merely smiled at him, an expression that was utterly false, and shook her head. “Of course not. Everything is fine.”
“Don’t sport with my intelligence, Diana,” he said, his tone a bit harsher than he wanted it to be. “I don’t appreciate it.”
Her lips parted and then she swallowed hard. He saw her fighting within herself, trying to find the words to say whatever had spooked her. He leaned forward, desperate to hear them, but then there was a knock at her front door.
She looked relieved. The expression lasted just a flash of a moment, but he saw it. He recognized it. It hit him in the gut like a punch.
“Excuse me,” she said, not meeting his eyes as she scurried from the room. He shook his head as he listened to her open the door, greet the earl, then guide him back to the parlor.
“Lord Stalwood,” she announced, once again like she was Lucas’s maid rather than his lover. His—hisfriend, for that was how he had begun to think of her in the time they’d been together.
He didn’t want to lose that.
“Great God, but you do look better,” Stalwood said as he came into the room, hand outstretched.
Lucas still chose to shake with his good arm, but felt more strength in even that. “Diana has worked wonders,” he said, looking past Stalwood to her. She was still not meeting his gaze.
“I should send all my injured to you, my dear,” Stalwood said with a brief smile for her.
She stiffened at the suggestion and some of the color went out of her cheeks. “I-I would not dare to take my father’s place, my lord. Now I will leave you two to your discussion.”
She said nothing more, but pivoted on her heel and all but fled the room. Stalwood stared after her and then looked at Lucas. “I did not mean to offend her,” he said. “I did not think that she would take it that I was trying to replace her father.”
Lucas motioned him to the settee and moved to pour the tea himself. “It isn’t you who offended her. I seem to have done that all on my own.”
Stalwood arched a brow. “Have you now? How?”
He shook his head. “I am not entirely certain. We were getting along fine and then—” He cut himself off and shrugged, wincing at the pain in his shoulder. “She is a riddle.”
Stalwood was staring at him with even more focus now. “I’ve known her since she was a girl, you know. Oakford worked with me and for me for years.”
Lucas straightened with true interest. “And what kind of child was she?”
Stalwood hesitated and then said, “Bright. Quick to laugh. But with a vein of sadness that ran through her. She missed her mother, I think.”
“And now her father.” Guilt washed over Lucas as he said it.
“Yes. She is…she’s more fragile than perhaps she looks.”
Lucas considered that statement. It didn’t ring true. Fragile was not the word for Diana, for she had a core of steel that ran through her. Fragile meant weak in some way, and she was not that.
