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“No,” Juliette said. “Hugo and Lancelot are members of the Masters’ Admiralty. A society not unlike the Trinity Masters, but based in Europe.”
“Wait, there are two secret societies?” Sylvia asked before turning to Hugo. “Why didn’t you tell me that last night?”
“We told you about the Masters’ Admiralty,” Hugo said slowly. “About our reasons for being here.”
“You said there were no more secrets, that you’d been honest with me.”
Before Hugo could respond, Juliette answered for him.
“I suspect that he didn’t tell you about us because he didn’t want to admit that they’re here on our sufferance.” There was a pause. “My sufferance.”
“What do you mean by that?” Langston asked.
“This is my territory. I allowed them to conduct their search for Alicia Rutherford as long as they met certain conditions.”
“We met your conditions,” Lancelot said.
“Oh, we’re going to play this game?” Juliette glanced at Sebastian.
Sebastian crossed his arms. “You were to sleep in this house for the duration of your stay. Yet you spent two nights elsewhere. You were to send daily reports, and you missed yesterday’s. Those are incidental, really. You were not to contact anyone associated with the Trinity Masters, and yet here we are.”
Lancelot didn’t back down. “Sylvia and her brothers aren’t members.”
“Do you care to explain how you know that?” Sebastian demanded. “Our membership roster is hardly common knowledge.”
Lancelot and Hugo were silent.
“That’s true. They aren’t members.” Juliette’s voice was cold. “And yet they weren’t on the list of people you planned to question, were they, Seb?”
“They were not.”
“This means you were very aware that if you had included their names, I would have forbidden you from talking to them.”
“There wasn’t time. The investigation changed.”
Lancelot’s response only served to inflame Juliette more. “And if it did, you should have kept us informed. Yet you clearly came here planning to talk to, at the very least, Sylvia. Why else would you have brought a copy of one of her books?”
“Why would it matter if they wanted to talk to Sylvia?” Oscar leaned forward. “Why are you protecting her?”
That was a very good question.
“We’ve never met you,” Walt said quietly. “So why does it matter that they might have been planning to talk to us?”
Another good question.
Sylvia looked at Hugo. She couldn’t look at Lancelot without twisting around. Hugo’s face was marked with dread, as if he were waiting for the other shoe to fall.
What was going on? A week ago, she’d been living an uneventful life, consisting of nothing more than poetry and art, sweet tea and Sunday dinners with her family. And now, in the course of a few days, she’d met and fallen for not one, but two sexy-as-sin Europeans, who were members of a secret society. She’d been kidnapped, drugged, nearly drowned. She’d had the best sex of her life, a fantasy come true, and suddenly this beautiful blonde named Juliette was here, telling them about another secret society, and now…now she could tell that shit was about to get really weird.
“Sylvia, Oscar, Langston, and Walt.” Juliette looked at them as she said their names. “This is not how I would have chosen to tell you or approach you.”
“Tell us what?” Oscar looked ready to flip a table.
“We want you to join us. To become members of the Trinity Masters.”
Heavy silence greeted the statement. Sylvia was shocked, though probably not as shocked as her brothers, who hadn’t even known such a thing existed twenty minutes ago.
“Fuck,” she murmured under her breath.
