The Mistress (15 page)

“No, I’m not the enemy. Even if I didn’t exist, I doubt Søren would let them have the kind of relationship they had back when they were teenagers. Hard to tell that to someone still a little in love after thirty years. So yes, Kingsley might be in the ‘I don’t like Nora club’ but you should know, he’s very much in the ‘I don’t let bad things happen to my people’ club. And I’m definitely one of his people.”

“The threat is duly noted.”

“Can I ask you a Kingsley question?” Nora picked up a napkin and started wiping at the crumbs on the table. Marie-Laure’s dark eyes glinted with dark pleasure.

“Please do.”

“Kingsley and Søren have been friends, for lack of a better word, for years. Barely a day passes without them talking to each other. And despite that, Kingsley’s managed to move on more or less. He has someone he loves and shares his life with—”

“Oh, yes, that. I’m a little disgusted about her. The Haitian woman? My brother could do better.”

Nora briefly envisioned stabbing Marie-Laure in the eye with a fork. She might have done it but didn’t have a fork handy. She’d left them on the sideboard.

“There is no one better than Juliette. Besides, what do you care about Kingsley or Søren or anybody they fuck? That’s my question. It’s been thirty years. Of course, Kingsley still has feelings for Søren—they’re together all the time. But you...you disappeared thirty years ago. Why are you back? Why now? Why not five years ago, ten years ago?”

“That’s an interesting question, and I have a more interesting answer. You’ll find it especially interesting considering your history with my brother.” Marie-Laure sat her teacup down and adjusted her robe. “You see...a certain nostalgia overwhelmed me last year. I’d been living in Brazil on my estate and quite happy. And yet, I did miss France. Every August when we were children, my parents would take my brother and me to a lovely seaside town in the south of France. I adored those times in that tiny village. I decided to go back for a few days. Self-indulgent, I know...but I thought it would be nice to see some old ghosts.”

“Did you see any?” Nora brushed her napkin off in a small trash can.

“I did. I walked the narrow winding streets, along the beach, down the dock. I stopped for coffee in an outdoor café. And there...I saw him...”

“Who?” Nora asked.

“I saw Kingsley.”

Nora shook her head.

“No way. Couldn’t be him. He never goes back to France anymore. He says he has too many people there who’d like to see him dead.”

“But it was Kingsley. I promise you it was. I’d wondered for years how Kingsley grew up after I died. I wondered what he looked like at age twenty, twenty-five, thirty...and there was Kingsley walking down the street with a beautiful girl on his arm and secrets in his eyes. You see, I found out about my brother’s true inclinations by accident. And by that I mean, I met one of his accidents.”

“Accidents?” Nora wasn’t quite sure she heard right. Kingsley...had a...

“I assume he wasn’t planned. My brother’s son, that is.”

The entire room rattled with the sound of the dishes in Nora’s hands clattering on the sideboard. Marie-Laure glared at her. Nora ignored it.

“Kingsley has a kid?”

“
Non,
not a kid, as you say. He looked to be in his twenties. A son he doesn’t even know exists.”

“Oh, my God. Kingsley has a son,” Nora repeated. And for whatever reason, a reason she didn’t want or need to think about, that knowledge gave her renewed hope. She would have wept for the joy of it had she learned this news in any other context. Kingsley had a son? A son in his twenties and handsome as his father? It seemed too good to be true, and yet she believed it. And once she believed, a wound she didn’t know she’d had suddenly closed up and healed over.

“Are you sure he’s Kingsley’s? Completely certain?”

“I doubted it, too, at first,” Marie-Laure said. “Although the resemblance was uncanny it was possible he was a distant relative...or merely a doppelgänger. So I had someone do some digging on him. Turns out my brother had been feeling nostalgic, too, about twenty-four years ago. He’d met a woman and spent a few days in her bed. A married woman whose husband had gone to Paris for a week of business. She kept the boy’s parentage a secret even from his real father.”

“Do you...” Nora paused for a breath. Tears lined her eyes. She knew then she had to survive this nightmare no matter what if only to find this young man, this child of Kingsley’s. “Do you know his name?”

