The Undercover Duke Read online

  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 always hated me,” he said, feeling the effect of those words. “I never didn’t know it. She hated 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.”

  “What did happen?” 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.”

  She smiled a little. “At that age, I imagine you must have been drunk on far more than just spirits.”

  “Yes. We were having a fine time until I turned and my father…Willowby…he was standing there three feet away, glaring at me. He was furious I was in this club carousing, as he put it.”

  She blinked. “But he was in the club.”

  “A fine argument, but not one I could make to him when he was half-drunk and filled with indignant rage. He dragged me out by my collar in front of my friends and threw me into his carriage. It was the longest ride home of my life with him screaming and yelling about all my failures.”

  “Oh, Lucas.” Her voice cracked. “I’m so sorry.”

  “I had been resentful of him for years. Resentful of his coldness. I’d spent time with Tyndale’s father by then, and our friend Kit, his father is Duke of Kingsacre and also so kind. I realized not all fathers treated their sons like mine did and had begun to hate Willowby with as much strength as he despised me. It was the perfect storm. A man and a boy nearly a man, both one drink too far into their cups, with so much between them that had been unsaid for over a decade.”

  “So you said it,” she whispered, and reached out to thread her fingers through his.

  He stared at their interlocked hands, surrendering to the peace her touch seemed to give every time she shared it. In this moment, when he was raw, it gave him the strength to say what happened next.

  “Yes.” His voice cracked. “I told him I was tired of his cruelty and his coldness. I told him I deserved his regard and his respect, if not his love.”

  She nodded slowly. “That was brave of you. What did he do?”

  “Hit me so hard with the back of his hand that I tasted blood,” he said. “And then he told me I deserved nothing because I wasn’t even his true son.”

  Her expression gentled with deep empathy. “Oh, Lucas, he was intoxicated and cruel—it’s very possible he was just lashing out at you.”

  “I thought the same in that moment. I was so stunned, I couldn’t believe it was possible. If I wasn’t his son, who was I? I couldn’t think of an answer. But what he said to me in that heated moment turned out to be very true. My mother verified it.”

  She caught her breath and Lucas fought for his. There were so many memories coming back up to torment him. He recalled his mother’s face when the two of them stumbled into the foyer. How disgusted she’d been as she glared at them from the hall.

  “Why would she do so?” Diana asked.

  “He gave her no choice. When we arrived here, at this very house, he dragged me inside. There she was, roused by the racket. He started bellowing at her to manage her bastard, as she should have done for all these years. She was not drunk, and there was a moment when all the color went out of her face. I knew then. In that moment, I knew.

  “What did she say to you?” Diana asked, her hand tightening against his. “Did she explain?”

  “In a way. She was enraged at first, not that he had struck me or railed at me, but that he would tell her secret. She kept asking him how could he, after all these years, how could he? It all came out then, as I watched them scream out their hate to each other like he’d screamed it out to me. It was like I wasn’t even in the room and they hashed out the whole sordid thing as I’m sure they had many times before, only in private.”

  “She had strayed,” Diana whispered.

  “With a servant, of all things,” Lucas said, almost laughing even though there was nothing funny about the most painful memory of his life. “My father’s valet—well, his previous valet. And that affair happened during a time where my father knew full well the child could not be his. So I am not a duke, I simply wear the costume. I suppose living a life of lies helped me with my role as spy. I should be grateful, perhaps.”

  She turned farther into him and her warm hands lifted to his cheeks. She smoothed her thumbs against his skin and whispered, “That is not true. They lived a life of lies, not you. Whatever your mother did wasn’t your fault. You couldn’t change it.”

  “Neither could Willowby, though I know he wanted to,” Lucas said. “I was born during their marriage—to protest my parentage would have been fruitless and caused a scandal that would have destroyed us all, not that my father cared about anyone but himself. He spent all those years looking at me and seeing the man whose tainted seed would be carried on in his line, and he was horrified. No wonder he despised me.”

  “He was a cruel person who could lay the sins of an adult onto an innocent child, no matter how he felt about his lines or his title or his fortune,” Diana murmured. “Oh, Lucas, that is a burden to carry.”

  He shrugged. “But I didn’t carry it. I ran from it, you see. I ran that very night, to our friend Hugh’s house in London. He was the only one who had inherited by then. He let me in and asked me about what had happened, but I wouldn’t tell him. I couldn’t. I was too crushed.”

