Читать книгу The Virgin - Tiffany Reisz - Страница 9

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2015 Scotland

“IT WAS A dark and stormy night,” Nora said as she came to stand next to Søren at the window. She gazed out on the summer storm tearing up the Scottish sky.

“Please tell me that isn’t the first line to your next book.”

“Oh, but it’s such a good first line. Classic even.” She tucked her hand into his and watched the light show with him. Wind and rain lashed the trees and the moors. A flash of lightning set the night afire for a split second and the hills revealed their colors before fading into black again. “How about this—‘It was a dark and stormy night in the castle, and a woman named Nora was determined to seduce her priest.’”

Søren smiled slightly.

“An improvement. A minor improvement.”

“Everyone’s a critic.” Nora squeezed his hand, and he lifted it to his lips for a kiss. He’d arrived this morning but she’d been so busy with her work here that they hadn’t had more than five minutes together. At last the day was done, her work was over until tomorrow, and they could hold hands and simply be.

“Do I want to know what you’re thinking?” Nora asked him.

“Merely watching the storm,” he said, but she could tell he had something on his mind, on his heart. They both did.

Tomorrow was the big day... Everything between her and Søren would change tomorrow. It was happening finally and there was no going back.

“Are you nervous about tomorrow?” she asked.

“Should I be?”

“I am,” she admitted. “Big day for us.”

“I’m at peace,” he said. “Although I will admit the peace is hard-won.”

“We’ve waited a long time to do this.”

“It’s time now,” he said. “We’ve waited long enough.”

A clap of thunder interrupted their conversation and together they peered into the storm outside the oriel window.

“What are you thinking?” Nora asked.

“Thinking about Job, chapter thirty-eight,” he said. “It’s every priest’s dream to have God come and speak to him face-to-face. Even if it is to tell him how little he knows about the world. Storms always remind me of those verses. God says, ‘Have you ever given orders to the morning, or shown the dawn its place?’”

Nora looked up at the sky. “‘Can you raise your voice to the clouds / and cover yourself with a flood of water? / Do you send lightning bolts on their way? / Do they report to you / Here we are.’”

“It’s comforting to know God is so powerful. Comforting to know we aren’t,” Søren said.

Perhaps only a priest could find comfort in his powerlessness. Perhaps only Søren.

“Are you coming to bed?” she asked Søren.

“Not yet. I won’t be ready to sleep for hours.”

In Scotland, it was nine-thirty. In New Orleans, where they’d been living for the past two years, it was half past three in the afternoon.

“Who said anything about sleeping?” she asked.

Søren arched his eyebrow.

“Well, in that case...” Søren turned from the window and cupped her face with his hands. He kissed her on the lips, softly at first, a slight kiss meant to arouse and torment. Ever so slowly he deepened the kiss. As much as she wanted to, Nora didn’t rush the moment. She’d been away from him for five weeks—four weeks spent with Nico at his vineyard and another week here in Scotland making the final preparations for tomorrow. Leaving Søren for any extended period of time was much like this kiss—a torture and a tease. Being away from him hurt, always. But the reunion at the end of the separation made every second apart worth the price.

He took her hands in his and brought them up and around his neck. His arms encircled her back and he drew her to him, deepening the kiss. The heat of his body warmed her to the core. She kissed his lips, his chin, his ear and his neck. He’d abandoned his collar for traveling and tonight wore only black trousers, black jacket and a white button-down shirt open at the neck. She pressed her lips into the hollow of his throat, a hollow made for her kisses.

And the moment when the kiss was perfect, everything she wanted and needed from him, she heard from behind her a small cough.

“Ms. Sutherlin?”

“God fucking dammit.” Nora growled the words, and dropped her head to the center of Søren’s chest.

“Eleanor, you’re scaring the waitstaff,” Søren said.

She turned and faced the interrupter, a young woman holding a bouquet of flowers. Her name might be Bonnie, or maybe she was just “bonnie” in the Scottish sense of pretty. Nora didn’t know and didn’t care.

“Miss, you’ve signed the nondisclosure agreement, haven’t you?” Nora asked. Kingsley was treating tomorrow like a celebrity wedding with ironclad nondisclosure agreements for everyone even remotely involved. Even she’d had to sign one.

