She glanced at the door. Although she could not hear the men talking in the closed parlor below, she had not yet heard Stalwood leave either. Until he did, she was safe to…to…
“Snoop,” she said out loud, completing the sentence in her head.
But as much as she hated the description, and the fact that it was entirely apt, she still lowered the paper and stared at it. This was Lucas’s hand, she would bet her life on it. His injury made it shaky, but there was still a flourish that fit him.
What was on the paper was far more interesting. It appeared to be a long series of notes, bullet-pointed and neatly organized. He was writing about her father’s murder, listing off a long line of facts about the case.
She staggered to the chair before the fire and sank into the cushioned seat. Her heart was pounding, her hands were shaking. She knew a little about that day. Bare skeletons of facts, told to her by Stalwood and Lucas. But this was detailed. This was horribly detailed. Lucas had written down every moment of that day, including exact words that had been said, and the collection of them swam before her eyes as they filled with tears.
“Diana.”
She jolted and jerked her gaze up to find Lucas standing in the doorway. His face was hard, lined with anger and betrayal as he limped to her and snatched the page from her hand.
“What do you think you are doing?”
Chapter Eleven
Lucas winced as Diana stared at him, her green eyes dark with grief and pain. Her hands shook as she lowered them into her lap, and she let out a sigh that seemed to shake her all the way to her very core.
But when she stood up, the pain was gone and it was replaced by an anger he had not expected. “What am I doing? What areyoudoing?” she snapped.
He drew back, surprised by the power of her raw emotions and by the reaction they inspired in him. It was sudden and formidable, a combination of wanting to rail at her for interfering and also wanting to hold her and comfort her in her pain.
He shoved all of it away and struggled to be controlled and measured. “You are askingmewhen I walked in to find you going over my private papers? I did not think you’d take the time you had while I talked to Stalwood to rifle through my room.”
Her lips parted on an outraged, huffy sigh. “How dare you! That is not what I did. I was tidying up your chamber while you were busy, changing your sheets so the laundry could be sent out.”
She motioned to the bed and he noted that it was, indeed, half unmade and his room was less cluttered. Things he should have observed immediately upon entry to the room. Noticing details was engrained in him, the first thing he’d been trained to do as a spy. Yet he hadn’t because he’d been distracted by Diana.
“So when you found something hidden, you decided that gave you a right to look at it?” he asked.
She folded her arms. “No. The book fell and the pages folded inside scattered. I thought you were being ridiculous hiding so much, just a spy so obsessed with his secrets that he thought everyone else was, too. But when I was picking up the papers, I saw my name on them.”
She pointed to the one he held in his hand. He slowly turned it over and winced. Of all the things for her to find, this was one of the worst. It was an accounting of every detail he had gathered or gleaned from the case. Her name was in it because she was part of the case for him now, tied to it and to him in a way that would never be undone.
But he would never have had her read some of it. Like how her father had looked lying dead on the ground. Like the details of their last conversation or the sound of the shots when Oakford was gunned down.
From her face, she had read it all. And now it would never leave her mind, just as it would never leave his.
“You have been investigating this case all along,” she whispered. “And you hid it from me.”
“Since the last time Stalwood came here,” he admitted as he folded the paper and put it into his jacket pocket. “And I wasn’t hiding it. I didn’t tell you what I was doing because it has nothing to do with you, Diana.”
Her face crumpled at that statement and she backed away from him like he had struck her physically. “He may have loved you more, Your Grace,” she whispered, her voice shaking. “But he wasmyfather.”
He recoiled at not just her words, but at the emotion laced in them. He moved to her in three long steps and caught her hands. She struggled against him, but he refused to release her. Indeed, he tugged her closer.
“He loved you, Diana, of that I have no doubt. And when I say that my investigation has nothing to do with you, I meant that you should not have to think of your father this way. That you should not think of his last moments, but of what you shared with him while he was alive.”
“You think I didn’t think of his last moments long before I read the details of them?” she gasped, yanking free at last. Tears had begun to stream down her face and her breath came in painful hiccups. “I wonder if he was afraid. I wonder if he was in pain. I wonder if he knew that these were his last moments and if there was any peace for him. I wonder if he…if he thought of me.”
Lucas stared at her, this woman made of intelligence and kindness and iron. This woman who was utterly alone in the world now that her father was gone. How well he knew that feeling.
He stepped forward and gathered her into his arms. This time she didn’t resist him. She let him pull her against his chest as he smoothed her hair gently. She shook as she wept, a pouring out of all the grief she had been holding back.
When her tears had slowed a little, he whispered, “Diana, yes, I am investigating his death. We all deserve justice. Him, me andyou.”
She lifted her face toward his, and he was struck with the thought of that first night he’d been here, when he’d held her like this and comforted her in similar grief. Now he knew her better. Now he wanted even more to soothe the wounds she carried so quietly and bravely. The ones the world didn’t see.
