CHAPTER THIRTEEN
EVENAFTERTHEIRDEATHS, he hadn’t wallowed. Thirio had been full of purpose. He had focused on the businesses, on learning everything he could about his parents’ work, and then, he’d thrown himself into being alone. Isolated. Sober, so that he could feel every single thread of remorse and guilt and responsibility, so that he could hate himself without the softening effects of alcohol. He had avoided the phone calls of his friends until they’d stopped calling, giving up on him completely.
But he hadn’t wallowed.
Even his guilt had been directed and ambitious—he had given himself a lifelong sentence and set about observing it.
But this was different.
Lucinda was everywhere in the castle, even when she was, now, nowhere. He felt her here, most of all, in the room they’d first made love in. His fingertips brushed her bed and memories jerked through him. He walked past her office and heard her fingertips on the keyboard, but when he looked inside, the computer was abandoned, the space empty. Her fragrance, just a hint, lingered, so he stepped inside, breathing in deeply. She was in his bed, in his shower, on the terrace, in the kitchen. Her hands were on his coffee cup, his chest, his scar, his face. Her lips, oh, her lips. He felt them everywhere, memories cutting through him, heating him and destroying him even as they gave him a strength he hadn’t known for a long time. Something bright caught his eye and he bent down, digging his finger into the gap between the floorboards, feeling something sharp. Frowning, he pushed at it harder, loosening it, pulling it free as a thousand memories exploded through him. Clutching it in his hand, he closed his eyes, remembering this, her, everything.
The world had shifted. Something fundamental was changing, but he fought that. He’d known he was playing with fire. He’d tried to resist her. Hehadresisted her, for as long as he could, but in the end, it was impossible. Yet even as he’d succumbed, he’d known it would have to end, and now she was gone. This was just something he’d have to deal with.
Still, the wedding loomed, not for the event it was, not for the fact it was his sister’s day, but because it would bring Lucinda back to thecastile—for the last time. He would need to be strong and he would need to remember: nothing good came from wanting what you could never have.
Anxiety was a tangle in the pit of her stomach. After all her hard work—and the last two weeks had involved twenty-hour days, hours of conference calls, flights to meet contractors, making contingency plans for any event, any unforeseeable crisis—and finally, she knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that everything was in place. This wedding was going to be spectacular—so much as she could control—and Evie was going to have the time of her life.
And Thirio?
How was he feeling about the impending arrival of one hundred and fifty of Europe’s elite at his hideaway castle?
If she’d known then what she knew now, would she have pushed this plan on him? Would she even have dared suggest it? The castle was his sanctuary, and he deserved that. But didn’t he also deserve to be made to face reality again? Did Evie know how shattered he was by their parents’ deaths? Did Evie understand why he hid himself away?
So many questions had clouded Lucinda’s mind since leaving thecastile, but she had reconciled herself to the fact she would never have these answers. It wasn’t her place to know.
Thirio had made that abundantly clear.
Even his name sent a shiver of anticipation down her spine, but she quelled it. An expert at concealing her feelings, Lucinda knew, nonetheless, that this weekend would test her as no other time in her life ever had.
As the plane lifted off the tarmac, she forced herself to focus on the acquisition of the company—being handled through a third-party broker. She didn’t want her stepmother knowing that she was behind the purchase until the ink was dried on the contracts. Despite the amount of money she’d offered, she worried that Elodie would refuse to sell, just to be unkind to Lucinda. Again.
But so far, everything looked in order. Lucinda was going to get everything she’d worked so hard for. She should have been delirious. But where she’d expected joy and contentment to finally fill her heart, there was only a dull, throbbing ache of emptiness. Somehow, her dreams had shifted, and her father’s business was no longer the pinnacle of what she wanted in life...
He had intended to install Lucinda in the staff quarters, with the caterers and housekeepers who’d been brought to thecastileto manage the logistics of the weekend. Over eighty workers filling a dormitory-style wing of the castle, just as they had in the past, when the family had travelled here for Christmas vacations and his parents had put on lavish parties that had drawn half of Europe—or so it had felt to a young Thirio. But as the wedding approached, he’d found himself giving instructions for the room she’d occupied on her first night at thecastileto be made available for her. It was close to his. A test, if ever he’d known one. But it was a test he intended to pass.
And yet, he also wanted to be near her. To see her smile. To help her if she needed it. He was no one’s knight in shining armour but that didn’t mean he didn’t care about Lucinda. He wanted this weekend to be perfect. For Evie, but also for Lucinda, who had so much riding on it.
And he wanted to see her, as much as he could. Even from a distance. He just needed...to look.
Would that really be enough?
She refused to take it as an omen that her luggage was lost on the flight. If anything, Lucinda convinced herself that that was her little piece of bad luck for the weekend, already got out of the way. Now, there would only be good luck! Besides, the luggage would turn up within a day or so, the airline had promised.
Closing her mind off to the suggestion that it was a bad omen, she stepped out of her hire car with a look of assumed calm. She wasn’t going to think about Thirio. She wasn’t going to wonder if he was watching. But, just in case he was, she wasn’t going to let him see how shredded her nerves were!
She walked to the front door with head held high, smiling when it was drawn inwards by a housekeeper in a black dress and pale grey apron.
‘Good morning,’ the woman said with an efficient nod. ‘Miss Villeneuve?’
‘Yes.’ She held out her hand in greeting.
The older woman with her golden hair pulled back into a bun extended her own hand. ‘I’m Vera. Come this way. Do you have a bag?’
Lucinda recounted the story as they walked, noting with pleasure how many of her instructions had already been implemented. The florists had been busy, and arrangements of bright flowers stood all through the common areas, huge bunches that were fragrant and meaningful—the national flower of Nalvania was the star of the group, with its pale pink and yellow blooms dominating the centre—surrounded by peace lilies and laurel leaves to represent Greece. There were also pale pink hydrangeas—believed to bring luck—peonies for prosperity and long tendrils of rosemary for remembrance. Each arrangement perfectly matched the illustrations Lucinda had sent. She paused to inhale one as they passed, tears touching her eyes.
Evie was going to love it.
She was so caught up in the details that she didn’t notice Vera leading her up a very familiar set of stairs, past a window that had been broken four weeks earlier and which was now perfectly restored, so that no one except her and Thirio would know that a tree had crashed right through it.