“Yes, ma’am?” The girl made everything she said into a question.

“Good. This man is a Catholic priest. We’ve been sleeping together since I was twenty. I’m sure you can imagine it’s not easy being the mistress of a Catholic priest. We don’t get to spend nearly the amount of time together we’d like to. In fact, I haven’t seen him in five weeks. Admittedly that’s because I was sleeping with someone else most of the time, but that’s neither here nor there. As you can see, my priest here is possibly the most handsome man in the world, although I am admittedly biased. He’s also kinky, well-hung and you’ve just interrupted the kiss I’ve been waiting for all day. So please tell me this interruption is more important than that kiss was.”

“Your dress is here. We hung it in your room. You told me to tell you when it arrived and to interrupt you no matter what you were doing even if you were, as you said, ‘blowing the pope.’ Also, these arrived for you earlier today. They were accidentally put away with the wedding flowers,” the girl said, passing the bouquet to Nora.

“Oh.” Nora tapped her foot on the stone floor. “How nice.”

“Eleanor...” Søren made her name into a threat.

“And sorry about the, you know, well-hung priest rant there,” Nora said. “Pre-wedding jitters.”

“It’s fine, ma’am,” the girl who was either bonnie or Bonnie said. “If he was kissing me, I’d be bloody pissed off to be interrupted, too. Catholic priest?”

“No comment,” Søren said.

“We had a priest like you when I was a girl,” she said. “We called him Father What-A-Waste. Glad you’re not going to waste.”

The girl bobbed a slightly sarcastic curtsy and sauntered off.

“Is it weird I kind of want to fuck her now?” Nora asked. “Castles makes me so horny.”

“Little One?”

“Yes, sir?” She turned back to face him.

“Who are your flowers from?”

“No idea,” she said. She looked through the small but exquisite posy of white roses, pink hydrangeas and green Cymbidium orchids until she found the small ivory card. She opened it up and read aloud,

“Dear Mistress,

I’m sorry I have to miss your wedding tomorrow but I never attend weddings where I’m not allowed to kiss the bride. Think of me during the ceremony—and on the wedding night. Love, Your Nico”

“Very kind of him,” Søren said, smiling.

“He’s a smart-ass like his father,” Nora said. She tucked the card back into the envelope. “Now, where were we?”

“Here, I think,” Søren said as he brought his arms around her waist and pulled her to him. He dropped gentle but hungry kisses along her neck.

“Oh yes, that’s where we were.”

“It’s been too long since I’ve had the pleasure of beating you and putting you in your place.” He whispered the words in her ear, and she shivered. “Do you even remember your place?”

“Underneath you, my sir,” she said. “Or wherever you tell me it is.”

“Very good answer.”

He tapped her under the chin and she smiled. She did so love to please him. Collaring Nico two years ago and making him her property had been the best thing she could have done for her relationship with Søren. At the time she and Nico became lovers, she’d been running on pure instinct and grief and need. She’d gone to Nico searching for something she was missing and found it with him. Once she had a submissive of her own, her own personal property collared and owned, she fully grasped Søren’s love for her. Owning Nico had filled up a void in her that not even Søren’s love—boundless as it was—could fill. She hadn’t cleaned up her act, hadn’t reformed. She hadn’t turned over a new leaf. Nora Sutherlin did not turn over leaves—new or otherwise. But for the past two years she’d had only two lovers—Søren and Nico—and wanted and needed no one else in her bed or her heart. It might be the closest she would ever get to monogamy.

Kingsley was already taking bets on how long it would last.

Søren took her by the hand and led her down the long ancient hallway. Portraits of noble Scotsmen, dead for centuries, followed their progress as they walked the faded crimson carpet and took a set of stone stairs to the next floor. Lightning created mad shadows in the castle. A suit of armor seemed to move with one flash of light. A portrait of a young noblewoman with pre-Raphaelite hair winked at Nora. The long-dead princess must have guessed what Nora and Søren had planned. Her smile was one of approval. Envy even. Nora didn’t blame the lady. Who wouldn’t want a night in Søren’s bed?

The wink reminded Nora of someone she knew long ago. And the castle reminded her of somewhere she’d once run away to and hidden herself. The abbey. Her mother’s abbey. The gray stone walls, the wandering hallways and the portraits like icons. The sound of her feet on the stone floors brought to mind that year she’d lived in her mother’s convent. Not quite a full year but close enough. Close enough that she thought of it always as “that year.”

