Chapter 22

Bren watched Sophia react to his words as though he'd punched her in the stomach, slumping forward slightly so that he couldn't see her face as she flinched. He came to stand next to her at the table, but did not touch her. Within moments she was sitting ramrod-straight again.

"Tell me." He demanded, thoroughly exasperated. It was bad enough that while she was still healing, he was wrestling with a host of emotions related to her presence, the crash, and her recovery. If she was going to return to her earlier habit of never telling him anything, he was going to lock her down in the med bay.

But this time it was different. It wasn't that Sophia wouldn't tell him what was wrong. She couldn't. It was evident in her troubled expression and the way she shrugged, obviously uncomfortable and yet still graceful. "I don't know. I am sorry, Bren, but something just makes me—This is a bad idea."

"He can't hurt you here." He said, for what must have been the tenth time in the last two days. She seemed to not even hear the words.

Frustrated, Bren stood at her side and faced the door, waiting for Miller and Esterhazy to appear. Miller had left her comms open, so Bren could hear her talking, although he could not hear the man's responses. They were close.

He was impatient to see Esterhazy. It had been six years since he'd seen the man, and even then Bren hadn't paid much attention to him. Carolina had discounted Philip Esterhazy entirely as being nothing more than a overly pretty boy that had interested her brother for the moment.

Could he really have killed Carolina? Sabotaged the Warlock? It didn't seem likely, given what he remembered of Esterhazy, but Sophia's paranoia wasn't faked. She genuinely believed herself to be in danger.

If Esterhazy was the source of Sophia's fear, then Bren wanted him on the Silvana. He wanted the man right where he could watch him, control him, and if need be, toss him off the edge of the flight deck and claim he'd never set foot on the ship.

"Get ready." He said to Sophia, but she didn't need the warning. Outwardly she looked composed and serene. If he didn't know better, he would have thought that her expression was the truth.

"Sophia!" Esterhazy strode forward past Miller to make his obeisance to Sophia. Bren looked down on him with a distaste that he kept well-hidden while Philip knelt on the deck and prostrated himself in the way that all Anatorayen citizens were expected to before their royalty. If any man had done so to Bren, he would have kicked him in the head.

"Good morning, Philip. How kind of you to come all this way to see me. Do you bring messages that require my attention? As you can see," She gestured to the empty table between them, "I have both the time and space to tend to correspondence, so I will not delay you for long."

This time Bren had to keep a straight face because of laughter, not disgust. Sophia made it sound like the Silvana was her home and that Esterhazy had just dropped by to deliver her mail. He had to give the man still kneeling on the floor credit, though. When Esterhazy looked up, it was with a smile that gave nothing away.

"If I had known you were here for certain, your Grace, I would have wheeled in a stack of letters from your admirers, all frantic at your recent disappearance and needing reassurance. As it was, I had to chase hopes and rumors to find you, and pray that I found you safe and well."

Sophia matched him smile for smile, and ignored everything he said. "This is my good friend, John Bren, Captain of the Silvana. You have already met his first officer, Lisa Miller. Both have been generous in their gift of the Silvana for my pleasure."

"Surrounded by friends as always, your Grace. I am glad for that." The tone he used didn't sound sinister, but Bren didn't like his choice of words anyway, "I had feared that you might fall in amongst those who did not love you as we do."

"How kind." Sophia was better than Esterhazy for keeping her voice warm and welcoming while speaking outright lies. Ever since he'd faced her himself over the same table, Bren knew that she was a consummate negotiator. Now he could tell that he'd barely given her a challenge. "As you can see, I've been so diverted by my time on the Silvana that I'd completely forgotten about my duties, which you have so thoughtfully brought here to me."

Bren couldn't help himself. He shot a glance over Esterhazy's head at Miller, who was grinning her appreciation from where she stood behind the man. She might not have liked the crack about the Silvana being practically handed over to Sophia, but she obviously approved of the skillful way that the woman handled Esterhazy.

If Sophia had treated him like she treated her brother's lover, he would have put her on the ground without any regrets. But she hadn't. Apart from that one infuriating meeting, she had been relatively candid with him. Maybe not honest, but at least she hadn't jerked him around with diplomatic words like she was doing right now.

Bren still hadn't had the chance to get Sophia alone and rake her down for trying to kill herself. He wanted to yell at her, to trap her in a chair and force her to admit that she was only alive because she was lucky. The panel's edge had punched into her thigh but only nicked her femoral artery. If it had gone any deeper, she would have been dead before the Warlock hit the ground. If she had not been conscious and able to slap a tourniquet on the thigh, she might still have died before Gareck had got to her.

Bren was starkly aware that luck had saved him from losing yet another Forrester woman, and this one was no more cautious or caring of her own life than her sister.

"I do have some matters that require your personal attention." Esterhazy was saying, and the apologetic way he said it caught Bren's attention. "If there were a more private setting, I would be delighted to review them with you."

Sophia gave a clear laugh, "This is the most private we've ever been, Philip. If you can't talk to me here, you can't talk to me anywhere!"

"A hundred relatives feels like less of a crowd than a handful of strangers." His knees had to have been killing him, but Esterhazy's smile was as charming as ever.

"How strange that you would feel that way." Sophia mused.

Confident that she was still handling the ambassador easily, Bren went back to his thoughts. Miller or Sophia would tell him if there was anything important he missed, so he didn't have to listen to the interminable drone of politics.