Liliana searched Geoffrey’s face. Lines of sorrowful anger marked his features. She believed him. At the same time, she longed to reach out to him, to pull him into her arms and give him comfort. In only a few hours, everything he thought he knew had been turned on its head. He must be reeling.
When he raised his eyes to her, Liliana’s breath caught at the anguish in them. “Do you know what this means?” he rasped.
Liliana shook her head, yet the hairs on the back of her neck tingled to life.
“It means I committed treason.”
Chapter Twenty-five
“T
hat’s ridiculous. Of course you didn’t commit treason,” Liliana insisted, a deep V forming between her chestnut brows. She sounded almost offended for him, and yet the expression on her face spoke of concern, of compassion. She looked rather as if she wished to reach for him, and Geoffrey felt an almost undeniable pull to let her, to lean on her.
He placed his hands on the edge of the desk and shoved, pushing himself away and gaining his feet. These last hours had thrown him more than he wanted to handle, and as far as his feelings for Liliana were concerned…well, they vacillated like the pendulum of human nature, from good to evil, love to hate…hope to regret. He couldn’t trust anything he was feeling at the moment.
What he could do was focus on how to handle the most recent blow.
“Intentionally, no. But do you think that will matter to my political opponents? Or to the men I’ve been working all year to convince to invest in employment opportunities?” His face tightened as he clenched his jaw. The weight of every ex-soldier he’d seen starving, suffering, slowly dying before his eyes seemed to bear down on him. He gritted his teeth against the crushing burden. “Christ, all it would take is a whiff of scandal and everything I’ve worked for will be for naught.”
He turned his glare upon Liliana and she flinched. He closed his eyes, marshaling his emotion. This wasn’t her fault. Hell, she’d been a child when all of this had happened. He’d been barely a man himself. Yes, she’d brought it to his door, had ripped his heart out by the way she’d chosen to go about her investigation, but really, hadn’t she done him a favor? At least now he knew what the blackmailer must have against his family. However, that was none of her business. As far as she was concerned, they were the only two people who knew of this sordid affair.
When he looked upon her once more, Liliana hadn’t moved. She looked so achingly beautiful as she sat there with her face open and imploring. His heart twisted. No, it wasn’t her fault, but damn, how he wished he’d never laid eyes upon her. Had never kissed her satiny skin, never ran his fingers through her silken tresses, never breathed in her crisp, clean scent.
But he had—and much more. That alone obligated him to do what was right by her. The fact that he had inadvertently been involved in the death of her father only compounded his duty. By marrying her, he’d make up for her loss in some way.
Liliana stood, her moves graceful and slow, never breaking eye contact. “Then no one ever has to know.”
He scoffed. If only it were that simple, but someone else already knew. Worse, he knew. Knew how she’d been wronged. Knew how she’d used him. Knew how his father had used him, had duped him, had potentially made him party to murder.
“I know you don’t believe me, Geoffrey, and I don’t blame you, but I would never do anything to hurt you.” Liliana winced and looked away. Then she straightened her shoulders and took a step toward him. She reached out to her left and snatched one of the decoded letters from the desk and held it out before her. “I plan to stay until we discover the truth. I need to know what went wrong, what really happened to my father, but then”—she crumpled the letter in her hand—“I’ll disappear. You’ll never hear from me again, if that’s what you want, and I’ll never tell a soul. You can trust me on that. I lo—”
She clamped her mouth shut and cleared her throat.
Geoffrey narrowed his eyes. She’d almost claimed to love him again. At least she’d stopped herself from uttering the lie. But then, she didn’t need to pretend to love him anymore, did she? Still, the truth and magnitude of her deceit knifed through him anew.
Liliana began again. “I…” Her eyes suddenly widened, her face taking on a look of horror. “Oh no, Geoffrey. Someone else does know. A man—he tore apart my father’s library. Everyone thought it a robbery at the time, but he could have been after the treasure.”
“When was this?”
“A few weeks ago.”
Damn. Another person? Or was this the blackmailer, searching either for the treasure or for more evidence against him? Was there even a chance to keep all of this quiet?
“We can’t worry about that until we’ve solved the rest of the mystery.” Geoffrey reached for her closed fist, which still held the crumpled note. He gently pried her fingers open and took the letter, detesting that the mere touch sent a sweet ache through him. He let her go and smoothed the vellum out. “How many more letters have you to decode?”
Her lip trembled and dropped, but she gamely said, “Three.”
He had only one left. He nodded to her chair and sat himself. “Then, let’s finish this.”
The last message from Claremont indicated that the piece had arrived from the university in Belgium, and he inquired about making the exchange. Geoffrey sat back in his seat and steepled his hands, touching his index fingers to his lips. It should have been simple, so what had gone wrong? As angry as he was with his father for lying to him—for duping him into committing an act of treason, for God’s sake—he didn’t see the man as greedy, willing or even able to kill for money—
“Here,” Liliana’s voice broke through his thoughts. “Your father has set up a meeting with mine, for December twenty-third. Father was to bring the treasure and exchange it for the money, which he would then hold for Triste.” She stood and paced beside his chair. Apples and lemons wafted to him as she passed, and despite everything, desire poured into his veins. “Yet the meet was moved up two days, and my father was killed. Why?”
A cold chill slithered over Geoffrey. “Your father was killed on the twenty-first of December of aught-three?” He swiftly calculated. That was little more than a fortnight before his own father died, an awful coincidence. Or was it? What if his father hadn’t died of natural causes?
Liliana watched him, empathy etching her features…not surprise, as if…“You knew our fathers died less than three weeks apart?” he cried as he leapt to his feet, outrage boiling in his gut that she would keep something like this from him. “Since when?”
“Since we visited Witherspoon in the village,” she said quietly. “Your father’s valet told me he suspected your father was poisoned. He smelled almonds on the body…which speaks to cyanide.”
“And you said nothing?” Christ. Too many things hit Geoffrey, and he backed away.
“I tried to yesterday, but you wouldn’t let me—”
“You’ve known for days!” He narrowed his eyes, seeing Liliana as if for the first time. “Did you even care for that old man’s health? Or did you just use him for information like you did me?”