“Because they’ve been sent on to Denise’s. She’s said I could live with her while I finished with my stage. That is”—she licked her lower lip nervously—“if you allow me to finish my training at Fusion.”
“Why wouldn’t I allow you to finish your training at Fusion?” he asked, his nostrils flaring slightly, his eyebrows slanting in a dangerous expression.
Elise shrugged and gave a desperate, gasping laugh. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe because I betrayed your trust, and made you tell Ian Noble the truth before you were ready? Maybe because it blew up in not only my face but Ian’s and Francesca’s? Maybe because as usual, I didn’t have a clue what I was doing, and screwed everything up. Even if I never mean to harm, it seems I’m fated to do it inadvertently.”
He gave her a long, searching look and shook his head slightly, casting a wild glance to the lake.
“You didn’t do anything that isn’t in your character, Elise. It was me who shouldn’t have kept you in the dark. If I had opened up in the beginning about why I was in Chicago . . . well. Things would have been different.”
A car horn beeped in the far distance. The wind rushed past her ears.
“Why didn’t you?” she asked, not at all certain she wanted to know the answer. “Is it because you didn’t trust me with the truth? Did you think I was going to hold it over your head somehow or maybe . . . blurt it out the way I did?” she finished hopelessly. “You ended up being right about that.”
“No,” he said scornfully. “That’s not it. At least that hasn’t been a concern for a long time now. And besides, you didn’t blurt anything out. You may have set the stage, but I was the one who decided to tell Ian the truth that night in his office. You didn’t force me into anything. It just seemed . . . fated or something, me telling him at that moment. I’m not the only one who has said so. Ian mentioned something about it as well.”
“He must hate me, for bringing it all to the surface when he was so vulnerable.”
Lucien shook his head. “He doesn’t. Not in the least. He told me that the whole experience had an uncanny feeling for him, as if he’d been waiting for a good part of his life for that moment. He dreaded it, but he longed to know the truth about his origins. About himself.”
She just stared at him, speechless.
“I thought you were angry. When I apologized and said I didn’t do it on purpose, you said, ‘Of course not. You never do.’”
His brows slanted as if he tried to recall exactly what she meant. “I wasn’t being sarcastic.”
“What?” she asked, bewildered.
He closed his eyes briefly and exhaled. “I know I was distracted. Ian was a wreck and he wasn’t far away while we spoke. I only meant that while it’s in your nature to speak from the heart, I know you never intend to harm. You’re very kindhearted as a rule. I know you aren’t capricious. You’re never more yourself than when you speak the truth.”
“Oh,” she said, eyes going wide and warmth flooding through her. She recalled Francesca saying something similar about her motivations. It seemed too good to be true that Lucien had felt similarly. “Capricious, no—foolish at times, perhaps.”
He shook his head. “No. I felt it too that night. It happens sometimes in life, when you feel a moment unfolding and you see your path clearly, when you understand that the time has come. That’s how I felt that night when Ian got that phone call. As I said, Ian felt the same way.”
She recalled the random thought she’d had that night that Ian seemed like a dream walker.
“Is he all right?” she asked after a moment.
Lucien shrugged, his expression bleak. “He says he is, but to be honest, I think he’s wretched. I wish I understood what’s going on in that brilliant brain of his. He shares very little of himself. You can imagine how surprised his grandparents and I were when he suddenly declared he was leaving for Germany on a matter of business.”
“Francesca is worried sick,” Elise said.
His hooded glance gave her a sinking feeling. Oh no. Francesca had a right to be worried.
She studied every detail of his face. It seemed so amazing he was standing there when she’d just been longing for him with all her heart and soul that it was hard to think about anything else. For a moment, they just looked their fill of one another. She eventually swallowed thickly. “Lucien, if it’s true that you didn’t keep the truth from me because you didn’t trust me, why didn’t you tell me?”
Again, he glanced out at the lake, his eyes looking brilliant from the muted light.
“Don’t you know?”
She shook her head. Elise sensed how uncomfortable he was . . . how much he was struggling.
“I didn’t know until I stood there in Ian’s office how much I’ve been avoiding telling him because I didn’t want to share the pain. The burden. The shame,” he added after a pause.
“Of what would you be ashamed? You never did anything,” she said heatedly. “Neither did Ian. It was that man . . . that Gaines. He’s the one at fault! Not you.”
His eyes were bleak. “You don’t know what it’s like . . . to carry the knowledge of your father’s sickness. His depravity. You can’t escape it. It’s in your very blood. You can’t purge it.” He gave a harsh laugh. “You can imagine how stupid I felt, trying to find a place where I belonged . . . a family where I fit in . . . wanting to escape the shame of Adrien’s crimes and my mother’s self-involvement . . . only to discover my biological father’s sins were a thousand times more heinous than anything my adoptive parents could engineer.”