“Nicolas...a fine French name for my nephew.” She said the name with relish and in the French pronunciation—Nee-coh-lah. “I’m still considering whether or not to make the acquaintance of my brother’s bastard.”

Rage surged within Nora. Kingsley’s son... Nora had once carried Kingsley’s child, and she’d chosen not to have it. To this day she never regretted that decision, but now she found motherly feelings she didn’t think she possessed rising up in her heart like an army preparing for battle. She would live and she would find him and tell him where he came from and where he belonged. And perhaps she might even give him one chaste embrace and know all the while she was doing something she thought she would never do—hold Kingsley’s child in her arms. She’d never even met him, met Nicolas, Kingsley’s son. But she would fight to the death to protect him from this woman and whatever sick, sordid plans she had in mind.

“Do not go near Kingsley’s son if you value your life,” Nora said quietly and with menace. And something in her tone must have penetrated even Marie-Laure’s madness and darkness.

“I don’t care anything about him.” Marie-Laure waved her hand dismissively. “Mere curiosity alone. Seeing him simply caused me to wonder about my brother for the first time in years. After all, I was under the impression that his interest in women had been feigned, a cover for his true inclinations. And yet, there was living proof that my brother, in his twenties, had bedded women. I had to wonder...what else had I been wrong about?”

“So you started investigating?”

Marie-Laure nodded as Fat Man pointed at the floor. Nora sank to her knees again, listening avidly. After the revelation about Nicolas, she knew she had to hear it all. What other secrets did Kingsley have? More secrets than he even knew he had?

“I did. I even came to New York, something I swore I would never do knowing this was his territory. I learned a great deal on that excursion. He had no idea I followed him, watched him, studied from a distance. Lovers...men and women. That Juliette most often, although he tries not to show anyone he cares for her.”

“He has enemies. He protects her by not letting on how much she matters.”

“I know he has enemies,” Marie-Laure said with a smile. “I’m one of them. I had prepared myself for everything I knew I would see watching my brother come and go from his town house, in his box at the opera, playing football—I mean, soccer, excuse me—on the field of a school.”

Nora’s stomach clenched hard at Marie-Laure’s words. Kingsley only ever played soccer these days with...

“You saw him with Søren.”

“
Oui
. I saw him with my husband. My husband had become a Catholic priest, I learned, and my brother was still in love with him after all this time. But that merely seemed a tragedy to me, my brother lovelorn even thirty years later. Lovelorn for a man he couldn’t have for so many reasons. For surely if he was a Catholic priest, he’d taken a vow of celibacy. It made so much sense to me then. My husband, not interested at all in women, had become a priest. From what I’ve heard, he would simply be one of a legion of priests entirely not interested in women.”

Nora’s hands started to shake as Marie-Laure continued her story. She didn’t like where it was heading.

“Still...” Marie-Laure continued, “I couldn’t stop watching him. A terrible itch, I had to keep scratching. And so I kept watching. I watched his home from the little copse of woods that shielded it.”

Nora’s breaths quickened.

“Lovely little rectory, so quiet and alone. He seemed so pathetic to me, my husband. A celibate priest who’d given up love and marriage and children to serve a God who couldn’t care less what the little ants under His feet did with their days. I liked that he’d become a priest. It comforted me to know he slept alone in his bed with no one to touch him, to make love to him. I hoped that in the middle of his loneliest nights he thought of me and our marriage and how I lay next to him waiting to be touched by a man who cared as little for my love as God cared for him. Then I saw her.”

Nora remained silent. She didn’t have to ask who Marie-Laure saw.

“I saw a woman come to his home in the middle of the night, and walk to the side door and enter without knocking, enter as if she owned it. An hour later he and she emerged carrying blankets, a bottle of wine, a candle and—”

“Binoculars,” Nora completed Marie-Laure’s sentence for her. “It was the night of the meteor shower. We wanted to watch it.”

“I watched you watch it. I watched you two lay down blankets and stare through the opening in the trees up at the heavens. I saw your head resting on the center of my husband’s chest. I watched him run his fingers through your hair as you two talked and laughed for an hour as stars fell out of the sky. I watched you....”

