The Prince (21 page)

“I don’t remember the details. Were we in the library?”

“The chapel.” Kingsley recalled every detail of that day. He and Søren had fought in the hermitage. Fought bitterly as they were wont to do. Young Kingsley had been tempestuous, hot-blooded, desperate for more time with Søren, more affection from the often remote young man. Søren, then as now, had been cold, calm, rational…his placidity in the face of Kingsley’s fury infuriating him even more. Kingsley had goaded Søren, desperate for any sort of reaction from him. Finally, he’d gotten it. Søren had thrown him onto the cot and tied his wrists to the metal frame. For half an hour, he had fucked him in complete silence and without mercy, one hand clamped over Kingsley’s mouth to silence his moans and another hand on his neck to hold him still. After the sex, Kingsley’s legs had shook from the sheer overwhelming force of the orgasm Søren had wrung from his body.

They’d returned to the school and gone about business as usual, Kingsley at peace again. In passive bliss he’d sat at Søren’s feet as they quietly flipped through the stack of French homework, circling errors and making corrections. On the floor next to Søren’s chair, helping him with his work, Kingsley had felt even closer to Søren then when they’d been fucking—a novel sensation he never experienced again in his life. Not until Juliette.

“The chapel. Yes. I remember now. I’d been terrified to interrupt you two. You were speaking French to each other. Not much. You seemed quiet, intent on your work. I hoped to get a picture without either of you noticing.”

“We noticed. But we didn’t mind.”

Christian finished his cup of tea and poured another. “So my picture of you two…what about it?”

“Someone mailed it to me. The original.”

“Who?”

Kingsley shook his head. “That is indeed the question.”

“No idea?”

“None at all. It was sent anonymously. As a threat or a warning…or perhaps merely a taunt.”

“A threat? Is it a secret you and Father Stearns were at school here together?”

Something in Christian’s voice…Kingsley heard it again. He knew something. Perhaps he didn’t even know what he knew. But Kingsley would find out.

“Not a secret we were at school together.
Non.
”

Kingsley waited and let the silence between them fill the room like rising water.

“Your sister…” Christian began and stopped. Kingsley said nothing. He’d seen a thousand men close to breaking before and knew that look in their eyes. At this moment Christian stood poised on the edge of a cliff, a cliff like the one that had killed Marie-Laure. Nothing to do now but let him fall over. “You and Stearns…”

“What about us?”

Christian stared down at his clasped hands.

“She came to me once…in tears. She said she thought that Stearns, that her husband was in love with someone else. She said he never…”

“He never touched her.”

Christian met Kingsley’s eyes. “I didn’t believe her. No one around but priests and us. She was the only girl within miles. And even if she wasn’t, who would ever love anyone more than her?”

“He did,” Kingsley said, failing to keep the note of pride from his voice. He might have lost Søren’s love to his
Little One
years ago but once Kingsley had been the victor.

“He loved you.” Christian said the three words as if he’d discovered the Holy Grail. “All my life, I’ve wondered, it’s been like a wound that never healed, Marie-Laure’s death. Why she died. What possessed her...you and Stearns. I thought but I never believed.”

“What did you think?”

Shaking his head, Christian looked around the room as if he’d never seen the place before.

“The wedding. I watched you three. Marie-Laure couldn’t stop staring at him. Of course. She was the bride. But you didn’t look at her, your own sister getting married. You looked at him. And he…”

“He looked at me.”

“My God…” His old friend set his cup of tea back down on the table and stared at him. He ran his fingers through what little hair he had left and rubbed at his face. His hands dropped to his sides and he stood up straight. “Before school let out…before summer break…you were carried to the infirmary. You—”

“
Non.
It isn’t like that. That wasn’t...it’s so hard to explain.”

“You had so many girlfriends.”

Kingsley stood up and walked to Christian. “I still do. What is that verse? ‘There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female…for you are all one in Kingsley’s bed?’” He patted the side of Christian’s face in a patronizing manner. His friend flinched, caught himself flinching and then laughed.

“That must be some translation of Galatians I’m not familiar with.”

“It’s my personal translation. Are you all right, Christian? You’re looking rather pale.”

