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The line went dead. I stared at the phone, feeling the weight of what I'd just learned settling on my shoulders like a lead blanket.
I rejoined the group only to find out Daphne and Lili had left.
"Bad news?" James had appeared beside me, his expression unusually serious.
"Something like that."
He studied my face with the practiced eye of someone who'd known me since Oxford. "This wouldn't happen to involve a certain acquisition, would it?"
I didn't answer, but that was answer enough. James was not only my best friend but also worked at Pemberton & Association.
"Christ." James ran a hand through his sandy hair. "The shopping channel?"
"Next Friday."
"And Lili?"
"Doesn't know."
James glanced back toward the door, "This is why you've been avoiding her."
"One of many reasons."
"Edward..." James's voice carried a warning I'd learned to heed over the years. "Whatever you're thinking of doing—"
"I'm not thinking of doing anything. I'm showing her around London tomorrow, as agreed. Nothing more."
"Right." James's tone suggested he believed me about as much as I believed myself. "Well, I'd better go charm the ladies before they start wondering what's keeping us."
As we rejoined the girls in the garden, I caught Daphne watching me with an expression I couldn't quite read.
When she saw my attention on her, she smiled brightly—too brightly.
"So it's settled then?" she asked. "Edward will show Lili around tomorrow?"
"It's settled."
"Wonderful." That mysterious smile again. "I'm sure you'll both have a lovely time."
As James launched into another outrageous story, I noticed Daphne step aside and pull out her phone. Her face went white as a sheet when she saw the caller ID. She spoke in low, urgent tones, her body language suggesting this wasn't a social call. When she caught me watching, she quickly ended the conversation and rejoined us, but her earlier excitement had been replaced by something that looked almost like relief.
"Everything alright?" I asked.
"Oh, perfectly fine. Just confirming some arrangements." She waved dismissively, but I caught the slight tremor in her hands.
The afternoon progressed with its usual chaos of James's stories, Daphne's schemes, and Lili's laughter. But I couldn't shake the feeling that there were undercurrents here I wasn't seeing. Something in the way Daphne kept glancing at her phone, the calculating looks she shot between Lili and me, and the mysterious phone call she thought I hadn't noticed.
I thought about Mother's warnings, about duty and family legacy. About the acquisition that would make us richer whiledestroying Lili's dreams. About how her laugh this morning had sounded like music I'd never heard before but somehow always knew.
This was insanity.
She was Daphne's best friend. She worked for a company I was about to obliterate. She represented everything that should be simple in my ordered world but somehow made everything impossibly complicated.
And yet, when she smiled, none of that seemed to matter.
By evening, as James prepared to leave and Daphne announced her plans for dinner at the Royal Opera, I found myself alone with Lili on the terrace.
The setting sun painted everything golden. Her hair seemed to glow like a halo.