The Mistress (21 page)

“Jeg elsker dig, min lille en,”
he said into her lips.

“You have no idea how much it turns me on when you speak Danish,” she answered, still laughing.

“Of course I do. Sleep now for a while.”

“Where are you going?”

Søren looked over her shoulder and she turned to see him meeting Kingsley’s eyes.

“Wine,” Kingsley said. “We’re going for wine.”

Wine...of course. They both loved their wine. A glass of red, no doubt. Or two. Wouldn’t take them long to drink it; she might as well sleep as ordered.

She settled into the bed. Kingsley and Søren pulled on their pants and shirts, not bothering to tuck anything in. They both looked so roguish, so dashing, in their disheveled clothes.

Hurry back, she thought but didn’t say aloud. Hurry back could be construed as an order. They gave the orders. She took them. Oh, how she took them.

They’d arrived at Kingsley’s house at midnight. Always safer to travel at night when the likelihood of an evening emergency call had passed. More than a few evenings had been lost by Søren being called away to attend to one of his parishioners. Every hour they spent together they stole. No wonder Søren had wanted her and Kingsley to share this night together. Perhaps in the future, when the church called Søren away from her, she could come here and not have to sleep alone.

But now she slept alone as Kingsley and Søren went to drink their wine.

They never got the wine.

* * *

“So what happened?” Marie-Laure interrupted. “No wine in the house?”

Nora sighed as Marie-Laure’s question ripped her out of the story. How she longed to stay in that memory of the night the seeds of the woman who would become Nora Sutherlin were sown in Kingsley’s bed.

“Oh, plenty of wine in the house. Kingsley has a well-endowed cellar.”

“What happened then, after my brother and my husband had both violated you?”

“I don’t know,” Nora admitted, hating her ignorance on the matter. “Not everything, anyway.”

“But you know something.”

“I know something.”

“Tell me what you know.”

Nora looked Marie-Laure dead in the eyes. This woman didn’t deserve these stories she told her, and for no reason other than to save her own life would Nora reveal such beautiful secrets that rightly belonged only to Kingsley, Søren and her. She’d never told Wesley any of this. She’d told Michael about Søren and Kingsley, because she understood the boy needed to know he wasn’t alone. Wesley would have been horrified by it all, by the thought of Nora getting fucked by two men at once. He would have considered it, as Marie-Laure said, a violation, something disgusting and vile that only women in pornos allowed men to do to them. But that wasn’t why she hadn’t told him any of these stories. They were too private, too special, too sacred, to share even with him.

Nora sighed heavily and silently prayed Kingsley and Søren would forgive her.

“Søren and Kingsley didn’t get the wine. They had gone to another room and fucked. I knew it when they came back to bed.”

“My brother told you?”

“No.”

“My husband told you?”

“No.”

“Who told you, then?”

“The bruises told me.”

24

THE KNIGHT

W
esley would have rather died than do what he was about to do. But spending a day with Laila made it impossible to ignore for one minute longer the nagging of his conscience. Kingsley was gone, thank God, and so he wouldn’t have to deal with that guy hanging around making snide comments the entire time Wes was attempting to do the hardest thing he’d ever done in his life.

Laila had gone to her room as soon as they’d arrived back at the house. He should probably check on her later. The cut on her face might need to be cleaned again, and in this house with a married Welsh woman, a French pimp and a sadist priest, Laila was like a gift from God sent to keep him sane and focused on something other than all the horrible scenarios running through his mind: Nora tied up in that house, a madwoman keeping her captive, men with guns who would do anything they were ordered to. Wes buried the thoughts under other concerns. They all needed to eat. He could cook something. That was something he could actually do. He could call his parents and let them know everything was fine. Lie, in other words. He could pray like he’d been praying since the moment he’d woken up on the stable floor and found Nora gone.

He wandered through the second floor of the house and didn’t find what he was looking for. As he descended the stairs, he heard strains of music coming from a room he hadn’t entered before. Wes followed the music to a door. Opening it, he saw Søren sitting at a baby grand piano. Only a few candles illuminated the music room. No way was there even enough light for Søren to see the sheet music. But still he played with incredible ease, each note flawless. The sound hit the walls and echoed back, amplifying itself into infinity.

The piece ended and Søren closed the fallboard and picked up a wineglass from atop the piano.

“I won’t insult you by asking you how you are, Wesley.”

“Thank you,” Wes said, taking a seat in the window of the music room a few feet from where Søren sat on the piano bench. “But I don’t mind telling you, I’m scared out of my mind and trying not to be. I’m not succeeding at that.”

“None of us are. Myself included, if that gives you any comfort.”

“It does. A little.”

“There’s no shame in being afraid. Even Christ was afraid in the Garden of Gethsemene. He prayed that the cup of his crucifixion would be taken from him. And he was so scared he sweat blood. I keep checking my forehead.”

Wesley half laughed.

“She’d love this, you know. You and me alone in a room together talking,” Wes said, wishing Nora could be here to see this.

“She would certainly enjoy seeing both of us so discomfited.”

