He moved closer to her, pressing into her space. She fought to hold her ground rather than fall into his arms or run away. “What do you mean by that? What are you saying?”
She drew in a long breath. “Perhaps it’s time that we stop pretending, Lucas. Perhaps it’s time for us to…part ways.”
He caught her elbow and shook his head. “No. You are saying that because you’re afraid to attend a ball?”
“No!” she cried out, but she knew that was a lie immediately. From his expression, so did he. “There are many reasons for us to end this affair,” she corrected herself. “Certainly one of them is that you are entering into the next arena of your case and of your life. One where I most definitely don’t belong.”
“Because I’ve taken you to my bed?” he asked.
She nodded. “That’s part of it.”
“Well, I hate to disabuse you of the notion that all ladies are pure, but I happen to know that all my recently married friends who are dukes bedded their ladies before they said their vows. We are human, my dear, no matter what titles are laid upon our heads at birth. A lady has desires as much as a woman whose father was not called ‘my lord’.”
“Yes, a lady. Meg is alady. All of your friends’ wives are ladies. I am not. My father was half a step above a merchant in their eyes. I am the kind of woman who would tie their ribbons or clean their chambers, Lucas. I do not belong in their world. Inyourworld. You are a duke, for heaven’s sake.”
His breath was short and he stared at her. Just stared at her. Then he said, “No. I’m not.”
She threw up her hands. “You can wish you weren’t, you can run as far and as fast from it as you like, but you are who you are. You are the Duke of Willowby, Lucas. The most recent one in what I assume is a long line. To pretend otherwise is—”
He caught her arms again, and the sudden action stopped her talking, as did the forlorn, pained expression on his face.
“Listen to me, Diana. I’m not saying I’m not the duke because I don’t want to be. I’m telling you…I’m telling you I’m not the duke because the last Willowby wasn’t my father.”
Chapter Eighteen
The world swam around Lucas as he said the words out loud. He had never confessed this to another person, not even the friends he held so dear. The secret had rotted him out from the inside the moment he learned it.
The secret had made him into the man he was today.
Diana touched his cheek and he was grounded again. He looked into her eyes, those jade eyes that had captivated him from the first moment he saw her, and he was able to draw breath once more.
“Lucas,” she whispered. “What are you talking about?”
He shook his head. “You wanted my secret, Diana. Well, that is it. He wasn’t my father. I wasn’t his son. What I have is not earned. It should not have been inherited. But here we are.”
She looked at him a long moment, and then the calm expression that she always wore when doing her work as a healer crossed her face. She took his arm and guided him to a bench in the garden. He sank into it, grateful that his legs no longer had to hold him up.
“How did you find out?” she asked.
He rested his head back and stared up at the swirling clouds above for a moment. Memories flooded his mind, and he braced himself against the emotional impact of what he was about to say to her.
“He alwayshatedme,” he said, feeling the effect of those words. “I never didn’t know it.Shehated me, too, as you saw when we first arrived. They sent me to school as soon as they could, to get me out of their house and their sight. I suppose I thought it normal, just the way a family behaved. I thought I’d never belong anywhere until I was twelve and met the others, the dukes. When I was invited into their club I began to feel that I belonged.”
She nodded. “That certainly explains your closeness to them.”
“Yes, but our bond was built on one common ground. That we were all the sons of dukes, almost all of them undependable or cruel in one way or another. We turned to each other for support and information and brotherly love. And then I lost the one thing that bound me to them.”
She shook her head. “What bound you was your love for each other. It was palpable in that room earlier.”
“But they don’t know,” he said. “I’ve never told anyone what happened.”
“Whatdidhappen?” she whispered.
He clenched his fists against his legs. “Our friend Robert, the Duke of Roseford…he’s always been wild. He arranged for us to gain entry into a club. We were gaming and there were, we were…”
“There were women,” she supplied gently.
“Yes,” he said with an apologetic look for the uncouth topic of women he’d bedded in the lifetime before he knew her. “I was sixteen and it was my first time really seeing the world of men.”