She pushed thoughts of the past away. The present was a far more pleasant moment. Through an arched wooden door they entered their bedroom. The fire in the fireplace was dead, but no matter. Linen sheets and silk pillows invited them to the bed. They needed only each other for warmth now.

Søren left her standing by the bed as he lit the bedside oil lamp for light and the candles on the fireplace mantel for ambience. Nora slipped out of her shoes and let her feet sink into the soft woven rug that covered the stone floor. She put her flowers in the ice bucket, which made for a perfect makeshift vase. Displaying them on the table by the bed might be a little too much even for Søren so she set them on the fireplace mantel instead.

“We’ve never made love in a castle before, have we?” Nora asked as she turned from arranging her flowers to gaze around the room. She walked from the great stone fireplace to the hanging blue-and-red tapestries on the wall adorned with unicorns, dragons and knights.

“Belgium,” Søren said as he strode to the bed, carrying a box in one hand and something long, thin and wrapped in fabric in the other. He snapped his fingers and she jogged to his side.

Nora smiled at the memory of a long-ago journey through Europe they’d taken together. An anniversary gift from Kingsley.

“We’ll always have Belgium. And what was her name?”

“Odette.” Søren opened the box that held her collar.

“Oh yes. That was it. She was fun, wasn’t she?” While in Belgium, she and Søren had toured a little brewery and had met a beautiful Swiss translator named Odette. During the tasting, Odette had flirted shamelessly with them both—she and Søren had dueled over who knew more languages. Søren won, but just barely. After the tour, Odette had come back with them to their hotel room in a renovated castle. Nora had been young then, only twenty-four, and had never been that intimate with a woman. Søren hadn’t touched Odette, but he’d certainly enjoyed watching the two of them together that night.

“You’re smiling, Little One.” Søren brought her collar around her neck and locked it on. While his fingers were at her throat he toyed with the necklace she wore always these days. It had three charms on it—two rings engraved with the words Everything and Forever and a small silver locket Nico had given her as a token of his adoration. They made a gentle clinking sound like tiny wind chimes when she moved.

“Good memories,” she said. “So many good memories I’ve forgotten some of them.”

“Speaking of memories, I have a gift for you. A gift in memory of something.”

“You don’t have to give me anything,” she said, keeping her eyes low, respectful, submissive.

“I know,” he said with that touch of arrogance she’d always loved and loathed in equal measure. “But it was time I gave you this.”

He held up the bundle still covered in its fabric wrapping.

“What is it?”

“You’ll find out. But you have to earn your gift first.”

“It’s not a gift if I have to earn it,” she reminded him.

“Then we’ll call it a ‘prize.’”

“How do I earn my prize?”

“Trial by fire.”

“You are in a mood tonight, aren’t you?” she asked. “Sir?”

“Do you accept the challenge?” he asked, his eyebrow cocked, his smile tight but amused. She was thirty-eight years old, and she had loved Søren since she was fifteen...and yet...after all this time he could still scare the shit out of her.

God, she loved him.

“Yes, sir,” she said. “I want my prize.”

Søren cupped her face again, kissed her lips again.

“I already have my prize.” He kissed her on the forehead.

She stood unmoving and made no protest as Søren stripped her naked. He unbuttoned her blouse and slid it off her arms. Under her shirt she wore a black corset, which he took an unnecessary amount of time unlacing. The more eager she was to have him inside her, the longer he took getting there. Her own fault for falling in love with a sadist, not that she regretted it. He unzipped her leather skirt and pushed it over her hips and down her legs. His fingers on her bare skin as he unhooked her stockings set her to shivering, even more when he tickled the bottoms of her feet as he pulled them off.

If she hadn’t loved Søren before, she would fall in love with him again for looking at her thirty-eight-year-old body with the same desire that had once gazed on her naked seventeen-year-old form. She’d never suffered from a lack of self-esteem and had, more than once—rightly—been accused of being egotistical. A woman who took money from men for the privilege of letting them worship her had to have more than her fair share of confidence. But finding herself so much closer to forty than thirty had taken a little getting used to. Time had only increased Søren’s beauty. The gray in his hair could barely be distinguished from the blond. The years had sharpened his features, scraped off the rough edges, and sculpted him into a man worthy of all the respect and love she had to give him. She had an older man to adore and a younger man who adored her.