  “And even when that first horrible reaction faded,” she asked. “Could you have confessed to any of them, if only to ease the burden?”

  “I could have,” he admitted. “Most of them have brutal pasts with their own fathers. I’m certain they would have been kind and supportive. But when they looked at me
, they would have seen that I didn’t belong. At least that’s what I thought. So I never told a soul.”

  She dipped her head, and her voice was far away when she said, “It ate you alive, that pain that could not be spoken. That loss that couldn’t be shared.”

  He stared at her, for there was an expression on her face that told him she understood those concepts on a far deeper level than he knew. He didn’t understand what had broken her, but he was more comfortable knowing that he wasn’t alone in the kind of pain that blossomed now in his chest.

  “Yes,” he admitted. “It damaged everything in my life. Like Hugh, all my other friends eventually sensed something had changed, but I pushed them back and pretended it didn’t matter. When Willowby died two years later, I entered the military rather than face the past and the future. Perhaps I wanted to die, I don’t know. I became a spy to forget what I am, but it slaps me in the face at all turns. If you think you don’t belong here, well, neither do I, Diana. So there is my secret. There is the truth.”

  Diana was silent for a long moment. So long that he feared perhaps his secret had changed the way she viewed him, as he had once feared it would change his friends and their view. That no matter what she said, she knew what he was and that was all she could see now. Like his father had. Like his mother.

  But then she took his hands and kissed first one palm, then the other. “That you shared this with me means so much to me, Lucas. And perhaps having said these things out loud will give them less power.”

  “I don’t know about that,” he said, and pushed to his feet. He walked to the edge of the fountain and watched the water endlessly fall. He understood that feeling. Forever falling, forever lost. He turned and found her watching him closely. “I think I owed you that secret. After all, you told me yours.”

  Something in her face shifted. That guilt and pain he often saw in her returned. It reminded him there was more to her past than what she’d shared.

  “You were right when you said that I haven’t been completely open with you,” she said.

  He caught his breath and hated himself for pressuring her. “But I was unfair to accuse you of that. In the heat of the moment I said it, but I don’t think you owe me or anyone anything, Diana.”

  “Only I do,” she said softly. “And of course it would be today of all days that I would see it.”

  “Today?” He tilted his head. “What is so special about today?”

  “It is the day before tomorrow. And tomorrow means everything.” She sighed. “You had a long day, Lucas—do you think you’re up for a little trip?”

  He blinked. “A trip?”

  “Back to my cottage here in Town. I was going to make an excuse about needing herbs so I could return there tonight or tomorrow, but perhaps it is time for all the lies to be stripped away. Perhaps it’s time you really understand, as I now understand. If you want to, then I’ll ask that you come with me.”

  He hesitated. From her expression, it was clear her secret was dire. Life altering. And if he knew it then they would both be laid bare. There would be nothing left as a wall between them.

  And that was terrifying.

  But the idea of knowing her, truly knowing her, was also tempting. Temptation won.

  “Yes,” he said softly. “I would be honored to return with you and to know whatever you want to share.”

  “Then let’s go now,” she said, and held out a trembling hand.

  He took it, guiding her toward the house, guiding them both toward a future he feared and anticipated in equal measure.

  Lucas had allowed there to be silence between them on the long ride across London back to her little cottage. Diana appreciated that deeply, for right now she could think of no words to say.

  Enough had been said already.

  She’d never intended to tell Lucas the full truth about her past. She’d never meant for anyone to know. But when he told her his secret, when he confessed it all out and asked for nothing in return, the last barrier she kept between them had melted. After all, this secret had brought her pain for so long. As she had suggested to him, perhaps speaking it out loud would take away the power of it.

  The carriage stopped and Lucas helped her out. His hand was warm, comforting as he took her arm and guided her to the door. She opened it and they stepped inside.

  Both of them drew a breath at once, and she glanced at him. He looked as pleased to be here as she felt. Back in this place where they had started. This place that was so separate from his world and whatever they would face there in the next few days and weeks.

  “What can I do?” he asked. “Make a fire in the parlor? Help you get something from the study?”

  She shook her head. “What I have to show you is not inside. We must go to the garden.”

