The Undercover Duke

by Michaels, Jess

  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 if nine of 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…wanted to be part of this world you would have all of us on your side. A formidable group, I assure you.”

  Diana faced her. “Of course Emma, Meg, Adelaide and Charlotte are wonderful. And it’s clear they all are darlings of Society. All the women watch them, and I heard three ladies discussing the cut of Charlotte’s gown a moment ago. She makes fashion. But…”

  “But?” Helena encouraged her.

  “Is it enough?”

  “Why would it not be?” Helena asked, her tone very gentle.

  Diana sighed. “Well, they’ve been watching me tonight, as well. Frowning. Talking behind their fans. Glaring at me. Would your circle be enough?”

  Helena nodded slowly. “I understand those feelings. When Baldwin and I announced our engagement, there were women who gave me the cut direct. I won’t say it wasn’t hurtful or uncomfortable. But if you love him, I can also tell you that it is more than enough.”

  Diana froze. There were those words again, but this time they were spoken from another person’s lips. They felt so much more alive. “I suppose the more important issue is if he loves…well, in theory it would be me.”

  “In theory?” Helena tilted her head.

  Diana couldn’t look at her. “We are speaking in hypotheticals, after all. We have to.”

  “Very well. In hypotheticals, I see the way he looks at you. It isn’t just desire in his stare. It’s caring. Concern. His face lights up when you’re near. He’s…alive. From an outsider’s perspective, that is very much like love. But what about you?”

  “If I were to feel such a thing for him,” she said slowly. “It would feel like being woken up after a very long sleep. Like finding a half that I hadn’t realized I was missing. But not a half that smothers or takes over the whole. Something that can allow itself to be separate, too.”

  Helena swallowed hard, her eyes now sparkling with tears despite her smile. “That is a very apt description. One that I think fits all in our circle. To find someone who both completes you and can allow you to be free, that is a rare thing. One that you should, hypothetically, not throw away out of fears that you won’t fit into his world. If you fit into his life, that is all that matters. At least you should tell him your heart and give him a chance to refuse or accept it.”

  Diana’s aforementioned heart leapt at that suggestion. To tell Lucas these feelings, that was courting disaster. And yet she knew Helena was correct. If she walked away without doing so, she feared she would live with that regret forever.

  And she knew something hard and sharp and painful about living with regrets.

  She looked across the room again. Lucas had left the side of his friends and now crossed the chamber to Stalwood. The two men shook han
ds and then talked with their heads close together for a moment. Lucas nodded, glanced over his shoulder, and then the two men exited the room together.

  She refocused her attention on the case and smiled at Helena. “You’ve given me much food for thought. I think I’ll take a moment and ponder it.”

  Helena leaned in and surprised Diana by pressing a quick kiss to her cheek. “In truth, I may be selfish. You and I could help each other, too, to find our way through this world. If I can do anything to help, please come to me.”

  “I will,” Diana assured her before she slipped away to follow the men from the room.

  She would have to face the truths that Helena had offered up to her. That was clear. But for now, she had to focus on the case that had brought Lucas to her. Perhaps once that was resolved, the future they could share…or not…would be clearer.

  At least she hoped it would be. Because her heart was already deeply involved, and she didn’t look forward to losing it if Lucas chose to walk away.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “You have concerns,” Stalwood said as he motioned Lucas into one of James’s back parlors and shut the door firmly behind them. “I can see them all over your face. Has something happened?”

  Lucas shifted. He’d been thinking about this moment for days and dreading it with every fiber of his being. What he was about to say was unthinkable, and a betrayal of the secrets Diana had shared.

  And yet there was no way around it. Stalwood needed to know his thoughts. They could save a hundred men. A thousand.

  “I do have concerns,” he verified slowly as he moved to the sideboard and poured them each a drink of James’s best scotch. “God, that isn’t the right word for them. Worse than that.”

  Stalwood took the offering, but didn’t drink as he continued to stare at Lucas with apprehension clear on his face. “This is about Diana, isn’t it?”

  “Diana?” he repeated in surprise.

  Stalwood nodded. “You’ve already told me things that worry me. She is a beautiful woman, not to mention clever and kind. You have a charisma that is hard to deny. Perhaps I was a fool to place you two into the same environment and not think that nature would run its course.”

  He blinked. Stalwood was mentioning indelicacies, dancing around the subject of their affair because it was obvious. Too obvious to anyone who knew him, who knew her. And yet he didn’t fear it. He didn’t regret it, even if he should. And it wasn’t the subject he wanted to discuss at present.

  “No, it isn’t Diana that brings me concern,” he said. He shook his head. “That isn’t entirely true. Let me explain.”

  Stalwood took a seat and glared up at him. “Please do.”

  Lucas sank into the chair across from his superior and said, “I have gone over every paper, compared every note and taken into account all the things I know, all the things I’ve learned from Diana, and I’m coming to one conclusion over and over.”

  “Which is?”

  “George Oakford may have been involved in the acts of treason,” Lucas said, though his voice felt slow and sounded far away as he forced himself to say those awful, terrible words. They rang in the air around him, and Stalwood jerked to his feet.

  “George Oakford,” he repeated, his lined face twisting with the same horror that burned in Lucas’s chest. “No. That cannot be. What is your evidence?”

  “He was there that day,” Lucas began. “Unexpectedly, uninvited. He gave an explanation at the time and I cared so deeply about the man that I fear I might not have dug deeply enough. But how would he know my location? It was a secret that was jealously guarded, considering the nature of my investigation. I suppose it is possible he did overhear my plans from someone else. Or perhaps…”

  Stalwood shook his head. “That is not enough to convince me.”