Life was good.

“Someone’s quiet,” Søren said as he lifted her off her feet and laid her onto the bed on her back. The linen sheets tickled her, made her aware of every nerve in her body. “Are you nervous?”

“I was thinking about tomorrow.”

“‘Do not worry about tomorrow for tomorrow will worry about itself,’” Søren said.

“Yes, Father Stearns. I’ve read Matthew, too.”

Søren set a basin on the nightstand by the bed and soaked a small white towel in the water.

“Good. Now stop worrying and hold still while I set you on fire.”

Nora held still.

Fire-play wasn’t so much about pain as it was fear. Fear and its mirror twin—trust. She closed her eyes while Søren painted her stomach with an ice-cold gel that smelled of rubbing alcohol. He took each of her wrists and buckled them one by one to the headboard with leather cuffs.

Søren lifted the candle off the bedside table and moved it slowly up and down her body six inches or less from her skin. When he inflicted his sadism on her, he did so intently, with respect for the act and respect for her willingness to serve him. Playing with fire was dangerous and it was rare when Søren asked her to submit to this sort of edge-play. She knew him. When anxious, troubled or under stress, he centered himself with sadism. He could pretend he wasn’t worried about tomorrow, but she knew better. It was on his mind as much as hers.

Outside the castle, the storm battered the windows and the walls. But the eye of the storm was their bed. All was quiet if not calm. Søren brought the flame to the edge of the S and at once it flared into life.

Eleanor breathed in and didn’t exhale. She could see the fire, smell the bitter smoke, but strangely could not feel it. The fluid formed a barrier between the fire and her body. As if the fire was a tongue lapping at her skin. But it did scare her and it was real fear. Real fire meant real fear. Real fear meant Søren was burning in his own fire. His breaths were shallow with barely controlled desire. His eyes were all pupil now, black as night, and in the inky depths she could see the fire reflected. Not once did he look away from the flame and neither did she.

Søren stripped himself of his clothes even as he watched the fire burn itself out on her.

He wrote on her with the gel again, set it alight again and watched her burn again.

When the fire was nearly but not entirely out, Søren straddled her hips and stretched out on top of her, using his own body to snuff out the last of the fire. He was aroused, brutally hard, and she felt his erection pressing against her thighs. She opened her legs wide for him and pushed her hips into his. He entered her fully, sliding through her wetness all the way to the core of her. Nora pulled against the bonds on her wrists, moaned and exhaled as he pulled out and thrust into her again.

This was bliss. How she had missed him these weeks she’d been in Europe. She loved Nico, loved the days and especially the nights she spent with him at his vineyard. The rest of her time was Søren’s. Nico’s one true love was his vineyard, and the vineyard was a demanding and possessive mistress. And Nora’s one true love was Søren, who was a demanding and possessive master. She and Nico understood each other perfectly. She was a Dominant herself, and when she had Nico on his knees in front of her, his lips on her ankles, her welts on his back, that was Nora. But Nora was only one half of her.

“My Little One,” Søren said into her ear as he moved inside her, filling her. “My Eleanor.”

And Eleanor was the other half.

He kissed her breasts, sucking deep on the hard tips, and massaged her clitoris until the room filled with the sounds of her cries of pleasure, her cries for release. He didn’t let her come yet. He ordered her not to come. An impossible command. He was inside her, thick and heavy, pushing hard and deep. She spread her legs wider, dug her heels into the bed and breathed into her stomach as she staved off her building climax.

“Tell me you love me and I might let you come,” Søren said, punctuating the command with a rough thrust that made her flinch with both pain and pleasure.

“I love you, my sir, with all my heart.”

“Tell me you want me.”

“I want no one in the world as much as I want you. I love your body, your cock. I want you to come inside me. Please...”

“Tell me a secret you’ve never told me, and I’ll consider letting you come.”

“I fucked a nun at my mother’s convent,” Nora said, and Søren stopped moving. He pushed himself up and stared down at her.

“What?” she said, batting her eyelashes up at him in feigned innocence. “You asked.”