Nora closed her eyes and one tear ran down her cheek. She remembered that night last summer. She’d only been back with Søren a few weeks, and yet already it felt as if she’d never left him. It had been his idea to watch the meteor shower. One of his old teachers at Saint Ignatius had been an astronomer and had instilled a love of the nighttime science in the boys. So they’d had a midnight picnic, the two of them in Søren’s backyard where they could hide behind the trees. It was a risk for them to be together outdoors, but one Søren had been willing to take. After the last star had fallen from the sky, she’d turned over and kissed him long and deep, whispering against his lips the apologies she’d been hiding in her heart.
I’m sorry I left you. I’m sorry I had to. I’m sorry I hurt you. I’m sorry I lied about you. I’m sorry I tried to hate you all this time and blame you for everything. It was only because it made being apart from you easier....
He’d forgiven her with a kiss and the words, “I’ll forgive because you’ve asked me to, not because you need my forgiveness. You did what you had to. You had to leave to become who you were meant to be. All that matters now is that you’re here, Little One.” And then he’d lit a candle and pushed her flowing summer skirt to her waist. He dripped the scalding wax over her thighs and hips and she’d submitted to the pain with peace and pleasure. How good it felt to surrender herself to him again, how safe, how right...and then with only the stars to witness, he’d made love to her until dawn.

But the stars hadn’t been the only witness.

Marie-Laure sighed heavily, angrily.

“I knew then that I had been lied to, that I had been betrayed even worse than I’d thought. It should have been me underneath him that night, not you. I am his wife, not you.”

“He thought you were dead. You can’t blame him.”

“He killed me,” Marie-Laure said, her voice so flinty with bitterness Nora could swear she saw sparks coming off her words.

“You killed yourself. You ran away.”

“I had no choice. I loved my brother. I wanted him to be happy. I was in the way of that happiness.”

“You didn’t want him to be happy. If you did, you would have gotten the marriage annulled or gotten divorced and gone back to France or even stayed married, taken the money and run. You had a thousand options that would have let Søren and Kingsley be together, be happy. You took the one option guaranteed to break them up. You wanted to punish Kingsley because he made the mistake of being the one Søren was in love with, not you. Don’t act like you faked your death for some noble purpose. You wanted to destroy their relationship by making them think they killed you.”

“I did destroy their relationship,” Marie-Laure said with pride. There it was. Nora saw it. The real motive coming out. She’d been right and Marie-Laure wasn’t going to deny it. She’d faked her death to punish Kingsley and Søren for daring to love each other. “I know what happened. Kingsley quit school and joined the French Foreign Legion right after I died. My husband went to Rome and began training for the priesthood. That kiss of theirs, the one I witnessed, it was their final kiss.”

And Marie-Laure grinned so wildly Nora wanted to rip it off her face with her fingernails. And she’d do it, too, but not with her hands—she had a much better weapon at her disposal.

“You didn’t destroy their relationship, though, despite a very good effort on your part.”

“Don’t lie to me. I know my husband. I read your file. You’re the only person he’s been with sexually since becoming a priest.”

“Kingsley writes the files and he’s a very unreliable narrator. He decides what goes in, what stays out.”

Marie-Laure narrowed her eyes at Nora, and despite the fear in her heart, Nora refused to look away.

“What do you mean I didn’t destroy them?”

Nora searched deep within herself for the courage she needed. She searched for it and she found it. She gave Marie-Laure a smile of her own.

“Let’s just say that tonight, if you want it, I’ll have one hell of a bedtime story for you.”

18

THE KING

K
ingsley drove through the dark all the way to Elizabeth’s house in New Hampshire. He drove alone and took no calls. He needed the company of his thoughts to plan his next step. Søren had forced a promise out of him. He could try to get Nora out of the house if Kingsley swore he would kill no one in the process. He knew Søren couldn’t care less if Marie-Laure’s compatriots ended up with their brains on the carpet. But the priest didn’t want him killing his own sister. A nice thought but Kingsley had seen battlefields and bloodshed of the kind Søren had never even dreamed. He’d made the promise and had no intention of keeping it. No room for sentimentality on a battlefield, not if Søren wanted Nora back.

