Both POVs: alternating
LUCIEN
I heard her before I saw her.
Not her voice, she wasn't talking. Just the quiet sounds of someone working: the soft sounds of papers, the occasional tap of a pen against something hard, the particular quality of silence that a room had when a person was completely absorbed in what they were doing and had forgotten the rest of the world existed.
I'd come home at seven, as I'd said. Changed out of the jacket and tie in my room, came down the hall toward the kitchen to find something to eat, and stopped at the study doorway.
The light was on inside.
She was on the floor.
Not sitting at the desk, not in the sofa but on the actual floor, cross-legged, in the middle of what appeared to be an organised explosion of documents. Files spread in a rough arc around her, several open, some stacked, one balanced against the side of the bookcase at an angle that suggested she'd put it there as a visual reference and forgotten it.
