“Diana,” he said, pushing off the door. His face was twisted with pain, with confusion, with desperation. All of it seemed so real. Like her anger and her heartbreak actually moved him. She had to force herself to remember that what she’d heard earlier proved his expression wrong.
“I thought you were going to tell me when you were meeting with Stalwood,” she snapped.
His eyes widened. “Isthatwhat this fit of pique is about? That I didn’t tell you that Stalwood and I were meeting? Diana, you have been a great help to me, I appreciate that more than you could ever understand, but let me be clear: this is my case.Idecide what I should share and not.”
She glared at him. “Yes, that is patently obvious. As is the fact that I am anidiotfor thinking we shared anything more than a few nights in a bed.”
He recoiled. “You cannot be this upset about a meeting, Diana. To think that nothing else mattered because I went into a parlor without you. That’s madness.”
“George Oakford is the traitor,” she said softly. “That is what you told the earl, isn’t it?”
He froze, his expression going blank because he’d spent years learning how to do that. How to turn emotion off and on. How to lie without blinking.
“Tell me to my face that it wasn’t,” she continued, rising to her feet and stepping toward him. “Lie to me, Lucas, as you have been for weeks.”
He lifted his chin. “You eavesdropped on my meeting.”
She folded her arms. “Do not turn this on me. I followed you because I was stupid enough to believe I was apartof your investigation. A partner, you said. I would have come into the room and never hidden, except I heard my name. And then his. And all those ugly words you said about him.”
He shut his eyes briefly and all the air exited his lungs in a long exhalation. For a flash of a moment, he looked exhausted. Overwhelmed. Devastated in a way she never would have expected.
Then he opened those same dark eyes and held her steady with them. “I would not have had you hear those things,” he whispered.
She barked out a humorless laugh. “I assume not, Your Grace. After all, they revealed me to be a fool for believing in you, in us. I’m certain you would not want me to know that you seduced all my secrets from me, things I would never have told another person, and then cavalierly handed them over to Stalwood. Will they be included in the report, as well? Passed around to the other agents?”
He moved to her now in three long steps and caught her arms, drawing her up against his chest. She caught her breath at being so close to him, at the passion that flashed in his eyes.
“That is not what this is about!” he all but shouted. “I struggled with giving Stalwood even the skeletal information I did.”
“It didn’t seem like a struggle,” she whispered as she carefully extracted herself from his arms and backed away once more. “You seemed to hand him my life on a platter like it was nothing more than another piece in a puzzle. Like my heart didn’t matter.”
“Of course it matters,” he said softly. “Diana, when I began to suspect your father, I didn’t tell you because I knew it would break your heart.”
“You knew I wouldn’t believe it,” she corrected, anger bubbling up in her chest and making her clench her fists at her sides. “And I don’t.”
“You don’t have to,” he said quickly. “He’s your father, and if you can hold him innocent, keep your memories as only positive, I would want nothing less for you.”
She stared at him. “But you will continue to investigate him.”
He hesitated, and she knew the answer even before he slowly nodded. “Yes.”
She spun away. “I heard what you told Stalwood.” She thought of each piece of evidence he’d laid out. And she violently pushed away the sliver of doubt that entered her mind when she considered them all put together.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I would not have wanted you to find out that way.”
“No.” She didn’t look at him still. “You wouldn’t have had me find out at all. When I heard you accuse my father, that was shocking. When I heard you hand over the most painful moments of my past to someone else when they were told to you in confidence, that was chilling. But when you told Stalwood that you would lie to me, keep me in the dark so you could continue to use me…thatwas devastating.”
She faced him at last and found him standing, his head bent and his shoulders slumped. “Would it make any difference if I told you I said it that way so Stalwood would not suspect my deeper feelings?” he asked. “That I was planning to keep the truth from you, for now, because I didn’t want to hurt you as you are hurt now?”
She clenched her teeth. How she wanted to believe that. To think that his lies were told to protect her. But she didn’t. She didn’t have any faith left. It had been whittled away, sliver by sliver, by Caldwell and his empty seduction, by the loss of her child, by the death of her father and now…this.
This final heartbreak that stole her breath and made her want to run. Made her need to run. That was the only way now.
She moved past him, careful not to touch him, and went over to her wardrobe. She opened it and began to remove her clothing.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
She glanced at him. “Now that I know the true purpose of your investigation, I cannot take part in it anymore. My father is dead and I won’t be a part of sullying his name. As for your injuries, we both know you are more than capable of healing on your own. You probably have been for days. Staying was…a mistake. And it’s one I can no longer afford to make.”
