“We don’t have duke meetings,” Hugh said with a dry smile.
Lucas shrugged. “Perhaps you aren’t invited.”
“It would be awkward if you are, indeed, talking about me.” He shook his head.
Lucas’s smiled faded. “I’m tired of the subterfuge and the avoidance. I came here because I think it’s time we addressed this directly.”
Hugh wrinkled his brow. Lucas was not the first to approach him on this subject. He was usually able to put off the others. But Lucas looked determined.
“That isn’t very spy-like,” Hugh tried as a means of distraction. “To just come out and confront me.”
“I’m not a spy anymore,” Lucas said softly.
Hugh nodded. That was true. His friend had been badly injured eighteen months before, had nearly died and had been brought back to life by his now-wife, Diana. He did not work for the War Department any longer, at least not in any official capacity, though Hugh did suspect he and Diana occasionally provided some kind of consultation in that world.
“Aren’t you?” he asked.
Lucas’s lips pressed together, and he leaned back in his chair. “Very well, if you want to play it that way, I will behave in a way more befitting whatever you think my position is. An interrogation is really more about observation, so let me share mine with you.”
“This is an interrogation now?” Hugh said with a rusty laugh.
Lucas did not join in on it. “You would not allow a friendly conversation and I will not leave here without the truth, so this is what it is.” He ticked off one finger. “First, I know you were recently in Brighthollow with your sister. You adore her, you are more her father than a brother, in truth. And yet there are shadows beneath your eyes, which means you did not sleep well over the last fortnight.”
Hugh blinked those same bleary eyes his friend had just observed and said, “Perhaps I was enjoying myself in the country.”
“No, you weren’t,” Lucas said, and this time he did laugh. “There is a difference between the expression of a man tired because he’s been indulging himself in pleasure and a man who cannot sleep for the demons that plague him. If you’d like to observe that difference, look yourself in the mirror for the latter and look at any of your married friends for the former.”
“Not all of us can walk away from our dukedoms as you did,” Hugh snapped, regretting the words the moment he said them, for they were harsh and ignored the pain his friend had endured in the not-so-distant past.
But Lucas looked anything but offended. “No, I suppose not. And yet it isn’t your duties that trouble you, either. You have never shied away in discussing your problems with your estate and title with the others, even with me. But you refuse, which means you have problems of a more personal nature.”
Hugh pushed to his feet and heard the letter in his pocket crinkle. He set his hand on the outline of it as he muttered, “You are being ridiculous.”
“Am I?” Lucas ticked off a second finger. “My next observation is that Lizzie is now seventeen, is she not?”
“Yes,” Hugh managed through gritted teeth. “Seventeen this February last.”
“That means she is of an age where you might present her to court, bring her into Society here in London, even if you had no desire to drive her into a match at such a young age. And yet she is not here. She’s hidden away in Brighthollow. My sources say she has not come to Town at all, not for any reason, in over a year.”
Hugh stiffened. Lucas was too close to the truth now. And his own pain was rising with every word he spoke. “Don’t you have something better to do, Willowby?” he snapped. “A wife to spend time with, for example?”
Lucas smiled. “If you think Diana wasn’t the one who helped me prepare this interrogation, you do not understand my wife.”
Hugh pivoted on him. “So you’ve corrupted that lovely woman entirely.”
Lucas’s grin grew. “Entirely,” he said with another laugh. “And I shall not be distracted, so stop trying.”
“Lizzie will come out next year,” Hugh grunted, folding his arms as he did so.
“You don’t sound certain.”
Hugh threw up his hands and paced away. Of course he was not certain. Lizzie was entirely against coming out. She refused to even discuss it now. And while no one would talk if she made her debut at eighteen versus seventeen, if the time stretched to nineteen, to twenty and beyond? The talk she was so terrified of creating would begin without her.
Already, it seemed it had, at least amongst his friends.
Lucas moved toward him, and now his expression was gentler. Like he was beginning to understand just the kind of pain Hugh was struggling with. “I shall move on to my third observation,” he said softly.
“Do. I am on the edge of my seat.”
