A Perfect Storm (17 page)

“Enough!” Lucien slammed his hand down on his desk with all of his might. “Get out! I will not have you denigrate the dead. If this is the assistance I am going to continue to get from you, then I do not want it anymore.”

“I’m going to let us both get some air,” Magnus stated with incredible calm, “but I’m not leaving the island. Beyond the fact that I can’t, I know this is going to explode all over you very soon, and you’re not going to be able to crawl your way out of the rubble without some help.”

Magnus’s calm grated on all of Lucien’s exposed, raw nerves. The irritation gave him some insight into how he must make Sophie feel when he behaved so rationally around her.
Fuck
. Empathy for her position filled him, and that only sparked lighter fluid to the flame burning inside Lucien. He could not afford to care about her or her feelings. He. Could. Not.

“You never loved Josh.” Lucien lashed out at the person he could, the one person he’d believed loved Josh as much as he did and who would share his need for payback. “You just wanted him because you thought he was the most beautiful man in the world, and you saw yourself as anything but.” Every wound inside Lucien, the ones he needed to have fester in order to continue this scheme, rose to the surface and drove his pain.
Right at Magnus
. “You hoped if Josh paid you some attention, then the way people looked at and gravitated to him would rub off on you too.”

“No.” Magnus kept his head up, but he could not hide the way he white-knuckled the doorknob. “I came to terms with my appearance a long time ago.”

“You think you did because you’ve had sex with a lot of people and because they paid you for it.” More than a decade of friendship and trust lived between them, as well as a wealth of personal information. “Deep down, though, where it matters, you remember how you came to be my employee, and you can’t see yourself as ever being worth more than that low price.”

Magnus’s chin didn’t waver. “Even if that’s true, it’s not relevant.” He looked Lucien right in the eyes. “The only thing important to note here is that the difference between you and me is that I remember Josh’s flaws. You have chosen to forget them.”

Lucien curled his hand into a fist against his desk. “Leave.” He drove his knuckles into the fine wood, knowing that if he didn’t, he would get up and slam his fist into Magnus’s face. “Now.”

“Fair enough.” Magnus opened the door he’d closed just a few minutes ago. “I’ll give you some time to think about what you’ve said and the choices you continue to make in the name of someone not worth your devotion.” With that, Magnus left Lucien alone.

Blood rushed with breakneck speed through Lucien, roaring the sound of the ocean in his ears. He needed to feed on every ounce of righteous anger living within him in order to successfully avenge Josh’s death. Kindness could not exist inside him, not for Sophie, not for Magnus, and not for anyone else who got in his way. The allure of Sophie’s innocence and budding sense of sexual adventure could not scratch any deeper than Lucien’s surface. He could not allow himself to close his eyes and let dreams of intimacy with her go beyond the base, raw stuff he had planned. He could not let her clever mouth and sweet innocence chip away at his psyche. And he damn well could not let Magnus’s objections make him second-guess himself.

But you didn’t have to attack him in his most vulnerable places. His deeply rooted insecurities about his appearance and self-worth should be off limits. That was beneath you.

Getting a glimpse of himself in his computer monitor, Lucien scowled. Magnus was more than an employee; he was a real friend. Someone Lucien trusted. Yet he’d let his driving desire for justice override everything else to the point that he’d humiliated a friend.
No, that’s not true
. Magnus had maintained his dignity through the entire exchange. The vision of him standing with his head held high in the face of the cold truth—that Josh had not loved Magnus the way Magnus had loved Josh—filled Lucien with a sick, thudding shame, aimed squarely at himself.

The sense that this plan had gotten beyond him and was slipping out of his control consumed Lucien and sent a roar screaming through his system. Shrieking denial filled his head, his blood, his guts, and raced through him worse than a rancid disease. Needing to unleash everything before it ate straight through him, Lucien picked up a paperweight and hurled it across the study with the speed and precision of a major league pitcher.

As the glass orb shattered against the wall, the broken pieces flung images of his baby brother, broken and bruised too, into his mind.
Josh. I could have helped you more. I won’t turn my back now
. With his head buried in his hands, Lucien vowed he would not let Josh’s death go unanswered, even if in the end it annihilated what was left of his soul.