By dawn Kingsley arrived at the house and parked the car in the woods off the road. He slipped through the trees, a high-powered rifle strapped to his back. Would the children of his kingdom even recognize him now if they saw him? Gone were his Regency- and Victorian-era suits and military coats. Gone were his riding boots. Gone was the roguish smile that seduced all comers. He’d changed into jeans, a black T-shirt, pulled his hair back into a low ponytail to keep it out of his face. He left his shoes in the car, far preferring the sensitivity and silence of bare feet. And instead of a smile he wore a look of grim determination.

He saw the house through the trees. Ducking down behind thick branches, he pulled out a spyglass and studied the windows. Laila had said she and Nora were held in the library. With all the curtains closed he couldn’t see anything, not even the hint of movement.

His sister...what the hell was she doing? She had to know taking Nora was simply a slower form of suicide. Did she think she would get her revenge against them and live to enjoy her victory? No, of course she didn’t, and that’s what scared him most. If Marie-Laure had no intention of surviving this gambit, then she had nothing to lose. If she wanted to die, planned to die, there would be no stopping her from taking Nora and anyone else with her to the grave.

If he tried to get Nora out and Marie-Laure caught him, there would be no more nights with his Juliette, no more days. He’d never see her again. And the last time he saw her, they’d fought over his insistence she leave him. Now he couldn’t be more grateful for what seemed like paranoia at the time. And yet, what he wouldn’t give to have another chance to look in her eyes and tell her how much he loved her.

“Ah, Jules...” he whispered to nothing and no one, a smile flitting across his face, “your timing is atrocious.”

If only he could tell her how sorry he was that it had come to this. His Juliette, his Jules, his Jewel... He’d dreamed all his life that he would find someone like her, someone who understood who he was. Not only did she not judge him for what he was, she loved him for it. What they had, he treasured it above all things and for that reason alone he’d sent her away. A week ago she accused him of overreacting, of letting his fears for her get the better of him. But still, she submitted to his wishes and had flown to Haiti where she still had family, where she could disappear, blend in and be safe. Now he thanked God he’d had the foresight to send her away. If Marie-Laure had stolen Søren’s most precious possession, no doubt she considered stealing his, as well. Sister or not, if Marie-Laure had laid a hand on his Juliette, his lover, his property, his...

Kingsley stopped his thoughts in their tracks. He couldn’t think about Juliette now, what she was to him, what the future held. He needed to stay calm, rational, if they were to make it out of this alive, all of them. And they would survive this. He would make sure of it no matter the price to his soul.

For two hours he sat and watched the house, waiting for a curtain to move, a door to open. Nothing happened. Nothing at all. A wasted trip. As Kingsley started to stand, to stretch his legs, he saw something.

Ducking down again, he waited and watched.

At the front of the house on the second floor, a curtain moved. It could have been nothing, the air-conditioning coming on. Or it could be something, someone... He brought the spyglass up and stared.

The curtain parted and a woman stood at the window. Thirty years disappeared in an instant. Long dark hair, bistre eyes, a dancer’s physique...

“Ma soeur...”

Marie-Laure stood staring out the window onto the long driveway. She seemed to be waiting for someone. He knew who she waited for, and as long as Kingsley had a breath left in his body, he’d make sure the person she waited for never came.

He raised his rifle and peered through the sight.

Only Marie-Laure stood at the window, however. And surely she hadn’t executed Nora’s kidnapping alone. If he killed her now, what would stop her henchmen from killing Nora and making a run for it? Nothing.

Marie-Laure stepped away from the window and Kingsley lowered the rifle.

He had no choice. He would wait for tonight, for darkness, and he would go in.

Back through the woods he crept, careful to not be seen or heard. Once in his car he stopped to breathe. Until that moment he saw Marie-Laure in the window, he had cherished a shadow of a doubt that perhaps they’d been wrong, that it was someone pretending to be her to torture them. Now he had no doubts. It was her, his sister, still alive. But not for long.