“Lesson learned.” He lowered himself onto her again and kissed her once more. The kiss was wild now, as wild as the night. He bit her lips, pushed his tongue into her mouth as he rammed into her with ruthless unforgiving thrusts. It was exactly what she needed. Her back arched and the muscles in her back coiled tight as a spring. She felt the ecstasy drawing together, pooling in her stomach. Then she rose and rose, higher and higher until she reached that throbbing peak and her body went still and stayed that way for one long perfect moment.

With a final cry, she came with a shudder that racked her entire body. She crashed back to earth with a thousand flutters of her inner muscles that left her shaking underneath Søren. He ignored her climax as he sought his own, thrusting into her faster and harder until he released at last, filling her with his heat.

Still coupled together Nora wrapped her legs around his back and relaxed her breathing. She loved this moment when she could feel the wild racing of his heart against hers. Bliss suffused her, peace and contentment. And then Søren spoke.

“You fucked a nun at your mother’s convent.”

“This is what you get for making me earn an orgasm by telling you a secret. It was the first thing that popped into my head.”

Søren pulled out of her and looked down at her again. Then he laughed, a bright big laugh, big as the castle. Even as he unlocked her wrists from the bed and chafed her hands that had grown cool while in bondage, he still laughed.

“I will never reach the end of you,” Søren said. “Every time I think I’ve seen it all, you lead me to a hidden door and open it.”

“In my defense,” Nora said, “she was beautiful, and I hadn’t had sex in a very long time.”

“When was this?” he asked as he slid off the bed and pulled his trousers back on. He didn’t bother with his shirt and that was fine by her.

“That year,” she said, and didn’t have to say anything else. Søren knew what “that year” was, what it meant. They didn’t talk about that year, never talked about that year. In fact, they did their best to pretend that year never happened.

“I see.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to bring it up. I have no blood in my brain when you’re inside me.”

“I’m not angry.” Søren poured water into a porcelain basin and brought it to the bedside table. He dipped a white cloth into the water. With it he wiped the residue of candle wax off her body.

“I would have told you if you’d asked,” she said as Søren rinsed the cloth in the basin. She opened her legs for him and now he cleaned the semen off her vulva and inner thighs. “You never asked,” she reminded him.

“That was a hard year for all of us,” he said.

“I never asked you what you did while I was gone.”

“Suffered,” he said, meeting her eyes.

“Now I remember why I didn’t ask.”

“It sounds as if you didn’t suffer the entire time you were gone.”

“You know me. If I’m not having sex, I go a little crazy.”

“What’s your excuse the rest of the time then?” he asked and she play-punched him in the arm. He captured her by the wrists and kissed her again, entirely against her will. Well, mostly against. Partly. She pretended it was against her will anyway.

After he released her arms, she clambered out of the bed and found her suitcase. The castle was full of guests now, and all day she’d been working, answering questions, making decisions, putting all the finishing touches into place. If someone came knocking on her door—a distinct possibility—she should probably have some clothes on before she answered it. She slipped into a pair of black-and-white silk pajama pants and a matching lacy camisole top. She kept her collar on for no reason other than she’d missed it. From Nico she’d learned the fine art of starting a fire in a fireplace, and she went to work stacking her kindling.

“So do I get my prize?” she asked.

Before she could answer, the door flew open, the rusty hinges screaming in protest. Kingsley rushed in and slammed the door behind him.

“What the hell?” she said, standing up.

“You have to hide me,” Kingsley said, out of breath from running. “She’s after me.”

“Who? Céleste?” Nora asked. Kingsley and his daughter had been playing hide-and-seek all day in the castle.

“Juliette,” Kingsley said. He looked at Søren and said, “Take off your pants if you want me to live.”

“You’ve tried that line before,” Søren reminded him. “It didn’t work the last time you tried it, either.”

“I’m a dead man then,” Kingsley said, barring the door behind him.

“Why do you need Søren to take his pants off?” Nora asked. “I mean, other than the usual reason.”

Kingsley pointed down at himself.

“That’s why,” he said.

Nora looked at him. He wore a black shirt and had his hair pulled back in a ponytail. His feet were bare; he looked like a pirate or a rogue or both and none of this was unusual. Except for one thing. Every man in the wedding party had already been given their formal wear.