“I’ll recover. Maybe. I’m trying to wrap my mind around all this... But still, certain things make sense now. Stearns, he was always so remote.”

“It just happened...we were all we had—each other. No women ever stepped foot into this school except for the nurse—”

“Nurse Jan, age ninety, weight nine hundred.”

“Exactement.”

“And your sister,” Christian reminded him.

“And my sister.”

“So someone sent you my photograph of you and Stearns. And you and Stearns were…”

“We were lovers, Christian,” Kingsley chided. “You’re a priest, not a virgin.”

Christian gave him a half smile. “True. You say ‘were.’ It’s really a thing of the past. He’s a priest now. He can’t—”

“Do not worry about
le prêtre.
He and I are long past. His parishioners worship him almost as much they do God. He has never betrayed their trust.”

“Good…that’s good. I’d never tell, of course. I can’t tell any of this to anyone. But I’ll sleep better knowing that your past is in your past.”

“It is. Or was. Someone knows about us. Or thinks they know.”

“Have there been any other threats?”

“There have been incidents. Something was stolen from my home. Father Stearns’s childhood bedroom was broken into. But I can’t talk about that.”

“Do you think…” Christian began, and stopped. “I mean, you were at the rock where they found Marie-Laure.”

“I was, yes.”

“Why?”

Kingsley stared at Christian.

“
Je ne sais pas.
Paying my respects. She was all I had after my parents died. I had almost no relationship with the grandparents who took me in. They loved me because I was their grandson, and for no other reason. But Marie-Laure, she did everything she could to come to America to be with me.
Pourquoi?
”

Christian gave him a blank look.

“Why do you ask?” Kingsley repeated.

“I’m not sure. Just a thought. Do you think someone thinks her death wasn’t an accident? What if someone thought…what if someone blamed you? No offense, but I remember her first day here better than I remember your first day here. Hell, better than I remember my own.”

“I’m hardly offended. I have never seen her equal in beauty. You think…”

Christian stepped to the window of the hermitage and pushed back the curtain. He pointed up to the ridge, where Kingsley and Søren had been standing less than an hour earlier. “What happened that day, King?”

“She was angry with me. She ran away. She fell and hit the rock.”

“Fell…or jumped?”

Kingsley couldn’t meet Christian’s eyes. The priest has asked him the same question Kingsley has been asking himself since the moment he’d gazed down upon his sister’s shattered body.

“She jumped…I think. But I can’t say for certain. She’d converted when she and Father Stearns married. She’d be denied Catholic burial if she’d committed suicide.
Mais…
”

Christian gave him a look of deep compassion. “You said you’d fought. What had you fought about?”

Kingsley groaned and squeezed the bridge of his nose. “She…Marie-Laure…” He found himself momentarily unable to go on. Talking about that time, about Marie-Laure’s death, filled him with an emotion he rarely if ever felt—shame. “She caught Father Stearns and I together. She saw us.”

“Good Lord.” Christian raised a hand to his forehead. “It happened, you and him, after he married her?”

Kingsley nodded.

“Marie-Laure and I had nothing—not a cent to our names. We wanted to stay in America, stay together, but couldn’t. She had to go back to Paris, to her ballet company. I couldn’t lose her again. And Stearns, he offered the perfect solution. If he married, he would receive the trust fund his father had set up for him—millions of dollars upon his twenty-first birthday or the day he married, whichever came first.”

“So she knew it was a marriage in name only.”

“You’ve seen
le prêtre.
You remember what he looked like then—almost as handsome as he is now. She agreed to the marriage and said she understood it was only for the money. But she loved him.”

“She loved him and we hated him.”

“Because you didn’t know him. I loved him. Anyone who knows him at all loves him. And if they don’t love him, then they do not know him.”

Christian continued to stare at Kingsley. “You still love him, my friend.”

Kingsley tried meeting Christian’s eyes and couldn’t.

“It’s the one sin I’ll let you absolve me of.”

Christian came to him and laid a hand gently on Kingsley’s forehead.

“Love isn’t a sin. It’s the one thing you’ve told me I don’t want to absolve you of.”

Laughing, Kingsley took Christian’s hand off his forehead and pushed it into the priest’s own head. Thirty years gone with one playful shove. They were men now and yet still boys.

