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He turned to find Lancelot leaning against the doorjamb, his pants on but chest bare. Hugo paused, considering his companion. Last night had been an intimate experience, yet Hugo felt vulnerable, standing there naked before the half-dressed knight.
Hugo glanced at Sylvia. “We need to go.”
“We’re not just going to leave,” Lancelot said. “She’s our best lead. We’ve got to get back to Oscar’s house, need him to give her Alicia’s address.”
Hugo’s shoulders slumped, and he lowered his voice. “We shouldn’t have done this, and the faster we leave, the better. She deserves—” He stopped speaking as Sylvia shifted on the bed.
Lancelot shook his head as Hugo walked to the door, where he could whisper without fear of waking her. “Lancelot—”
“She does deserve better. We’re lying to her about why we’re here, and I feel bad about that, but it doesn’t change our objective. The mastermind is killing our people—lots of them. Sylvia is our best shot at finding the woman who knows who he is. Last night was…”
“Was?” Hugo prodded when Lancelot didn’t appear willing to finish his thought.
“Bad judgment. Having sex with her wasn’t part of the mission. Dammit, it’s not like I came to this bedroom with the intention of seducing information out of her. God, Sylvie…knowing her, she would just…”
Hugo clenched his fist, feeling irrationally angry even though he knew Lancelot was right. “Tell us whatever we wanted to know. She’s trusting, kind, and welcoming.”
“Too kind. Too welcoming.” Lancelot shook his head. “I’m worried about her. Someone could hurt her.”
“Someone like us? All the more reason to leave now. Alicia is dangerous. If she finds out Sylvia is helping us, even unwittingly…”
Lancelot shook his head. “We can’t leave. For the reasons I just listed, plus…come on, la. Talk about your dick moves. She gives us one hell of a night to remember and you want to sneak out like thieves. We’re staying. We’ll have breakfast and hang out, show her a bit of respect.”
“You’re not talking about respect. You’re following orders.”
Lancelot scowled but didn’t deny it.
Hugo wasn’t finished arguing. “You realize that sleeping with her certainly counts as ‘contact.’ I sent the Trinity Masters an email last night, and of course lied, and said we were not questioning anyone. But what if they know that last night, we didn’t sleep in the house they provided for us?”
“They’re probably already checking on that,” Lancelot said.
“So soon?”
“If I were them, I’d be watching us. Monitoring us,” Lancelot said. “If they don’t know where we are yet, you can be sure they will soon.”
If the situations, the continents, were reversed, Lancelot or another territory’s knight would be the one making decisions about monitoring foreign visitors, so he had to trust that Lancelot was right. Which led to another problem. Juliette Adams wasn’t a woman to be crossed, and they’d broken every rule she’d given them.
They were running out of time.
“I’m going to step outside and put a tracker on Sylvia’s car so we can keep an eye on her. Might call Lorelei to see if she was able to utilize any of Oscar’s tricks for tracking people,” Lancelot said.
Hugo nodded, wondering if Lancelot was placing that tracker as part of the job, or if he, like Hugo, was feeling overwhelmed by the need to keep Sylvia safe. They’d thrust her in the middle of this investigation, opened her up to danger without warning her of the risks, and then taken her to bed. “We crossed a line.”
“And it’s one we can’t cross back over, so it’s time to regroup. We’re staying, and that’s all there is to it.”
Hugo bristled. Lancelot’s words were the equivalent of putting his foot down, and it rubbed against the grain. Regardless, he slipped past Lancelot and into the bathroom without retort. When he was done, he found and pulled on his discarded clothes. He winced as floorboards in the old house creaked, but Sylvia didn’t move, even when he walked around the bed, picking up pieces of Lancelot’s attire, too.
Hugo sat on the trunk by her window. It was only then that he noticed the open sketchbook. There was a drawing of two men sleeping. No…not just any two men. Him and Lancelot. That was Lancelot’s tattoo.
Hugo looked at Sylvia. He wanted to have extra pictures in his mental bank because he was sure he would think about her and last night more than he should. She was such an odd mix of trusting and aware, insightful and blunt.
He returned the sketch pad to its place, glancing over his shoulder and out the window. He could see Lancelot in the backyard, still bare-chested and talking on his cell phone.
Despite the guilt he suffered, once Sylvia woke up and joined them in the kitchen, the day actually passed in a quiet, lazy-Sunday-morning fashion. The three of them worked together to make a brunch fit for a king for themselves, Lancelot flipping pancakes while Hugo manned the espresso machine and argued the merits of crepes over pancakes. Sylvia set the table with her grandma’s “fancy dishes” and even went outside to clip several sprigs from her blooming lilac bush, the sweet scent filling the kitchen.
Lancelot had offered to put together a plate that they could take to Oscar’s, expressing his strong desire to talk to her brother more about his tech designs, but Sylvia—still miffed about Oscar’s bad behavior toward them the previous day—had said he could spend a day listening to his stomach grumble, for all she cared.
After that, Sylvia insisted on taking them to the French Huguenot Church to view the Neo-Gothic architecture. According to Sylvia, the church was built by French refugees who fled France after Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes. Hugo could have spent hours studying the finials, scalloping, hood moldings, and pinnacles, but Lancelot’s ability to pretend to give a shit about architecture started wearing thin after a couple of hours. The knight was getting antsier by the hour; every minute that passed was time they were wasting in their mission to find Alicia.