He started the car and eased back onto the road. Although it had been years since he’d been to Daniel’s house, he needed to consult no maps. He still remembered the way.

Funny how terribly, maddeningly small the world was they lived in. Kingsley had met a beautiful woman named Maggie back in his twenties during a brief trip to New York. Although wealthy and with a high-powered job as an attorney, she craved the domination of powerful men. He’d happily fed her hunger to submit until he had to return to France. Soon after she’d met a younger man named Daniel, a librarian without a penny to his name, and married him. Maggie and Daniel had a house in the country, a retreat a few hours from the city yet less than ten miles from the house Søren had grown up in. Ten miles—close enough to scout out the house easily, far enough away not to tip them off.

As he pulled into Daniel’s driveway he saw Søren’s motorcycle parked near the front door. Kingsley felt a momentary stab of sympathy for the man. He knew Søren hated being anywhere near this part of the world. Even Kingsley didn’t know the extent of what had happened in that house, the house where Nora was being held. Not even to Nora had Søren shared all the horrors of his past. Not to Nora or to him, and for that Kingsley was grateful. He had enough skeletons of his own in his past. He’d run out of closet space for any more.

He glanced up at the colonial manor as he headed to the door. Lovely place—two stories, two hundred years old. Elegant. Tasteful. Stately. And home to one of the kinkier men of his acquaintance.

The door opened before Kingsley even knocked.

“Daniel, get out of this house right now,” Kingsley said without any preamble.

“It’s my house,” Daniel reminded him as Kingsley pushed past him.

“Yes, and I’m commandeering it.”

“You can’t commandeer my house.”

“Fine, then I’ll commandeer your wife.”

Daniel followed Kingsley down the hallway into the library where Kingsley deposited himself on top of Daniel’s desk.

“Kingsley.”

“Daniel.”

Kingsley attempted to stare Daniel down. A bad idea. Daniel’s ability to stare down people was notorious in the Underground. Only Søren had a more vicious glare than Daniel’s infamous unyielding blue-eyed stare. Maggie called it the Ouch and the name had stuck. Anyone on the receiving end of the Ouch would likely be saying “ouch” for the next couple of days.

“Put the blue eyes away,” Kingsley ordered.

“I can’t very well take my eyes out.” Daniel continued to glare. The years had been kind to Daniel. Marriage and children even kinder. In his day the man had been so handsome he’d even tempted Nora from Søren. For only about five seconds, she’d confessed to him, but still, something of a feat. Then again, Nora always did have a bit of a fetish for blonds.

“I’ll do it for you if you don’t stop glaring at me. I told you that I needed your house for a few days. And
non,
I’m not going to tell you why.”

“I already told him why.” Søren stood in the doorway. He, too, had gone for “business casual,” as Griffin always called it. No collar, no clerics. Black pants, white shirt open at the neck. He never got used to seeing Søren in his collar and clerics. Yet, he never quite got used to seeing him without them on, either. “If we’re stealing his house, he deserves to know why.”

Kingsley sighed. It was for the best. Unless Daniel knew the real danger, he might put up more of a fight about leaving. Thankfully, Kingsley had four little trump cards he could use on Daniel.

“I know about Eleanor. I can’t believe someone would kidnap her.” Daniel glanced between them. “I wouldn’t even borrow a teacup from you two.”

“Is that so?” Søren asked, and gave Daniel the only glare more feared than the Ouch.

“You let me borrow her, remember?” Daniel asked.

“For one week. You’re the one who attempted to convince her to stay.”

Kingsley watched as Daniel walked across the room and met Søren in the doorway.

“Come on,” Daniel said, looking up at Søren. “You would have tried to keep her, too.”

“Yes,” Søren agreed. “Only I would have succeeded.”

“You get more arrogant with age. Aren’t priests supposed to be humble?”

“We’re also supposed to be celibate.” Søren smiled at Daniel, and Daniel and Kingsley had to laugh. No need to fight an old battle when a new one was already brewing.

“Good point. Now someone tell me what I can do to help,” Daniel said, turning back to Kingsley.

“You can leave,” Kingsley said.