“When she’s back, we’ll all go out for a nice dinner together and she can watch us be all awkward and uncomfortable while she sits back and eats up every second.”

“A lovely thought...her being back. Dinner notwithstanding.”

“Kingsley...he’s going after her now, isn’t he?”

Søren nodded. “If he can. I told him that under no circumstances is he to do anything to risk his own life. If he can get her out without risking himself, he will try. Otherwise, I’m afraid he’ll come back empty-handed.”

“Are you more worried about him than her?”

“I am equally terrified for the both of them. Eleanor is a symbol of something Marie-Laure hates, a symbol that I moved on and found happiness with someone else. But Kingsley is her own brother, who she thinks betrayed her. She would be merciless to him if he were caught.”

“What’s she doing with Nora, then?”

“Marie-Laure is being merciless to me.”

“You’re not the only one who loves her, you know. I love her, too.”

“I know you do. And she loves you.”

Wesley’s eyes widened in the shock of hearing those words from Søren’s mouth.

“Don’t look so surprised, young man,” Søren said, almost smiling. “I’ve known how much she loves you for well over a year now.”

“And that doesn’t bother you?”

He inhaled and didn’t answer at first.

“Does it bother me that she loves you? No. God is love. I’m sure you’ve heard that somewhere. When someone loves someone else, they are acknowledging the God inside that person. It’s a spiritual act, loving someone. She sees God in you. So do I.”

Wesley raised his hands and rubbed at the headache blossoming behind his eyes. He breathed through his hands to center himself before dropping them to his thighs and meeting Søren’s gaze.

“How are you like this?” he demanded, the questions pouring out of him like wine into a glass. “How are you a priest and a sadist? How can you say you love God and yet you sleep with Nora? How can you hit women and still claim to be a man of the cloth? How are you...you? I can’t figure you out, not to save my life.”

Søren paused again. Wesley had never known anyone to do that—to stop and think before speaking.

“You might be surprised that I’ve asked that of myself many a time. When I was a child especially, I had these thoughts...desires... I didn’t understand them. I saw what my father was, how he was with my stepmother. Brutal, violent, dangerous, merciless.”

“Your father was abusive?”

“Yes, he was a monster. He did horrible things to his wife and my sister, to my own mother. I was only five when I was sent to school in England. I withdrew as much as I could there into my schoolwork. I feared I’d been tainted by my father, feared I was like him.”

“You are, though, aren’t you? I mean, you enjoy hurting people.”

“I do, yes. It is different, however. My stepmother was powerless to stop my father from grabbing her by the hair and dragging her into the bedroom. She had no recourse, no safe word, nothing. Whenever Eleanor and I are together, anything I’m doing to her she can stop with a single word. I know she’s told you all of this. Why do you need to hear from me?”

“I want to get what she sees in you. Other than the obvious.”

Søren laughed softly. “The obvious? I suppose that’s your tactful way of saying I’m not horrific to look at.”

“I’ve seen worse,” Wes conceded.

“I’m going to tell you something private, something I never imagined I would talk about with anyone other than Eleanor.”

Wesley crossed his arms over his chest. He wasn’t quite sure he wanted to hear anything private from Søren, but he knew he couldn’t leave, not yet, not when he still hadn’t done what he needed to.

“Okay...tell me.”

“Eleanor and I met when she was fifteen. She was seventeen before I told her what I was. I waited until after my father died to tell her. It wasn’t a conscious choice. Looking back I think I feared Eleanor would attempt to exact some sort of vengeance on my father for what he did to my sister.”

“I don’t doubt it.”

“After he remarried and fathered my younger sister Claire, I made certain he could inflict himself on no other woman again.”

Wesley shivered at the cold tone of Søren’s voice.

“What did you do?”

“Let’s just say I made certain he could never father children again.”

Wesley’s stomach plummeted through the floor.

“But...you’re a Jesuit. Nora said you’re a pacifist.”

“I was eighteen when I castrated my father. Not a Jesuit yet. I was halfway to Europe by the time he woke. He assumed my sister Elizabeth had done it although he could prove nothing.”

Søren smiled and it was the most chilling smile Wesley had ever seen in his life.

“You look horrified,” Søren said.

“I am horrified.”

“I told that same story to Eleanor the night of my father’s funeral. She wasn’t horrified. She was proud of me.”

“No...Nora wouldn’t...”

“Eleanor can be a bit barbaric herself. One of her more attractive traits. One of millions.”

One of millions... The words reminded Wesley of what he’d come to say, but he couldn’t quite say it yet.

“I wouldn’t want to get on her bad side,” Wesley admitted.

“You couldn’t if you tried.”

“That’s good to know.”

Søren took a sip of his wine and turned on the piano bench so that he and Wesley sat facing each other.

“Telling Eleanor about my father, what he did to my sister, what I did to him in return, that wasn’t all I told Eleanor that night. I asked first if she was certain she wanted to know the entire truth about me. I warned her it would change how she saw me, how she saw us, possibly even how she saw the world. I’d long suspected Eleanor was of our ilk. The first time I met her she had self-inflicted burns on her arms. Teenagers inflict harm on themselves for only two reasons—either they’re in pain or they love pain. Eleanor was of the latter variety.”

