CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Lucien refilled Sophie’s wine glass after lunch, then pushed his chair back. The meal his housekeeper had prepared for them had been delicious, yet they’d both been subdued after their tempestuous morning.

“I need to go out for a while this afternoon.”

Sophie nodded, oddly relieved at the prospect of some time alone. Every moment with Lucien was full throttle, and the experiences of the day so far had left her feeling raw and exposed. Her body ached, and her heart ached even more.

She needed a deep bubble bath to soothe her muscles, and some precious space to think. In less than twenty-four hours she’d be back in London with Dan, and as yet she had no clue what on earth she was going to do. All she knew was that the next few hours felt like a stay of execution.

Lucien rested his forehead against the cold side window of the car and stared at the plain, red brick university hospital building. This wasn’t his intended destination this afternoon, yet he’d instinctively turned along the drive anyway rather than pass on by. He had no intention of going inside. His fingers closed around the letter inside his jacket pocket, not caring about the fact that he was screwing it up to a point where reading it again would be nigh on impossible. He knew what it said without looking at it anyway.

Dear old papa was in here once again for alcohol abuse, only this time around there was every chance he wouldn’t make it out again. He’d been a dead man walking ever since his wife killed herself; Lucien was only surprised that it had taken him this long. He had no feelings to offer except disgust and hatred, and what use were they to a dying man?

Let the chaplain hear his father’s pleas for forgiveness. Let the cold hand of a stranger be his comfort. Lucien had nothing to give him.

He studied the building and wondered which window sheltered his father. How would he look these days? Lucien had cut all ties with him after his mother’s death, choosing to stay with relatives who bore his troubled presence like a cross rather than stay with the pitiful father who pleaded daily for his son’s understanding.

Yet wherever Lucien laid his hat, the letters stubbornly followed. His father had tracked his progress around the world and stayed in contact every few months, despite the fact that he never received any acknowledgment that his words had reached his son.

Lucien didn’t want to read them, and for many years, he hadn’t done so. He chucked them, unopened, one on top of the other, into an old box, unsure why he wasn’t just hurling them into the fireplace instead.

As the years slipped by and the letters continued to arrive, Lucien’s protective shell hardened enough for him to be able to open them without being engulfed by fury. He wasn’t that frightened child anymore.

The letters brought him news of his homeland, of family deaths, and of babies being born who shared his bloodline.

Letter by letter, those paper windows onto the minutiae of day-to-day life in the Arctic Circle rekindled his love for Norway, a bone-deep homesickness to lie on his back in the clearing and watch the skies dance once more.

And so he’d rebuilt his relationship with his motherland, made his peace with the beautiful, cold kingdom that held such bittersweet memories. Returning to Tromso as a successful man had calmed the roar of injustice in his heart. He’d come full circle, and after years of running away, it was fitting that Norway offered him the safe harbour and solace missing from his life in London.

Yet still he didn’t contact his father.

He couldn’t do it. When all was said and done, the man was responsible for his mother’s death, and all the talking in the world could never change that.

He flung the balled up letter onto the passenger seat and threw the car into reverse. He put his foot down as he hit the open road, disgusted with himself for even being there in the first place. There was somewhere else he wanted to be.

Sophie lounged in the steaming bubbles and closed her eyes. If she could freeze time, she’d push the button right now. Lucien had transported her into this fairytale of magical skies and sublime sex, but the adventure had to come to an abrupt end tomorrow. Grey skies and marital discord waited impatiently for her, back in London, and the idea of seeing Dan again made her stomach roll with dread.

Her whole world had revolved around him for her entire adult life; he was all she’d known of love. But did she still love him now? She turned the question over in her head. Before she’d met Lucien Knight, she’d have answered yes in a heartbeat, but would it have been the truth? Loving Dan was her default setting, but this week with Lucien had forced her to take an honesty pill when it came to her own emotions.

Sophie reached for the dark glass of Shiraz balanced on the ledge beside the bath and drank deeply. The wine warmed her veins and fortified her with Dutch courage to continue her long overdue personal therapy session.

It was curious really, to stand back and look at the bare facts. Sophie had had an idea that Dan had been seeing someone else for more months than she’d care to admit, yet she’d allowed herself to ignore the mounting evidence. It had been alarmingly easy to consider his alternative explanations plausible rather than face the possible truth and all of its associated ugliness.

Was he aware that she knew? Did he take her lack of challenge as tacit acceptance? Hot shame flushed her cheeks warmer than the steamy bath water. How little must he think of her if that was the case?

She knew in her heart why she’d held her silence. It was simple, really.

She’d wanted him to choose her.

Then along came Lucien Knight, and at one look from him, Sophie had stopped waiting. With one touch, the scales had fallen from her eyes.

Lucien had reminded her how it felt to be adored, and how much she’d missed it.

Memories of Dan tumbled through her mind, and she let them in. Memories of the times he’d been the one taking the time to make her feel adored.

At fourteen, laughing as she rode on the crossbar of his bike all the way home from school. At eighteen, his hair too long and his big easy smile that lit her heart. And on her twenty-first birthday, nervous and down on one knee in the damp leaves as they walked through the park.

Tears slipped from beneath her closed eyelids. Tears for Dan, and for their love that once upon a time had felt too big to break.

Lucien shoved his hands in his pockets and pushed his chin down into his jacket. The cemetery was suitably bleak, and there were no flowers to cheer the grey stone that bore his mother’s name.

Would she be proud of the man he’d become? Would he have trodden the same path if she’d lived? He didn’t have any answers, or anyone to ask. She’d been gone from his life for more years now than she’d been there, and his recollections of her were all wrapped up in childish memories of wiped tears and goodnight kisses, of scraped knees and snowy Christmas mornings.