“I’m happy to do it, I assure you, Your Grace. You are well thought of in the department. Many who trained us spoke of your abilities, referenced your exploits. You did so much for the country during your time in the field.”
Lucas shifted. His accomplishments were being spoken of in the past tense. Something from a bygone era that was over, a reminiscence by friends he had worked with on cases. His own fears, spoken in plain words by a man who was hardly that. Anger rose in his chest and he carefully tamped it down as best he could.
“At least the company is fair,” he drawled. Logan arched a brow and shook his head as if he didn’t understand. Lucas glared at him. “Miss Oakford.”
Color filled Logan’s cheeks. “I—er—yes, sir. She is very lovely.”
“All of them think so?” he pressed.
“Only three of us, Your Grace,” he explained. “On a rotating schedule. But yes, she does occasionally…come up.”
“Mr. Logan, I’m ready for you once again!” Diana’s voice came from downstairs, and the young man saluted before he hurried off to help her.
Every fiber in Lucas’s body itched with anticipation. Annoyance. Frustration unlike any he’d ever experienced. He hated every part of this, and then add Diana to the mix and it was impossible. He didn’t need to be jealous, for God’s sake. She wasn’t his—she was only a temporary distraction. If she wanted to allow this or that or any young man to court her, that was her right. She could bed the entire War Department and he had no place to judge her. She was owed pleasure and happiness and a future.
He could only give her one of those three things. His shortcoming, not hers.
Logan returned with Diana at his heels. He had two buckets and she one. He dumped his two, then smiled at her as he took the last one and added it to the steaming tub.
“Is there anything else I can do, Miss Oakford?” he asked.
She reached out to touch his arm. “No, you’ve been a great help, thank you.”
He nodded to her, then to Lucas, and left them alone. Lucas moved to stand and she held up a hand. “Not yet,” she said. “One more thing.”
She departed the room again and he flopped back on the pillows in increasing frustration. Being out of control was not something he enjoyed. It reminded him of…
Well, it didn’t matter. He wasn’t going to think of that time, of that life he had abandoned and why.
Diana returned with a small bowl filled with herbs. She lifted it in his direction before she moved to the tub. He had to smile as she sprinkled them into the steaming water.
“Are you going to boil me like a finely seasoned chicken, then?” he asked, his frustration fading in exchange for the teasing that had begun to feel so easy and comfortable between them.
She set the empty bowl aside and turned to him with a laugh. “More like a tea, and you shall be the biscuit dunked in it. But right now the water is too hot and the herbs must steep.”
“What will they do?” he asked.
“You are always so curious, Your Grace.”
“I am,” he admitted. “Especially when a lady is attempting to make a meal of me.”
She laughed again, the music of that sound touching every part of him. “They will help you relax. They will soothe some of the pain. Nothing to harm you.”
He watched her closely. “I don’t think you’d ever harm me, Diana. Not on purpose.”
She drew back at the intimacy those words created. He was rather shocked, himself, that he’d said them. He hadn’t meant to. There was just something about this woman.
She cleared her throat. “You may feel differently in a moment. While the bath cools, I would like to try massaging your muscles.”
He blinked in surprise at the notion. “Rubbing me down, you mean. Like a prize horse?”
She shook her head and shot him a playful look that told him she was only barely tolerating him. “I suppose that is a step up from being a chicken or a biscuit.”
“If you think it would help,” he said. “I’m not adverse to the notion of you rubbing your hands on me.”
“I will try very hard not to become distracted. Thankfully you did not make the same mistake you accused me of earlier and dress, so if you would roll over on your stomach and remove the pillows you’ve built into a fortress behind your head, that would be helpful.”
He did so and lay flat on his stomach, turning his head away from her. He heard her moving around, then her hands touched him. They were slick with a fragrant oil that smelled like cinnamon and something exotic he couldn’t place. He hissed out pleasure at the erotic sensation of flesh gliding over flesh.
“Oh, I should request this treatment every day,” he groaned.
“You might not like it as much as I go deeper,” she said. “Pleasure is not always the first reaction, but pain.”
He opened his eyes and stared at the other side of the bed. Her words reminded him of a realization that had been troubling him a few days. One he had not discussed with her, but now it sat in his head, a jealousy amongst other unwanted jealousies.
“Were you married?” he asked at last.
Her hands hesitated on his back, and then she went back to her work. “You mean because I was not…was not untouched the first time you made love to me?”
He turned his head to look at her as he said, “Yes.”
Her cheeks tuned red and she turned away for a moment. He set his jaw. Perhaps he’d gone too far, been too blunt. His friends used to say he could be, a long time ago.
She looked back at him and he saw her exhaustion. He leaned up on his stomach, ignoring the shot of pain through his shoulder, and caught her hand. “You don’t owe me any explanation, Diana. I know that. I want you to know I know it. Despite that, I’m asking because I’m curious. And because I want to know more about you.”