A great, heaving tightness filled Lucien’s chest, and his entire body shuddered as he fought the sob pushing to erupt. Arms suddenly circled his hunched shoulders, and gentle hands caressed his upper back. Sophie murmured soothing nonsense words, and for just a second, Lucien circled his arms around her waist and clung to her, hungry for her warmth.
Please
. Everything inside him felt so fucking inhuman. Sophie clutched Lucien just as hard as he did her. Lucien felt and reveled in every finger she dug into his back, the hold keeping him close; he pressed his cheek against her soft belly.

Something deep inside Lucien, a place he never let out of the darkness, tried to claw its way up to the surface, desperate to seek solace in this woman in a bone-meltingly intimate way. Lucien turned his head and began pushing up Sophie’s shirt to rain kisses over her stomach. As he exposed just a sliver of the golden, soft skin of her belly, he saw himself laying her out on his study floor and sinking into her snug, welcoming heat for a long, slow afternoon of lovemaking. The image, so far from what he needed to do with her in reality, jerked Lucien out of his moment of weakness.

Breaking away from Sophie, Lucien cleared his throat. “I apologize.” Such warmth filled the deep shades of blue in her gaze; Lucien almost couldn’t bear to maintain eye contact. “You caught me in a bad moment.”

“No need to apologize.” Rather than go to the table where she usually sat, Sophie shifted to perch on the edge of his desk. “I’m glad I was here.” She ran her fingers through the blonde tresses surrounding her face and managed to push most of it behind her ears. “May I ask what made you so upset?”

“Magnus.” Part of the truth slipped out of Lucien uninvited. This woman lulled him; every moment he spent with her chipped away at some corner of his walls. But he would not tell her anything more about Josh until he was ready to reveal everything. “Magnus and I had a disagreement that became very heated, and I said some things I shouldn’t have. Cruel things. Things that hurt.” As Lucien studied Sophie, he wiped at the hard lines bracketing his mouth. “To someone I call a friend.”

With a nudge against his knee with her foot, Sophie said, “So go find him and make it right. Apologize to him”—she jerked her head toward the open door—“not me.”

Every time Lucien mentally replayed what he’d said to Magnus, more sickness grew in his gut. “I cut deeply at some already open wounds.” His admission, each word spoken, felt like a rusty nail in his mouth. “Saying I’m sorry won’t heal them.”

Sophie didn’t recoil; only deeper sympathy filled her stare. “Maybe not completely in one shot, but I’d bet it will do a darn good job of slowing the flow of blood. Aside from that, you do it because you mean it.” She slid across the desk to right in front of where he sat and covered his hands with hers. “Whatever you said”—without anything in her wavering, she squeezed his fingers in the sure clutch of hers—“I can see in your eyes and hear in your voice that you regret it. Magnus will be able to sense that too.”

As naturally as the tides ebbing and flowing, Lucien turned his hands under Sophie’s. He threaded their fingers together, and the perfect connection weaved twining vines of longing into his core. “I’ll find him later.” The contact between their hands, something so fucking simple, thumped his heart with a heavier beat and turned his voice husky. “Magnus suggested we take some time to cool off and breathe, and that’s probably a good idea.”

Sophie played with Lucien’s hands. The touch licked heat across his skin with each brushing touch, and a soft, lovely smile burnished a glow through the entirety of her being. “I admire the friendship the two of you share. It feels authentic. The relationships between everybody here do. Everything feels like it goes deeper than employees loyal to their boss, and I don’t mean because of the sexual arrangement you all share.” Sophie nodded as if to solidify her thoughts.

Shit
. Discomfort suddenly started crawling up Lucien’s neck.

“It’s something more,” she went on. “It feels like you’ve been together forever. It’s like… It’s like a family.”

It’s not a family
. Betrayal lanced a pain through Lucien, and he yanked his hands out of Sophie’s.
My family is gone
. Lucien could not let his foolhardy fascination with this woman and the light she’d brought into this castle blind him to his mission.