So instead of his usual clothes, Kingsley wore a kilt.

“Juliette has a kilt fetish?” Nora asked, now understanding Kingsley’s panic.

“A newly discovered kilt fetish,” Kingsley said. “She’s had me three times yesterday and three times today already—”

“You’re her Dominant,” Søren reminded him. “Satisfying her needs is your job.”

Kingsley ignored him. “She’s hunting me down for a fourth. I’m a man, not a machine. I feel violated, used...”

“You’re being melodramatic. You know you love it,” Søren said.

“Why does she keep calling me Connor in bed?” Kingsley asked.

“This explains why she’s always trying to make me watch Highlander with her,” Nora said as she stood up in front of the fireplace.

Nora looked at Søren and awaited his verdict.

“Please don’t make me go,” Kingsley said in a pleading tone. “I swear it’ll break off if she gets her hands on me again.”

Søren delivered his judgment.

“Throw him out.”

“You heard the man,” Nora said as she strode to the door, her feet tingling on the cold stone floor. “The priest has spoken.”

“I’ll be dead by morning,” Kingsley said, pressing his back to the door.

“We’ll miss you very much.” Nora reached past him for the door bar. “I have my collar on. I have to follow orders.”

“I’ll beg for my life. How’s that?” Kingsley looked straight at Søren.

“Beg then,” Søren said as he dug through his suitcase and pulled out a T-shirt. He was a cruel man and putting on clothes was the most sadistic of all the many cruelties he inflicted on his lovers. “I’d like to hear this.”

“He’s in a mood,” Nora said to Kingsley. “I had to beg for my orgasm.”

“I can beg. I’ll beg.”

Nora crossed her arms and waited. She hoped Kingsley would find a way to earn his way into staying. She’d missed him too these past few weeks she’d been gone.

“S’il vous plaît, mon ami, mon amour, mon coeur, mon maître, mon monstre, I will do anything if you let me stay. Anything at all.”

“Anything?” Søren repeated. “Define anything.”

Kingsley looked at Nora then he crooked his finger at Søren.

Søren sighed and walked over to Kingsley, who cupped his face and whispered something. Nora strained to hear what Kingsley said to Søren, but his voice was too low and his French too rapid. But whatever he said must have been good. Søren’s eyes widened.

Søren met her eyes. “He can stay.”

“Merci, mon amant.” Kingsley took Søren’s face in his hands and kissed him first on each cheek and then on the mouth. Nora rolled her eyes. “You have saved me. Bless you.”

Kingsley released Søren, walked to the fireplace and warmed his feet and hands. It was spring in Scotland and the castle was drafty. She almost felt sorry for all the men running around in kilts. Their pain. Her gain.

“It’s good you’re here anyway,” Nora said as she returned to her suitcase. “I have something from Nico for you.”

She pulled a bottle of wine out of her suitcase and a small envelope.

“‘Rosanella Petite Syrah, 2004,’” Kingsley read the label aloud. “I have such a good son.”

“He says it’s the best vintage so far. He sent six bottles with me.”

“We’ll save it for the reception tomorrow then.” Kingsley opened the envelope and pulled out a sheet of paper. Nora peeked over Kingsley’s shoulder. Reading French wasn’t her strong suit but even she knew enough to recognize the words With love from your son, Nico. Kingsley grinned at the note before folding it again and slipping it into his sporran. “He’s inviting us all to the vineyard’s one-hundred-year anniversary fête this fall. He says it wouldn’t be a real celebration without me, Juliette and Céleste there.”

“You better go then,” Nora said. “You wouldn’t want to ruin his party.” Her relationship with Nico hadn’t been easy for Kingsley to accept at first. He’d never been angry with her, not really, but he’d struggled as they all had, herself included. But after some time, some talking, Kingsley had given them his blessing. While Kingsley had loved his son from the moment he knew of his existence, Nico rebelled at the idea of accepting any man but the man who’d raised him as his father. But Nora had served as a bridge between father and son, and step by step, story by story she’d led Nico by the hand to Kingsley’s side. Kingsley had Juliette as his submissive, Søren as his Dominant. He didn’t need Nora in his bed anymore for either purpose. What Kingsley needed far more was his son’s love, and that Nora had given him.

