Chapter 24

Elena wished she had taken a ferry. A long ride across the waves, into the sunset, a suitable ending to a romance for an independent woman who could handle her own life.

Instead of a short, cramped hop that made it seem as if Lucien was only a wish away, that any time she had second thoughts she could get to him.

He already has a family.

She should have known.

It had all been in her own head, the whole time. Her fantasy, of a lone soldier who needed her. Finally, someone who needed her, to give him a home.

And she’d cheated right from the start in trying to slip herself into that home, hadn’t she? Quit kidding yourself, Elena. When you made sure your cleavage showed to advantage before you walked up to him, that was for your sake, not his.

Because she’d had again a stupid fantasy. A stupid hope.

She was twenty-eight years old, and still to this day, she persisted in having stupid hopes.

But he doesn’t need you. He’s just playing with the idea of you. There’s no room at all for you in his life.

There never, ever was.

She let herself into her apartment and didn’t even open the shutters. She just stood there in the dark, resting her hand on the pile of lemons in the bowl on the counter, and then sank to the floor, hugging her head to her knees. Elena, you’re such an idiot. Why do you always have to believe?

***

She locked her phone in the trunk of her car, so that she wouldn’t know when he called. Tristan finally poked his head into her office at the museum Wednesday afternoon and gazed at her assessingly.

Tristan had had a much harder time in school than any of his cousins, particularly Damien who had been a brilliant student, but she never could shake the impression that Tristan was really the smartest of all of them. Especially when he looked at you as if you were a perfume whose components he, the famous nose, was deciphering as easily as breathing.

“Lucien asked me to check and make sure you were okay,” he said. “You do seem to be.”

That fast, her eyes stung. She focused fiercely on her paperwork. “I’m fine. Just busy.”

“All right.” Tristan leaned in the door and folded his arms, as if to prevent himself from reaching out and just fixing the problem he could see hanging in the air. “So…not my business, then.”

“It definitely is not.” But she felt a faint stirring of temptation. What if the Rosiers did decide she was their business? That would be nosy as hell of them. Exactly like…family.

“Okay,” Tristan said, but he didn’t move from the doorway. He just studied her, brown eyes thoughtful and not judgmental, long and lean and casually gorgeous, in that way that had slain pretty nearly all the hearts in their high school. Well, Damien and Matt had had their following, too, and she was pretty sure so had Lucien and Raoul, although she had still been in middle school when those two disappeared. She’d had a crush on Lucien, definitely. It had probably protected her a bit from being one of the uncounted masses in her year who had fallen for Tristan.

“Kind of thought you two were really hitting it off,” Tristan said after a moment.

Elena snapped her pen down and stood. “I’m trying to work, Tristan.”

And it was one of the very nice things about the Rosiers that even though they wielded major influence over her place of employment, she could talk that way to any of them and face no repercussions. They saved their enmity for threats to their family or, say, Nazis.

“Yeah, I know.” But he didn’t move. “You know, I’ve never been a big fan of cutting off communication with someone you care about.”

Yeah, well, what the hell did he know? Tristan had been the whole region’s golden boy, always handsome, always loved. She had been the unattractive, frizzy, spotty daughter of a woman who had spent most of Elena’s life in and out of rehab. Plenty of people had ignored her calls. Sure, most men would pick up now, but somehow she never forgot that the person hiding under her now-polished surface had never been worth anyone’s forever.

Her jaw worked. “I’m doing the best I can, Tristan.”

Tristan’s expression gentled, although his eyes stayed shrewd. “All right.” He straightened from the door. “If you need any help, you’ll let me know, won’t you?”

Elena stared at him, astonished. No. It had never occurred to her that she could let him know.

“If Lucien is being stubborn or stupid about something, for example,” he said. “I used to be able to get through that thick head of his once in a while.”

“Lucien’s not stupid,” Elena said blankly. Stubborn, sure. But far too smart. His eyes were even more astute than Tristan’s. And when they looked at her, even warmer and kinder than Tristan’s, too.

Damn it, she missed those blue eyes so much already. And her throat ached so damn bad.

“Can I see what you’re doing with the perfume book while I’m here?” Tristan said.

Oh, thank God.

She took him down to storage, where Solene was going over the book page by page, her hands gloved with linen, taking close up photos and notes as to its condition. A book restorer, Solene had straight brown hair currently pulled back in a smooth ponytail high on her head, deep blue eyes she was currently either hiding or highlighting with cat glasses, a scattering of tiny dark brown freckles across her cheeks, and the kind of geekily athletic body of someone who actually thought triathlons were reasonable things to do on weekends. Elena had met her when she was following a trail through Paris for an exhibit on Catherine de Medici’s use of Grasse glove-maker perfumers, and had invited Solene down several times since to help with projects, but this was by far the biggest.

Through her glasses, deep, near violet blue eyes shone with her joy in the work. “This is in remarkably good condition, considering,” Solene said.

“I’ve made a file with high definition photos of every page.” Elena handed the thirty-gigabyte card that contained a copy over to Tristan. “But Solene’s assessing restoration and preservation possibilities.”

“It would be criminal not to make every effort to preserve this book in a way that will last for centuries more,” Solene said. “But some of the stains and tears it has accumulated over centuries might be part of its history, too.”

