Читать книгу The Queen - Tiffany Reisz - Страница 10

1

The First Wedding

NOW, THIS WAS a happy ending.

It was all Nora had hoped for, all she had prayed for, and she couldn’t stop grinning as the music began—Jeremiah Clarke’s Trumpet Voluntary.

She smiled even wider when two elderly gentlemen in traditional servant’s livery opened the great oak double doors with a flourish befitting the exalted occasion.

After one deep breath, Nora stepped through the open doors and did the one thing she’d sworn she would never do—she walked down the aisle of a church in a wedding dress toward Søren, who waited for her at the altar.

He hadn’t seen her for hours and this moment was Søren’s first look at her in her wedding dress. It had been twenty years since she’d walked down an aisle toward Søren as a bridesmaid in a wedding he’d performed. Even now, halfway down the aisle, she could see the look in his eyes, a look that said the twenty years had been worth the wait.

As Nora took her place at Søren’s right hand, she leaned in close and whispered, “Stop looking at me like that.”

“Why?” he asked as the two hundred assembled guests rose to their feet when the groom made his entrance into the Great Hall that had been converted into a church for the wedding.

“You’re on duty,” she reminded him. “Father Stearns.”

“Can I look at you like that after the wedding?”

She smiled at him as the two grooms joined hands in front of Søren.

“Today you can do anything you want.”

“Watch out. I’ll hold you to that promise,” he said as the music faded into silence leaving her unable to retort. She swallowed her words, composed her face and tried not to cry when Søren began to speak.

“Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to join this man, Michael Luka Dimir, and this man, Griffin Randolfe Fiske, in holy matrimony. May your love be blessed by the sacrament of marriage and may we all who are gathered as witnesses rejoice together in the beauty of your commitment to each other as we would bask in the warmth of the sun...”

Nora made it three whole minutes into the ceremony before the tears started flowing. Luckily all eyes were on Michael and Griffin as they spoke their vows and made their promises. Once upon a time in a very different setting, Nora and Søren had made promises to each other and she wore those promises around her neck in the form of wedding bands engraved with two words—Forever and Everything. They weren’t wedding vows but they had bound them together nonetheless. What was a sacrament but the outward sign of inner grace? If she and Søren loving each other and staying together despite all they’d been through, all they’d put each other through for twenty-three years, wasn’t a miracle, she didn’t know what was.

“Therefore,” Søren said as the service drew to its conclusion, “now they are not two, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let no man put asunder.”

Søren spoke with authority and power, as if the words themselves could bind hearts together.

“I now pronounce you husband...and husband.”

Griffin took Michael’s face in his hands and kissed him.

And kissed him.

And kissed him.

A kiss of love and of lust and of complete and utter devotion, it went on so long the assembled witnesses started to titter, then giggle, then laugh. They kissed until Søren cleared his throat not once, but twice, louder the second time than the first. When even that didn’t put a stop to their rather protracted display of public affection, Søren uttered a low “For heaven’s sake, Griffin, people have places to be. Can’t you save the consummation until later?”

Griffin paused long enough to look at Søren and answer, “Nope,” before returning to the kiss with gusto.

Nora applauded him. Good man. Don’t let anyone tell you to stop kissing for such a silly reason as two hundred people watching. What better place in the world was there to be than here, watching true lovers kiss? One didn’t see such a thing every day. When witnessing a miracle, one should never hurry it along, for it’ll be gone all too soon and who knows when one will see another miracle in one’s lifetime?

Time stopped with that kiss. The image imprinted itself upon Nora’s mind like a tintype photograph... She stood at Søren’s right as Michael’s mistress of honor—no one would have believed her a maid or a matron, so mistress it was—and Kingsley stood to the left of Søren as Griffin’s best man. The wedding was held in the Great Hall of the thousand-year-old castle. The vibrant blue walls gleamed like polished azurite in the glow of a dozen brass-and-crystal chandeliers. Candles and flowers stationed on the ebony oak floors encircled the wedding party. Kingsley, Griffin and Søren all wore kilts. Griffin’s and Kingsley’s were red, white and green, the tartan of his mother’s ancestors. Søren’s kilt was black and blue, the traditional clergy tartan of Scotland and bruises. Upon request and because she couldn’t tell Griffin no when he’d asked so nicely, she’d worn a Scottish wedding dress, tiered white silk and lace peeking out from under a corseted red-and-green tartan overlay. Michael had forgone the kilt—not his style, he said—and chosen a hip Rat Pack–era tuxedo with a black shirt and black jacket. A better-looking married couple she’d never seen in her life and not because they were so beautiful, although they were, but because their love was true and pure and hard-won. Every act of love was an act of courage, but for Michael and Griffin it was especially so. The world didn’t often reward those who loved outside the lines. Nora had learned this lesson the hard way.

The kiss went on so long the guests rose to their feet and applauded.

Griffin turned to the masses and issued an order.

“Less applauding,” he yelled at his guests. “More kissing!”

“No one has to tell me twice,” Kingsley said, holding out his hand to Juliette, the mother of his daughter with another one on the way, and the most beautiful woman in attendance by far. Laughing, Juliette rose to her feet and put her hand in Kingsley’s. He dipped her back and gave her an old Hollywood kiss.

“Shall we?” Søren asked.

“In front of two hundred people?”

“Why not?”

“Is that a rhetorical question or do you really want me to list all eight hundred reasons why not?”

Søren answered by taking her face in his hands and kissing her—a kiss like Communion, like wine on her tongue. She heard a few gasps of shock from the assembly followed by laughter and applause. Apparently this was the first time they’d seen a Catholic priest kissing a woman. It was a first for Nora as well, being kissed by Søren in front of so many people they didn’t know. Yes, Kingsley had forced all the staff and the guests to sign non-disclosure agreements, but that was no guarantee word wouldn’t leak that a certain well-respected Jesuit priest passionately kissed a fairly notorious dominatrix at a wedding in Scotland. And not just any wedding—a same-sex wedding. Søren could be laicized for performing a same-sex marriage. He’d get in less trouble if he were caught by the Pope himself sodomizing her in the Tomb of Saint Peter. Not that she’d ever had that fantasy—not very often anyway. Officiating the service had been Søren’s gift to Michael, whom he loved like a son. When Nora had reminded him of the very real danger of excommunication if caught, Søren had replied, Michael asked me. It’s my honor to do it. Since Søren was a man of honor that had been the end of it.

But it wouldn’t be the end of it.

Søren was a Jesuit priest who had kissed a woman in front of two hundred people and performed a same-sex wedding. A kiss plus a wedding plus what would happen tonight at nine o’clock added up to one very simple conclusion.

Søren’s days as a priest were numbered.