“Does he know?” Christian asked. He sat on the kitchen table and pushed the teacups out of the way.

“
Oui.
He’s always known. I loved him when we were boys and he never loved me back. Not then. Not now. Not in the same way. Or perhaps in the same way but not as much.”

“He shouldn’t have used you like that then.”

“
Peut-être.
But even if you’d told me then he didn’t love me and never would…” Kingsley found his wicked grin again “…I wouldn’t have changed a thing.”

“Except for Marie-Laure’s death, of course.” The statement came out as a question, and Kingsley was forced to answer it.

Had Marie-Laure not died, what would have happened? She and Søren would still be married. What would that have meant for them both? Søren had wanted to try to make a life with Marie-Laure. Once he realized that his young wife truly loved him, he had been determined to be a good husband to her. Their marriage had gone unconsummated for months after the wedding. Søren had been waiting for the right time to tell her about his needs that only inflicting pain would fulfill.

He’d confessed this plan to Kingsley. And then they’d fought more bitterly than the day Christian took the photograph. Kingsley had gone mad with rage and grief at the thought of Søren with anyone else, especially his own sister. Any other brother would have been defending his sister’s honor, refusing to allow her sadist husband to tell her he needed to beat her if they were ever to become lovers. But Kingsley’s pain had been for himself alone. If Marie-Laure wanted pain, she had the whole world to give it to her. But Søren’s violence belonged to Kingsley.

He’d threatened Søren, threatened to tell everyone at the school that they were lovers. A foolish, idle threat that would have had no impact even if Kingsley had gone through with it. Søren’s trust fund had already come through. He and Marie-Laure were rich now. Free to go wherever they pleased. Kingsley feared that more than anything—that Søren and Marie-Laure would go and leave him behind.

Søren had stayed calm during the worst of Kingsley’s tantrum, and at the end, when he had exhausted himself with grief and anger, Søren had taken Kingsley’s face in his hands and kissed him. And the kiss had turned into something more. When Kingsley’s shirt slid off his shoulders and landed with a whisper on the ground, and Søren had dipped his head and dug his teeth into Kingsley’s collarbone, causing Kingsley to groan with the pleasure and the pain and the sheer relief of it all…that’s when Marie-Laure had walked in on them. And although her heart would beat for only a few minutes more as she’d raced through the forest…that had been the moment Kingsley knew she’d truly died.

“Of course,” he answered now, but wasn’t sure if he spoke the truth. Had Marie-Laure lived, Søren would have become a piano teacher and a college professor, and his calling to the priesthood would have gone unanswered. Kingsley knew that, without Søren, he would be a dead man. For over ten years after he and Søren had parted company, Kingsley had lived the most dangerous life he could. He ran from death the way he’d run that night from Søren—in the hopes he’d get caught and taken. Not until they reunited had Kingsley found a purpose in his life again, a reason to live.

And Eleanor…Nora…Søren’s Little One. She, too, would have had a comfortable home six feet under the earth had Søren never come into her life. Tempting, Kingsley admitted only to himself. A world without Nora Sutherlin…he’d almost like to see that.

“I mean only what happened between Father Stearns and me as teenagers. I have no regrets about that, even though now he’s a priest. And a very devout one.”

“But not too devout to be seen in public with you.” Christian smiled.

“This is hardly public. And he’s off now, likely saying Mass in the chapel with Father Aldo.”

“Ah, Father Aldo is long gone. Back to South America. He’s saving the soul of the Southern Hemisphere these days.”

“I’m sure the students miss his cooking.”

“We all do. Only Marie-Laure could make better creme brûlée. To die for.”

Kingsley exhaled heavily. “Perhaps that’s why she died.”

Christian pursed his lips and gave him a look half amused, half disgusted.

“You’re deflecting. You realize that, yes?”

“Are you a priest or a psychologist? I’m not quite sure which is worse.”

“I’m both.” Christian sat back on the edge of the kitchen table. “Master of Divinity and Psychology. PhD in Psychology. Priests have to be psychologists. Especially at a school for troubled boys. And it doesn’t take a PhD to see that you’re still deeply grieving for your sister. Every little joke you make about it is further proof.”