She stared at their intertwined fingers. Then she pulled away and motioned him back to his original position. Her hands came back to his skin and she sighed.
“When my mother died, my father only knew medicine. He had no idea how to raise a child, certainly not a daughter.”
Lucas thought of his own parents. His father who had always despised him. His mother who could hardly look at him. He doubted Oakford had ever been that harsh, but that didn’t mean he’d been a good parent or given Diana what she needed.
And that he wholly understood.
“It must have hurt you,” he said softly.
Her hesitation was the only answer she gave to that question for a moment. Then she whispered, “Sometimes. Eventually he began to teach me about his vocation. Of course, I quickly learned that he taught me what he knew because it was all he understood. And that meant we had long talks about the body and all its processes.” She drew a long breath. “I am not like the ladies you were raised with, Lucas. I was never a tittering innocent.”
“Not in mind, perhaps. But the body is a different thing,” he said.
“Yes.” Her voice cracked, and it took everything in him not to lift his head and look at her. Not to roll over and pull her closer. He fought those urges, not just for his own sake, but because he doubted she would continue if he did so. He could sense her reticence.
“You don’t have to tell me,” he said again.
“I know. But I suppose you deserve the truth given the…the nature of our relationship.” She sighed again. “I was innocent until I met him.”
“Him,” he repeated.
Her fingers dug harder into his muscles and he tensed against a rush of pain. For a moment, she just worked at it and slowly the muscles relaxed and the pain lessened.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I know that hurts.”
He knew she was trying to distract him on some level. That she was reluctant because her story was obviously painful. He didn’t want to hurt her, but this drive inside of him, the spy’s tenaciousness, it didn’t relent.
“Who was he?” He pushed and rolled over at
last so he could look at her when he asked it.
Only he did not see pain in her expression. At least that wasn’t all he saw. There were much deeper emotions in her stare. Anger. Resentment. Loss. And grief. Something deeper and more potent than mere fleeting pain.
He saw it all and he wished he could take back the question. Not because he didn’t want to know the answer, but because suddenly the answer felt far too important. Far too intimate. The answer would bind them, and he feared that as much as he had ever feared anything in his life.
But he was about to know it. There was no going back.
Chapter Nine
Diana could hardly breathe, but she managed to keep her voice calm as she said, “You are tenacious.”
He smiled at her, but she saw the falseness of it, heard it in his voice as he said, “It is an investigative prerogative.”
She pressed her lips together. She liked his teasing most of the time. It made her comfortable. In this moment, it felt false. A way to make the tension fade, to get whatever it was he wanted from her.
“Am I being investigated?” she asked softly.
His gaze grew hooded and heated as he reached out to touch her leg through her skirt. “Most intimately.”
She frowned more deeply. If he was using what they’d shared against her, that cut her to the bone. And yet she still felt driven to tell him the very truth he sought. If she did, it might make him understand who she was on some level. And perhaps to drive him away a little too.
After all, a person like him would not want a woman who had given herself so easily. That would put a wall between them, and perhaps that would keep her from being so needy when it came to this man.
“He was a friend of my father,” she said, and hated how her voice shook. “He came to our country home as a visitor. Or so I was told.”
Lucas sat up a little, resting on his elbows. She saw pain on his face, but not as intense as it had been days before. They were making progress.
“What do you mean, so you were told? That wasn’t the truth?” he pressed.
“I think he was…” She hesitated, for she had never felt comfortable with this part of her story. “He was part of a case my father was working on.”
Lucas stared at her, his expression hard and suddenly cool. “Oakford told you he worked on cases?”
“From time to time, yes,” she said. “I know he was mostly meant to be a surgeon for the men, but he had a brilliant mind, and sometimes he worked on other things.”
“I see.” Lucas was quiet a moment. “So this other man came as part of something your father was working on. For the War Department.”
“They had their heads together quite a bit and always suddenly grew silent if I entered a room unannounced. I was helping my father with his household by then, and he barred me from his study and told me not to review his paperwork while his visitor was there.” She shrugged. “I’m not a fool. I understood what was happening. Does that surprise you?”
“That you are not a fool?” he asked. “Not at all. I am surprised to hear your father worked on cases. I did not know he took them on. But I can see how his mind would be a good fit for the work. As you say, he was brilliant. I often turned to him to help me problem-solve.”
She drew in a long breath to keep herself from the tears that inevitably rose in her when she considered her father too long. “I’m sure this man was doing the same.”
“Who was he?” Lucas asked.
She turned away, fists clenched at her sides. “No, I will not tell you that. I will not have you discussing me with your cronies, comparing experiences.”
“Diana!” he said, his sharp tone forcing her to look at him. He was sitting up now, staring at her. “You cannot think I would ever disrespect you or what we’ve shared in such a manner.”
She lifted her chin. “I don’t want to think it,” she said. “But what do I know of how you talk when you are alone with the others?”
