Meg swatted him playfully and was now chuckling through those very tears. “You are a cad, sir.”
“And yet it is too late to escape me, for you are mine, or so the minister declared,” Simon said with a laugh. “Come, I will dance you around the floor, and all will be well before the last strains of the music.”
If Meg was going to argue, he did not allow it, but all but carried her off to the dancefloor, where they joined James, Emma and the rest of the revelers.
Lucas smiled at Diana. “You do look wonderful.”
She blushed, and the act put him to mind of all the times they had made love. That flush of pleasure was something he very much enjoyed putting on her face, no matter how he found a way to do it.
“And you are handsome, not that you do not know it,” she returned. He offered her an arm and she took it, allowing him to step her farther into the room. “How was your reunion?”
He glanced down at her, for he heard her concern in her voice. “Far better than I ever could have dreamed,” he said, choosing pure honesty with her. He knew he could trust her with it. “All my concerns, gone in an instant. Though they certainly have a romantic notion of what it is to be a spy.”
“Can one even be a spy ifnineof his closest friends and all their wives know the truth?” she asked.
He smiled. “Well, my future with the department may yet be in question. I am better, yes, but my body is not the same. Perhaps it never will be. But if I were able to return to the work I love, I know for certain that I can trust those men and their wives with my life and the lives of those I work with. I believe that with all my heart.”
She turned toward him with a half-smile. “Yet you feared what they would think of your secret.”
He found his hand lifting, his body filled with a desire to touch her cheek. But he was well aware that the room was watching him, agog over the long-missing Duke of Willowby. To be too forward with Diana was not the best of ideas.
He clenched his fist at his side. “That’s different,” he said softly.
She nodded. “Of course it is.” She might have said more, but in that moment, her eyes went a little wide as she looked at a point over his shoulder. “Is that Stalwood?”
He glanced back at him. “Yes. He’s an earl, of course.”
“Yes,” she said with a shake of her head. “I know it, but sometimes I forget. To me, he’ll always just be an old friend of my father.”
Lucas winced at that reminder. He had some things to say to Stalwood tonight about the subject of Diana’s father. Things that would hurt the man, would devastate her if she realized he suspected them.
He forced a smile. “He thinks very highly of you.”
She blushed a little. “And will you discuss what we’ve gone over in your case? Would you like me to be a part of that?”
Before he could answer, he felt a tap on his shoulder.
“Are you going to introduce us?” Robert said when Lucas turned to see who had interrupted their conversation and saved him, albeit without meaning to, from a very uncomfortable lie he was about to tell.
He felt Diana shift at his side, and gently touched her arm before he smiled at the others and then made the introductions to the dukes and duchesses she had not yet met. After a moment of their welcome and kindness, he felt her relax a fraction and watched as she fell into conversation with the others.
Seeing her so relaxed should have made him happy. He liked that his friends liked her. And that she seemed to fit in with their tightknit little group. And yet, all he could think about was the subject they had been discussing when they were interrupted.
His case. Her father. And the secret that he was keeping from her about both.
Diana stood along the back wall of the ballroom, watching. It was a rather interesting exercise, for the room was a cacophony of sound, color and movement. Couples swirled around her, both in the flirtatious dance of courtship and the more regulated one of the dancefloor. Then there were the servants, moving through the crowd in every effort not to exist, even though they saw all. The men found each other in groups to talk politics, sometimes too loudly. And the women did the same, though their voices were raised in a wider variety of topics. Often their eyes fell on her, and there was no mistaking their interest and judgment.
Regardless of the attention, though, Diana felt like she was looking in through glass. She was still very much on the outside of this world. Lucas’s world, for as she found him in the crowd, talking to James and Graham, it was clear he belonged. Whatever he felt about himself when it came to the truth about his parentage, he was a duke. And this was his universe.
“You’re frowning,” Helena said as she sidled up to Diana and slid a hand through her arm. “Are you well?”
Diana smiled at her friend. “Of course.” They stood together for a moment, and then she sighed. “It is a very different world, isn’t it?”
Helena laughed softly. “Oh, yes. Indeed it is. Are you feeling as if you don’t belong?”
Diana nodded while she continued to look at Lucas. “I don’t.”
“As you know, I’ve felt the same. But I promise you, all in our circle like you enormously. We were just having a duchess meeting on the subject. So if you…wantedto be part of this world you would have all of us on your side. A formidable group, I assure you.”