Half an hour of animated discussion ensued, so engaged that the only thing that hurt Elena’s heart was the sight of Niccolò Rosario’s firm but elegant Renaissance hand: J’y suis, j’y reste.

As it said on the inside of the ring Niccolò had given Laurianne, and which Lucien now wore with his dog tags. Maybe it would inspire Lucien to hold some line unyieldingly in a battle one day, to stick by his men no matter what the cost, to be the immovable object no matter how inexorable the force.

Elena focused on a recipe written in Laurianne’s more feminine hand.

Niccolò’s straits had been pretty desperate when he met Laurianne, if all the tales were true. But Lucien was not desperate. That had just been her romantic delusions that day in Italy, when she had convinced herself he needed her.

He didn’t. He excelled at his career and given his age could probably rise to control the whole Calvi base one day.

And I don’t need him either. In fact, the reverse. She could probably become head curator here one day. Maybe now would be a good time to go back to work on her PhD and fill all her evenings with so much work she couldn’t cuddle her floppy stuffed puppy to her and cry.

Somehow, it was time to get off work, and Tristan had gotten her and Malorie to join him for a drink on the esplanade, and there Corsica sat, in the distance.

Damn it. Corsica was always going to be there, wasn’t it? Any time she looked at the sea. I am here and here I’ll stay, it sneered at her.

“Ow,” Malorie said.

“Oh. Sorry.” Elena pulled her foot back. “I think I was kicking Corsica.”

“It is annoying, isn’t it?” Tristan studied the shadow across the water. “I’ve always thought so.”

Yes, it was. And it was on the other side of all that water. She didn’t even like water, unless Lucien was around to help her enjoy it. Didn’t that just figure.

“It has an annoying populace, too,” Tristan said.

“Tristan,” Malorie hissed, glancing around at the other tables. Corsicans could be very touchy about having themselves criticized by Frenchmen. Corscians were French, too, officially, but they were touchy about that as well.

“Italian accent, always claiming they should be independent without the slightest clue as to how to sustain such a small economy without French help, Napoleon, and then there are the legionnaires. Military men.” He slid a sideways glance at Elena. “Who needs them?”

“Will you stop already?” Elena demanded, exasperated. “Tristan, this is not your business.”

Plus, it hurt.

“What’s not his business?” said a voice behind her. She looked up at Antoine, his suit coat slung over his shoulder and his shirt sleeves rolled up, clearly done with work for the day. He kissed her cheeks and Malorie’s, clasped Tristan’s hand, and took a chair.

“Corsicans,” Malorie said dryly.

Antoine’s expression blanked. He looked sideways at Elena. “Trouble there?” he asked her very softly, maybe softly enough that the others couldn’t hear. Although she was pretty sure Tristan could read lips.

“I just don’t think there’s any future there,” Elena said, as crisply as she could. How this had turned out to be a whole table’s business, she did not kno—okay, she did know. It was the family thing.

Now why hadn’t anyone warned her that good, happy families could be very invasive and annoying when it came to protecting that happiness? Whenever she had gone quiet and refused to talk about things with anyone else growing up, from her mother to her various foster families, they had just let her.

A conflict of expressions across Antoine’s face. Across from him, Tristan’s eyebrows drew slightly together as he studied the other man.

“Did you tell Lucien that?” Malorie asked, a little coolly. “That you didn’t think there was any future?”

Elena looked down at her drink. “No,” she admitted, low. Because if she told him, he might accept it. And then all that stupid hope would be gone.

And all she wanted to do now was go home and cry. This was terrible.

“Wouldn’t that be the honest thing to do?”

Elena said nothing. She did try to do the right thing, she really did. But some days, Malorie could be a little relentless in her own determination to be so honorable that no one could ever mistake her for a collaborator’s great-granddaughter.

And Elena didn’t want to do the right thing by Lucien. She wanted to do the right thing by herself.

She looked at Antoine. He laid his arm across the back of her chair. “It’s okay, Lena,” he said quietly. Her shoulders prickled. Lucien liked to lay his arm across the back of her chair. To touch her, as if he knew how much she liked his touch.

The furrowing of Tristan’s brow deepened. He was watching Antoine.

“Look,” Elena said desperately to Tristan. “Just tell him I’m busy, okay? I’ll…I’ll see him at the wedding.”

Tristan shifted his attention from Antoine to her. She had never been on the receiving end of one of his grandfather’s stern looks, but she had a sudden idea of what it must feel like. Tristan’s normally friendly eyes flashed. “If you think I’m going to make it easier for you not to talk to my cousin, then you don’t know me very well. Tell him yourself.”

***

The problem with pulling her phone out of the trunk of her car was that it had so many messages on it. Four voice mails from Lucien. Six missed calls. And a whole series of texts, the tone in them changing just like the tone in his voice mails. From warm, possessive, easy: Sleep tight, bella. Sorry we couldn’t talk on the phone tonight.

To puzzled and worried: Ça va, bella? You’re not ignoring me, are you?

To exasperated: Okay, what’s going on?

To annoyed: Damn it, Elena. You’d better have a good reason for this.

She texted quickly. Kind of busy. I’ll see you at the wedding. Antoine’s going to give me a ride there.

She slammed the trunk shut on her phone again and, up in her apartment, buried her face against the cushions of her couch, shuddering with tears.