“Not like that, I assure you,” he said, his tone laced with disgust at the very thought. It was so real that it actually gave her relief.
“His name doesn’t matter,” she said, and moved to the tub to test the water. It was almost perfect now and it gave her an excuse to stay away from him, to stare off so he wouldn’t see her face when she continued her story. “In the end, I cannot even blame him completely for what happened.”
“How can you say that? You were an innocent, he was a visitor in your father’s home.”
She shrugged, like it didn’t matter. The biggest lie she’d ever told. “I was lonely and foolish. I took flirtation for something more. And when he kissed me…” She trailed off as she remembered that moment in full detail. Then she had been thrilled. Now she felt empty. “Well, I felt like a light had been turned on inside of me. One that had always been there, but I’d never known it.”
“How long ago did this happen?” he asked, his voice rough.
She forced herself to look at him. He was unreadable as always. “Two years,” she whispered. “I was not quite one and twenty. That probably sounds so foolish to you, as most women have more sense at such an age.”
“It is not so old,” he said softly.
“To me, it certainly wasn’t. I had not gone to balls or had suitors. In some ways I was naïve about the ways of men and women, of love, of…matching. He offered me an…an illusion. And I let him have what he wanted because I thought it meant love and a future.”
His cheek twitched. “And once he had it?”
She bent her head. “Everything changed. I discovered he was married, for one. That broke my heart. And then my father found out the truth about our tryst. He was angrier than I’d ever seen in all my life. I thought he might kill his friend. But he didn’t. The other man left and…”
She stopped. There was so much more to the story, but it was impossible to say those things out loud. She never spoke of them, she certainly wasn’t about to start with a man who’d already told her he offered her nothing but pleasure.
“And?” he said.
“And now I’m here,” she said, her tone falsely bright. “And you know what happened. Now, why don’t you get into your bath? It is the perfect temperature to help those muscles loosen. It will relieve your pain.”
He held her stare for a long moment and she felt him reading her. Felt him analyzing as he’d been trained to do. She knew in that moment that he sensed there was more for her to tell and she held her breath as she waited for him to accuse or demand she give him the whole story.
Instead, he got up, silent and slow. As the sheets fell away, she found herself looking at his body. She couldn’t help it. He moved toward her, and when he reached her he caught the back of her head and drew her in for a kiss.
She sighed, flattening her palms on his bare chest and reveling in his taste and how he washed away all the pain that had been burning inside of her during her confession.
When he pulled away at last, he looked into her eyes. “I am not using you, Diana.”
She caught her breath. “I know,” she said. “I know that. This time I am entering our arrangement with eyes wide open. No one can be hurt if there aren’t any lies.”
“Diana—” he began, but she shook her head.
“Get in now,” she said, offering him a hand to balance himself as he did so. “That’s enough seriousness for the moment, I think.”
He pursed his lips, but didn’t argue. Instead, he sank beneath the hot water with a shuddering sigh and his eyes fluttered shut with his head rested back on the tub edge. She let out a sigh of her own. The subject had passed. At least for now.
And if she was careful, they would never have to broach the topic again.
Lucas had no idea how long he had been reclining in the tub. Long enough that the water was beginning to bleed out some of its heat. He had been seduced by the bath. By the warmth that seeped into his body, by the sweet, soft fragrance of the herbs Diana had added, by
the way his muscles had begun to relax and the pain that was his constant companion eased.
And yet he wasn’t fully comfortable. His mind still turned, running over what she had confessed about the man who took her innocence. She had been very honest about a remarkably painful subject. To have been seduced and discarded by a friend of her father, another spy…it brought up an anger in his chest that was far more powerful than it should be.
And questions. It brought up questions. He had known George Oakford his entire life as a spy. He’d never known the surgeon to work a case, nor to assist in one. That day Lucas had been injured had been an aberration, a moment of opportunity when he needed backup and Diana’s father had been there.
Oh, he’d talked to the man about thorny problems, of course. Oakford had a mind like a steel trap and was quick to offer advice or solutions. But he could not picture a scenario where he would have actually gone to Oakford’s home, where he would partner with him in a case. The idea seemed…off.
“Here,” Diana said, her soft voice breaking through his thoughts.
He opened his eyes and took the soap she now held out toward him. “Ready for me to be finished, are you?”
She smiled. “The water is cooling and you should wash before we get you out. Sitting in the cold water will be no good for your injuries.”
He nodded and began to wash himself. He was keenly aware of her watching him as she retook her chair a few feet away. Watching him with erotic interest that set his body on edge in a most pleasant way.
Wanting her was easy. Knowing her? That was another story. Her confession had brought him a bit closer, of course, but he still felt her withholding. There was more to her past. More to the man who had hurt her.
But right now wasn’t the time to push. Perhaps it never would be. After all, he wasn’t here to get to know this fascinating woman. He wasn’t going to be with her long. She said it over and over—they both knew what this was. An affair, meant for pleasure.
The Undercover Duke Page 8