“So you told her what you are?”

“I did. I told her all my secrets that night, all the ones that mattered. I told her I was a sadist who could only become aroused by inflicting pain, mental or physical, on another person, and if we were to be lovers someday, I would hurt her. I would have to. I told it all to her, and I did not spare her the gruesome details. When she was fifteen she made it abundantly clear she desired me. When she was sixteen she made it even more abundantly clear that she was in love with me and she knew, despite my best efforts to hide my feelings, that I was in love with her, too. I dropped all pretense, all subterfuge, and I laid out all the dark, stark truth before her.”

“What did she do?”

“She said the three most beautiful words I’d ever heard in my life.”

“I love you?” Wesley guessed.

Søren emptied his wineglass with one swallow and sat it back on top of the piano.

“‘Is that all?’” Søren said the words so casually Wesley wasn’t sure he’d even heard him right.

“What?”

“That’s what Eleanor said to me when I told her the sort of horrific stories that would send anyone else running for their life. She said,
‘Is that all?’
I didn’t even know how to answer at first. I’m not sure I remember what I said. But I do remember her laughing, and breathing a sigh of relief. She said she’d been worried something was actually wrong with me. Perhaps terminal cancer or that I was a serial killer. Or even worse, she said, I could be impotent.”

Wesley laughed. He couldn’t stop himself. So Nora.

“Sounds just like her.”

“That seventeen-year-old girl was braver than I was that night. I’d been anticipating shock and disgust from her, and I prayed with time she would understand and accept or at least forgive me for being what I was. Telling her the truth seemed like the greatest of risks, and yet I loved her too much to keep her in the dark any longer. I’d feared she would spurn me. Instead, she said she belonged to me and knew she belonged to me from the moment we met, and her body was mine to do with what I wanted. She loved me. She trusted me. She knew I wouldn’t hurt her even if I hurt her. And we kissed for the first time, and I felt something I never dreamed I’d feel.”

“Happy?”

“Normal. I felt normal. I’d felt loved in the past, and I’d certainly felt happy. But never normal. She so readily accepted everything about me that I’d worried she would fear or despise, I felt almost foolish. When Kingsley and I were teenagers at school, we often congratulated ourselves on what beautiful freaks we were. Typical teenagers thinking we were so different from the rest of the world. We were two lost souls who’d found each other in a wasteland. But with Eleanor, I didn’t feel lost anymore. She simply saw nothing wrong at all with what I was. I might as well have told her that I had a bad habit of drumming my fingers on the desk, and I would have gotten the same reaction. The same patronizing, ‘Is that all?’ My God, I thought I loved her before that. After...you have no idea.”

“I think I do have an idea.”

“Yes...” he said, resting his elbow on the piano fallboard. “Of course you do. I apologize. I’ve loved Eleanor as long as you’ve been alive but it’s wrong of me to dismiss your feelings for her simply because they’re younger than mine.”

Wesley winced at the words, visibly. Søren clearly noticed because the priest laughed at him.

“Do I even want to know what that expression was indicative of?” Søren asked.

“No. Maybe...” Wesley sighed heavily. “I need to tell you something and I don’t want to say it, but I try very hard not to be an ass most of the time. My father can be an ass, and I’ve spent my whole life trying not to turn into him. But every now and then I say stuff and I hear it in his voice.”

“Terrifying thought that one can so easily turn into one’s parents.”

“My father’s no monster, though. He’s a good man. He’s just...an ass. I think the word Nora used was
imperious
. He’s old money, at least for this country. I think he thinks he’s kind of a king. He does nice things for people because he’s...what’s the word I’m looking for? Nora would know.”

“Magnanimous?” Søren offered.

“That’s it. Magnanimous. It’s not normal charity or kindness. It’s ‘Here, let me show you how rich and powerful I am by paying for your son’s surgery or buying your farm that’s going into foreclosure and allowing you to stay on it.’ He loves the gratitude, the homage from the peasantry. He does the right things, but not always for the right reasons.”

“Better than doing the wrong things. Trust me, I have seen that side, as well.”

Wesley rubbed the back of his neck, still sore from where he’d been knocked out.

“I used to try to understand what it was about my father that bugged me. And it wasn’t the magnanimous gestures. He’s got the money to spend, he’s helping people, go for it. Great. He dotes on my mom, he’s fair with people. He was never abusive or violent. If anyone ever tried to hurt me or Mom, he’d destroy them. No doubt. He’s a good father, and I do love him.”

“But?”

“But I don’t think I’ve ever once heard him say, ‘I’m sorry, I was wrong.’ I told that to Nora and she said, ‘Being a rich white son of a bitch means never having to say you’re sorry.’ She said that and I decided I’d be the kind of man who would say it, who would apologize when I said or did the wrong thing. I would admit it if I got something wrong. So...” He paused.

“Take your time,” Søren said, almost smiling. Wesley appreciated that Søren was at least trying not to laugh at him.

Wesley took a deep breath. Like a Band-Aid, he told himself. Rip it off.