“The dinner was at eight, Lucian. It is currently eleven-forty-five.”

Celeste didn’t shout. She didn’t throw anything. She simply stood in the center of the grand foyer, her silhouette framed by the moonlight streaming through the capiz-style windows she had fought so hard to install. She was still wearing the floor-length emerald silk gown she had chosen specifically because he once told her it made her eyes look like a forest after rain. Her hair, which she had spent an hour pinning up, was beginning to lose its structure, a few stray curls clinging to the back of her neck.

Lucian stopped just inside the door, his briefcase hanging from...