Lucien rubbed his palms against the arms of his chair, trying desperately to get the nerve endings within to dull against the tingle of contact still buzzing his skin. “Ravenstoke is nothing more than people who’ve found an interest in common and have made it work.” Christ, after what he’d done to her yesterday, Lucien had thought for sure he’d redirected all of Sophie’s interest in Raven Island to the sexual goings-on here. He did not need her grilling his staff about how they’d met. She had a way about her that made people want to share, and one of them could crack.

Steepling his fingers and affecting his best laconic stare, Lucien settled deeper into his chair. “Anyway, this conversation is definitely not why you came to see me. Did you need something specific?” His attention briefly dropped to her laptop and a stack of folders sitting on the edge of his desk. “Or was it just the desire for a change of scenery while you work?”

Still sitting on his desk, Sophie continued to study Lucien in silence for a stretch of minutes that had him working like the devil not to blink, look away, or get inappropriately erect. He had to struggle to keep his cock from getting hard every time she held him with that intelligent, assessing stare. Lucien held her gaze right back, though, and gave nothing up in his own. Eventually, her lush lips flattened to a narrow line, and she slid off his desk.

The second Sophie turned her back to grab her computer, Lucien gave himself a chance to exhale and breathe.

After opening her laptop and pushing it to the middle of the desk, Sophie grabbed a visitor chair and pulled it next to Lucien. She then picked up a folder and withdrew a stack of copied letters. “Okay.” She paused for a moment, and her fingers actually trembled around the pieces of paper. Her entire body seemed to hum and spark energy into the study’s air. “I think I might have found something that more definitively alludes to William and Jude’s romantic love and possible affair. See here?” After shuffling through the sheets, Sophie handed Lucien one that had a passage circled in red, with notes jotted alongside. “This is from Imogene, who was the sister of Calliope and Jude, right?”

“Correct.” Lucien pulled from his memory. “Older brother who inherited the title was Clayton, and I believe there was another much younger sister named Ruth, and two more brothers mixed in somewhere too.”

“Okay, good. So look at what Imogene says to Calliope here.” As Sophie moved her finger across the copied letter, she read aloud. “
My dearest sister. I have sensed your upset through the words you write in your letters to me. I urge you not to be cross with her ladyship, as I was quite insistent, and she finally confided your dilemma to me. I must agree with her counsel. You have embraced your life in America, and you should not let it spoil for any purpose. You have many interests. Continue to pursue them with vigor. To return for a visit without Lord Ravenstoke would invite curiosity you cannot appease. Bear the weight of your knowledge with strength and silence, as all wives must do. You now have freedom to do with as you wish without fear of consequences from your husband. Take it. Do not be afraid
.”

When Sophie finished reading, she looked up with a gleam in her eyes. “My take is that there’s a good chance this paragraph is saying Calliope knew about William and Jude and had shared what she knew with this ladyship person, who then told Imogene at least some portion of Calliope’s problem, if not everything. I would guess that if she’d mentioned Jude by name, Imogene might have had a different response to learning William had an interest in another man.”

“That was my take when I read it too,” Lucien shared. “But I could not retrieve any of the letters on the other end. Nobody in Calliope’s family saved her letters the way Calliope saved theirs.”

Sophie practically bounced out of her chair. “But what if this unnamed ‘her ladyship’s’”—Sophie’s fingers went up to make quotation marks—“family did? Those are the letters we need.” She jammed her finger against her notes, her eyes as big and bright as a sunrise. “The ones Calliope sent to this ladyship person. And…wait a minute.” Sophie shuffled through her papers one more time. “I think I know who she is.” She smacked another sheet, this one with blue notations, on the top of the pile. “Lady Jane Bainbridge.”

Lucien bit the inside of his lip to hold back the smile wanting to escape. But damn, Sophie’s enthusiasm for his home’s history swirled around him like warm clouds of cotton candy. Not to mention that with every day she immersed herself more completely into this story, she entrenched her emotions deeper into Ravenstoke and thus its inhabitants’ lives too. Trust that felt natural was crucial to his plan.

“I can see you’ve given this some thought,” he said, happily indulging her, “so go ahead and tell me why, out of all the people Calliope corresponded with, you think this Jane is the ‘her ladyship’ to which Imogene referred.”