  He released her arm and motioned for her to lead him. She did so on shaking legs, with a throbbing heart that felt like it was loud enough for the neighborhood to hear.

  She walked through the cold, dark back parlor and through the doors that led outside. The sun was warm on her face, but that felt like a slap when she considered what she was about to do. Say. Feel.

  Lucas followed her silently as she maneuvered her way through her herb plantings and the few flowers scattered through the small outdoor space. Finally she reached the big oak tree in the back corner of the space, and she stopped and stared at what she saw there.

  Two little markers, memorials for the dead. One was for her father and her mother. The other was small—tiny, really—like the person it represented. The life lost before it had even begun.

  “Diana,” Lucas said softly.

  She didn’t look at him, but kept her eyes on that tiny marker. “My mother’s name was Mira. I always loved the way my father said it. It could be a love poem or an admonishment or a prayer. When my baby was born so early, unable to take a breath, gone before I even got to hold her, I called her Mirabelle. At least in my head.”

  Lucas’s fingers closed around her arm and she looked at him at last. He was pale and his lips trembled. “Your child.”

  She nodded. “That ill-fated affair with Boyd Caldwell brought me more than just a sad story about innocence lost, you see.”

  His jaw twitched. “Caldwell. That was the spy your father brought here? The one who seduced you?”

  “I assume you know him,” she whispered, her cheeks filling with heat.

  His gaze darted away as he jerked out a nod. “I do. I…I know him, though not well.”

  She glanced back at the memorials. “When I realized I was breeding, I tried to hide it. Eventually, I was forced to tell my father what had happened between us and how Boyd had abandoned me after he got what he…wanted. I have never seen him so enraged. I don’t know if he confronted Caldwell—we never spoke of him again. We came to London, where he could watch and help me while he worked. Until…until I started having pain. Too early, too soon. My father tried to help, but he couldn’t save her. He barely saved me. She is buried here, which is why I put a memorial marker for them beside her. So I could visit them together.”

  She blinked and realized tears were streaming down her face. “Tomorrow will be one year since she died.”

  He swayed slightly, and then to her surprise, he drew her in and held her tightly against his warm, broad chest. His hand came up into her hair, gently smoothing her locks. “I’m so sorry, Diana.”

  She buckled then, the weight of the grief she had carried with her for a year hitting her all at once. He held her, keeping her upright and never speaking as she cried for the daughter she had never known, then for the mother who had also left far too soon and the father who had been snatched from her. She wept for them all until her chest stopped hurting and the tears faded to shudders and then stopped.

  “Mirabelle is a beautiful name,” he said, drawing back to wipe tears from her cheeks before he handed over a handkerchief he withdrew from his jacket pocket.

  She wiped her eyes an
d nose and nodded. “I sometimes wonder what she would have been like. Looked like.”

  “Beautiful and accomplished like her mother,” he said with a smile. “There is no way she could not have been with you as her influence. I’m glad you have this place to visit with her.”

  She shook her head. “I’m not sure Father wanted to have it, honestly. He seemed to do it out of guilt rather than a desire to remember. He was forever encouraging me to let her go, forget her.”

  Lucas flinched. “That isn’t very kind.”

  “No, perhaps not. But he was a surgeon, of course. A doctor who saw death regularly. He could set it away. He expected me to do the same. He wasn’t much comfort…after.”

  Lucas tucked her into his arms again and they looked at the markers together. “Then let me comfort you. We can stay here tonight. I’ll have supper sent over—we can be here in this place where the case and the duties don’t matter. And tomorrow we can see her again, visit her and set some flowers here for her birthday.”

  She glanced up at him, shocked by the kindness of his response to a child he didn’t know, hadn’t been his. But of course he would be. Despite his gruff beginnings with her, she had swiftly realized that while he might be complicated, he was not cruel. He was giving and caring, deeply passionate and highly attuned to those around him. Perhaps those things had been honed because he was a spy, but they hadn’t been born from his profession.

  They were just…him. And that was why she loved him.

  She jolted at that realization, which hit her in the heart and almost made her buckle with shock and pain and terror. She couldn’t deny it was true though. She did love him. She would always love him.

  Even though there was so little time left for them now.

  “I would like that,” she said, wrapping her arm around his waist and leaning into him. “If you are willing.”

  He leaned down and pressed a kiss to her temple. “Whatever you need, Diana. Whatever you need and more.”