“Modest, as always,” Stalwood said, his tone dry as dust. But his smile belied any annoyance his tone might have conveyed. “We’d have to tread carefully, though. If it is known you are staying here with Diana—”
Lucas shook his head. “No, I’ve thought of that too. This place is too isolated, too small to be safe if my location is made public. It would be better if I…if I returned to the ducal home here in London. Took up my duties as Willowby.”
Stalwood lifted both eyebrows in surprise, and Lucas couldn’t blame him. He had never had, nor expressed, any interest in the title. Quite the opposite, though no one knew why he had pushed his dukedom and all that went with it so far away. Not his friends, not his colleagues, no one.
“Youaredriven if you are willing to be Your Graced for a case,” Stalwood said softly.
Lucas lifted his chin. “George Oakford is dead because of me and Diana deserves justice. Answers. So do I. I’m willing to do almost anything for that.”
“Your mother is staying in the London home, you know,” Stalwood said, holding his gaze. “Will she be a problem?”
Lucas tensed. “My mother. I’m certain she’ll be a problem for me, but for you, for the case…no.”
“If you think it for the best, then I approve,” Stalwood said. “I’ll arrange for guards for your estate, ones I trust implicitly. Is there anything else you need?”
Lucas shook his head. “Not at the moment, though if that changes I’ll inform you. I’ll just need to tell Diana and arrange for her to move with me.”
Stalwood’s eyes widened. “You intend to take Diana with you,” he repeated.
“Of course,” Lucas said. “She is helping me greatly with my recovery. But it’s more than that.”
“More.”
Lucas’s lips parted at the knowing tone of Stalwood’s voice. “Yes,” he grunted. “More. Diana will have to come and go if she is not staying with me. She’ll be seen and that could put her in danger if the man who did this to me, to her father, is watching. And we want him to be watching. If she is with me then she’ll be under the care of your guards, as well as me.”
Or course, there was so much more to it than that. He had no intention of saying so to Stalwood. Perhaps he didn’t need to, if his superior’s pinched expression was any indication.
“And how will you explain her?” Stalwood asked. “This beautiful young woman who has come to stay with you unattended?”
Lucas froze. He hadn’t actually thought that far ahead. Here their arrangement had not been public. In his home…well, he knew he was considered a bachelor—a catch, thanks to his fortune and his title. The traitor to their cause would not be the only one watching his home, his every move.
“I’ll talk to her,” he said. “And let her decide how she’d like things presented.”
Stalwood rose. “I agree that is the best way of it. Let me know what you two come up with and if there are any additional things you need. I will speak to you after you are settled.”
“Very good,” Lucas said, and motioned his superior into the foyer. They shook hands and he watched as Stalwood headed out the door and into his waiting carriage.
Now that they had a plan, Lucas’s mind was racing. This wasn’t quite back in the field, but it was working a case, truly working it.
And he couldn’t wait to get back into the thick of things and remember what his life was truly about.
Diana moved about Lucas’s chamber, tidying up. That was all she could think to do while Stalwood and Lucas talked downstairs. She had no place there with them. She had no place with Lucas at all. Yet reminding herself of that was somehow difficult.
“You are being so utterly foolish,” she bit out, letting the words hang in the air around her. She heard them, she knew they were right. They still stung.
With a quiet curse, she yanked a pillowcase from the pillow, tossing it into the basket on the floor beside her. When she did so, a book fell from within the folds of the fabric, bounced off the edge of the bed and clattered to the floor, sending folded sheets of paper sliding across the wooden surface.
She sighed and bent to retrieve the items. “Spies and their secrets,” she muttered, thinking of the pistol she had already carefully set aside when she stripped the other pillow of its cover.
Lucas certainly had enough of those secrets. Things he hid about his past, his life, his vocation. She knew what it was like to live with a man like that. Her father had been much the same. Close-lipped and careful, steering her away from anything that mattered to him. The last time she’d seen him, he’d been angry with her for coming into his study at their country estate and reorganizing some of the items on his desk.
That was their last conversation, for he’d left soon after and never returned.
She winced and turned over yet another paper. She was ready to stuff them all back into the book and put it on the side table for Lucas when she caught a glimpse of her name, written in a shaky hand on one of the sheets.
She frowned and held the paper to her chest. These were Lucas’s private things. No amount of sex or whispered secrets from the past gave her any right to go rifling through them.
But it was her name, on this paper he had placed in a book and then hidden in a pillow. How could she not be curious?