“I’m not leaving. I love Eleanor, too. You know she—”

“Tell me the names and ages of your children,” Kingsley said.

“King, I know—”

“Tell me the names and ages of your children, Daniel,” Kingsley repeated.

Daniel paused to glare at Kingsley again. “That’s not fair.”

“It was not my idea for you to get married again and have how many children?”

“Four,” Daniel said almost apologetically.

“Right. Four children. And a wife. And your wife has how many siblings that you’re taking care of?”

“Daniel...” Søren said as he came into the room. “He’s right. This is dangerous. You should go.”

“Your niece is here,” Daniel countered.

“She has a purpose being here. You don’t.”

“Well, thank you very much for that.”

“He means Laila was there,” Kingsley added. Did Søren always have to be so
Søren
all the time? “She knows things.”

“Who’s the guy with her? Boyfriend?”

Kingsley nearly hurt himself trying not to smile. Søren turned his glare on Daniel up a notch.

“He most certainly is not,” Søren said, his voice dangerously icy.

“Sorry. Jesus. I said ‘boyfriend’ not ‘pimp.’”

“
Le prêtre
is annoyingly protective of his nieces,” Kingsley explained.

“A product of spending too much time in your company,” Søren said.

“And the young man to whom you’re referring...I suppose you could call him an interested party,” Kingsley said, looking for the most tactful description of Wesley’s presence. All of it was nonsense, lies and subterfuge. Neither he nor Søren wanted nor needed any of them here—not Wesley nor Laila, not Grace. He knew why Søren insisted that they be allowed to come. He knew and refused to accept that their presence here would ever be required.

“An interested party?” Daniel repeated, a slight smile on his lips. “So he’s sleeping with Nora.”

“Précisément,”
Kingsley said.

Daniel only shrugged. “Figures.”

“I’ll let you two talk,” Søren said from the doorway. “But, Daniel, for the sake of your family, you do need to go. You shouldn’t be involved in any of this.”

“I appreciate the concern,” Daniel said, and Kingsley heard no sarcasm in his words. “I was prepared to die in this house after I lost Maggie. Eleanor saved me from that fate. I owe her...everything.”

“Then do what she would want you to do,” Søren said.

“She’d want me to take care of my family first,” Daniel admitted with obvious reluctance.

“She would,” Kingsley said.

“I’ll go.” Daniel raised his hands in surrender. “But I want to know everything. I want to know when she’s safe.”

“Thank you,” Søren said with real sincerity in his voice.

“For leaving?” Daniel asked with a small laugh.

“For saying ‘when she’s safe’ and not ‘if.’”

Kingsley watched as Daniel’s jaw clenched and his eyes darkened.

“You’re welcome.”

Søren merely nodded and walked away.

Daniel exhaled heavily as if he’d been holding his breath.

“I’ve been friends with him for decades, and he still scares the shit out of me sometimes,” Daniel said.

Kingsley sat on Daniel’s desk.

“He knows he does. You make it too much fun for him.”

“I thought he was going to kill me for daring to suggest his niece had a boyfriend.”

“He might have.”

“So that boy...one of Nora’s conquests?”

“Worse,” Kingsley said, grimacing. “He’s her fiancé. Supposedly. He asked her to marry him right before he was knocked unconscious and she was taken.”

“Are we sure he asked her before he received the head injury?” Daniel winked at him.

“I knew I liked you for a reason.” Kingsley hopped off the desk and clasped Daniel by the shoulder. “I’m taking care of this. You know that I can.”

“I know you can. If anyone can work the necessary miracles it’s you two.”

“Good.
Bien
. Now get out of your house.”

“I’m going.”

Kingsley followed Daniel from the library. They passed the well-appointed but comfortable living room where Grace sat curled up on a couch. At the back of the room, Wesley stood staring out the window in the direction of Elizabeth’s home. They couldn’t see it from Daniel’s house but perhaps it gave him some comfort to turn toward Nora like a faithful Muslim toward Mecca. Laila came up to him and offered him a cup of something—coffee or tea, Kingsley couldn’t tell. Wesley thanked her and Laila’s face lit up like a Christmas tree.