  “Nor me,” Lucas reassured him. “So there is the rest. Diana told me that Oakford brought another spy into their home two years ago. That she believed that this man was working with her father on a case. But you told me that Oakford was not given cases. I know that idea troubled you.”

  Stalwood paced a moment and then nodded slowly. “Yes. I admit, that Oakford would work behind my back raised my suspicions. We were old friends and I was his superior. If there were an innocent explanation, then he could have and I think would have talked to me.”

  “I agree,” Lucas choked out. The words came harder now. “Diana also mentioned a special knot her father used to close the bandages on wounds. Something complicated and not easily learned. Yet that was the knot on the bandage wrapped around my leg when I woke up after my injury.”

  Stalwood wrinkled his brow. “But you believed Oakford to be dead when you saw him lying on the ground. He could not have tied off your wound.”

  “I would think not. But perhaps his partner, the man who shot me, did. Although why he’d try to save me after shooting me twice and causing me to fall ten feet is beyond me. Or perhaps…”

  “Perhaps?”

  Lucas got up now. He hated to say the next. “What if…Oakford was pretending the initial injury?” he suggested. “He wasn’t hurt at all, but he wanted me to think he was in the event that I survived. What if he came to my aid? We were…I thought we were close. Diana said he thought of me as a-a son. Even if he were a traitor, it doesn’t follow that he truly wanted me to die. He might have even thought that my injuries would close the case.”

  “But Oakford did die. We had a body.”

  “Mutilated, which you didn’t tell me,” Lucas snapped.

  Stalwood let his breath out in a long sigh. “I’m sorry you heard about that. I did not want you to carry even more guilt. His body was damaged, yes, but we identified him through his clothes and personal effects. We buried him.”

  “I have reason to believe Oakford might have come to despise his partner.” He cleared his throat. “A personal reason. If that man turned on me, tried to kill me, and George intervened, they might have quarreled…”

  “You think that was when he truly shot Oakford, along with all the other servants, in the scuffle,” Stalwood finished. “But why would he hate the partner?”

  “Diana,” Lucas said softly.

  Stalwood blinked a few times, his expression heavy with shock. “Diana,” he repeated slowly and in a tone thick with understanding.

  Lucas winced, for he hated to reveal even a sliver of the secrets she had whispered to him in confidence. But this was a traitor. A murderer. A man that had turned against his own and caused Diana’s father’s death. That had to justify what he was doing…somehow.

  “I do not wish to get into the details,” he said, and hoped Stalwood would respect that. “I will just say that Oakford believed that Diana had been…harmed by his partner. To know that would rot him out. Drive him to rage, even. They were in deep together, but if Oakford hated him…”

  Stalwood nodded to show that he understood the path of Lucas’s thoughts. His expression was grave. “Very well, let us say that is true. That still leaves us with an unidentified man in our ranks.”

  “Not unidentified,” he said. “Diana named him. And the name matches even more of our evidence. Boyd Caldwell.”

  Stalwood swayed slightly at the invocation of that name. “You said the men guarding the estate that day said part of their employer’s name that day. Cal—”

  “You looked into Caldwell with all the rest, I know. Did you eliminate him?” Lucas asked.

  Stalwood shook his head slowly. “He was one of the men we couldn’t exclude by an alibi at the time of your attack. But we couldn’t find anything especially suspicious about him, either. But if he is linked to Oakford…and Oakford was there the day you were shot…”

  “It’s a good lead, as much as I hate it,” Lucas said, and rubbed a hand over his face. “I cannot tell you how much I hate it. To think that George Oakford could be a traitor, in league with a killer…it turns my stomach.”

  Stalwood was pale as paper. �
��Everything in me wants to shove this information away. Burn it from my mind if I could. But I know you’re correct. There are pathways here that the evidence reveals. And until we prove them wrong or right, we cannot dismiss them. Even if it breaks my heart and yours.”

  “It does break my heart,” Lucas croaked out. “Worse, it would break…”

  “Diana’s,” Stalwood said, his tone pained. “Does she know your suspicions?”

  Lucas flinched. “No. What she told me was not told as part of the investigation. I didn’t reveal to her what I thought when she said that name…Caldwell. And I won’t. I won’t tell her.”

  “That’s for the best,” Stalwood agreed. “Until we know for certain, keep the communication open. We may need more details that she would be loath to share if she thought they would destroy her father’s memory.”

  Lucas wrinkled his brow. That was not why he was keeping his thoughts secret from Diana. After everything she’d lost, he had no intention of stealing her love for her father, her belief and faith in his goodness. Not until they knew everything. Perhaps not even then.

  If he could protect her, he would.

  “Willowby?” Stalwood said, sharp.

  He jolted. “Of course. Of course I will not tell her,” he said.

  “Good.” Stalwood smoothed his hands over his waistcoat. “Bloody hell, I hate this. I’ll return to my office and do some work on my end. I’ll reach out to you as soon as I can to further this investigation.”

  The two men locked eyes, and then Lucas motioned to the door for his superior to leave first. He followed, his hands shaking as he tried to regain composure before he returned to the ballroom where he’d have to face the world, his friends and Diana.

  Diana hid in the shadowy dark of an alcove in the hallway, watching as Stalwood and Lucas headed toward the ballroom. She leaned heavily against the wall, for her own legs would not hold her.