She smiled at the description. “That sounds lovely, to have such friends as that.”
He swallowed hard, and she thought she saw a faint glimmer of tears in his eyes before he blinked them away. “It was. But it changed.”
“How?”
He shifted, and for a long moment he was silent, fighting a battle within about what to say. She prayed she would win that battle. Win a glimpse into the truth of him.
“It started…oh, it started a long time ago,” he choked out, his voice thick. “I was sixteen. Something happened.”
“Something?” she pressed, wishing with all her heart that he could find a way to confide in her. He knew so much about her and she knew…nothing.
He shut his eyes, and pain flowed over his face like a waterfall. And then it was gone. Tucked away because he was a spy and capable of masking anything important.
“It isn’t important what. It changed me, that is all. I started to push away from everyone then. My family, my friends, everyone. When I was eighteen, my father died. Instead of taking over my title, I enlisted in the military as an officer.”
She lifted her brows in surprise. “A rare thing for a man of your station.”
“My family was furious. I was the duke, damn it. I was not meant to risk my life and line for king and country.” He shook his head with a derisive snort. “I didn’t listen. Within two years I’d started at the War Department. I wrote to a few of my friends, but every year it was less often. Every year I pushed further. And now…well, I haven’t written to anyone since at least a month before the attack.”
She nodded slowly. She didn’t understand the particulars of what had sent Lucas away from everyone he loved and that still troubled her. But she did perfectly understand the utter pain he clearly felt at the action. The loss and the grief at having no one.
Thatshe understood perfectly.
“The distance cannot have meant as much as you think,” she said softly. “Your friend has written to you now, an almost immediate reply. Surely that means something.”
He stared at the letter once more and still didn’t open it. “I fear it will tell me to sod off,” he admitted. “I’d deserve no less.”
She reached out and wrapped her fingers around his. She felt the warmth of his skin and the crunch of the paper, she felt the slight tremble of his hands. “I could look,” she suggested gently.
He looked at her, holding her gaze for a moment, two moments, an eternity. Then he released the pages into her care and nodded silently.
She leaned up and kissed his cheek, then broke the seal on the back of the pages and opened the letter. It was two pages long, and she scanned the first page briefly before she smiled and began to read it out loud.
“Willowby,” she began, and Lucas flinched as he always did when someone used his title. She thought this time was also about his friend, his fear. Swiftly she continued, “You do not know how long I have waited to hear from you, or how much fear our group as a whole has felt since you stopped writing months ago. To know that you are well and in London brings a joy to my heart that is only surpassed by recent happinesses in my own life, of which I long to share with you.”
With every word she read, she watched the tension bleed from Lucas’s shoulders, the fear leave his face, replaced by relief and joy. She watched every twitch and change, reveling in seeing the hardness go out of him, replaced by something gentler. Younger. Something untouched by whatever had changed him that he refused to share.
“Shall I go on?” she asked. “Or would you like to read the rest yourself?”
He held out a hand and she passed the letter over. He read over it and let out a long sigh before he read it a second time. Like the first was not to be trusted. Like he wanted to be certain it wasn’t a dream or a fantasy that his friend still cared.
“They are coming tomorrow,” he said at last.
She blinked. She had not read that far in the letter herself. “They?”
“Yes. Simon, his wife Meg and another of our friends, Matthew. He’s the Duke of Tyndale and was apparently visiting them when the letter arrived. They’ll be here for tea in the afternoon.”
“I-I should not be here for that,” she stammered.
He stared at her. “Not be here?” he repeated, like she had spoken some foreign language. “Why in the world would you not be here?”
She wrung her hands and moved away from him. “I-I am not fit to meet two dukes and a duchess. Not before our arrangement, certainly not since I am being labeled as your mistress.”
“Why would they care about that?” he asked.
She spun toward him and threw up her hands. “Don’t be obtuse, Lucas, it is beneath your intellect. Your servants look at me like I am a whore. What would a duchess think?”
Lucas’s jaw set. “If my servants dare to be rude to you, I will sack them at once. As for the duchess in question, I’ve known Meg nearly all my life. She has never been anything but kind, generous and accepting. At any rate, she’d be a hypocrite if she had anything to say about the matter. I may no longer be directly informed about the details of my friend’s lives, but I hear enough. She and Simon were embroiled in a terrible scandal not a year ago. She would never dare to judge someone else.”