“Thank you for this,” Kingsley said, folding up the invitation and tucking it back in the envelope. She knew he wasn’t thanking her simply for delivering the mail.

“My pleasure,” Nora said, and kissed him on the cheek.

“So what will we do tonight?” Kingsley asked as he left the heat of the fireplace and walked to the window. Outside the storm continued its assault on the castle. “Tell ghost stories? It’s a good night for it.”

“Perhaps Eleanor would be willing to tell us about the time she, and I quote, ‘fucked a nun’ at her mother’s convent,” Søren said, sitting on the bed and stacking a large red pillow behind his back.

“You fucked a nun at your mother’s convent?” Kingsley asked, turning back to stare at her askance. “When did that happen?”

“That year,” Nora said, and Kingsley winced. He knew what she meant, as well.

“And you never told me?” Kingsley asked.

“How is me sleeping with a nun any of your business?”

“Because it’s you sleeping with a nun,” Kingsley said with dramatic emphasis. “That is the very definition of my business. I need to know what she looked like, her name, if she had small breasts or large. Do you have pictures of her and you together? And can you tell me exactly what you did with her in detail while I take notes?”

“I could,” Nora said. “I’m not going to.”

“I could order you to,” Søren said, and Nora groaned.

“You’re as bad as he is,” she said, pointing a finger at Kingsley. “You’re perverts, the both of you. J’accuse.”

Kingsley nodded. “J’accepte.”

“That was a really hard year for all of us,” Nora said. “And it was twelve years ago. Can you give me one good reason why we should dredge all of that up tonight?”

“I can,” Kingsley said. “Because you fucked a nun. C’est la raison.”

Nora put a hand to her forehead. “Dear Lord, save me from these men tonight.”

“I would like to know,” Søren said, and the room went still and solemn with the tenor of his words. “Neither of you ever told me what happened that year you both were gone.”

“Maybe because you don’t want to know,” Nora said as she walked to the bed and crawled into it on the side opposite Søren. She pulled a pillow to her stomach and sat cross-legged. “You weren’t our favorite person that year, after all.”

“I wasn’t my favorite person that year, either,” Søren said, bending his leg to rest his arm on his knee. Kingsley came to the bed and stretched out at the foot, lying on his side to face them. “You both had disappeared on me and when you came back, everything had changed.”

“I met Juliette,” Kingsley said. “That’s what I did that year.”

“You’ve never told me how,” Søren said. “And you—” he looked at Nora “—never told me why you came back.”

“Do you really want to know?” she asked, meeting his eyes. “We’re happy now, all of us.” She glanced at Kingsley and back at Søren.

“Ignorance is a poor excuse for bliss,” Søren said, looking pointedly at her. “Tell me what happened.”

Nora turned her head and looked into Kingsley’s dark brown eyes. They stared at each other for a long quiet moment. She’d never told Kingsley what had happened when she’d left Søren. And Kingsley had never told her. In her more honest moments she’d admit she was curious what Kingsley did in that time and why he’d left when she had.

“That sounded like an order,” Nora said to Kingsley.

“It was,” Kingsley said, as accustomed to following Søren’s orders now as she.

“Who starts?” she asked him.

“You left first,” Kingsley said to Nora. The playfulness had left his demeanor. She saw the dark light of secrets in his eyes.

“You left after me, though. Why?”

“You don’t know?” Kingsley said.

“No. I was afraid to ask,” Nora confessed. “I thought...I thought all kinds of things that year. I think I went a little crazy for a while. But I guess you would too if you were trapped in a convent surrounded by nuns with nothing but your thoughts to keep you company.”

“And a nun in your bed,” Kingsley reminded her.

“And yes, there was a nun in my bed,” Nora said with a sigh.

“This is my favorite story already,” Kingsley said. “Go on.”

Nora took a breath, got comfortable with the sheets and pillow.

“Well...” she began. “It was a dark and stormy night...”

“Eleanor,” Søren said.

“It was,” she said. “I’m not making that up. That night we fought, it was dark and stormy, remember?”

Søren nodded. “I remember. Go on.”

Nora closed her eyes, let herself drift back to that night, that terrible night and that year, that dark and stormy year.

She was twenty-six years old.

Søren had just returned home from Rome.

And she was in the worst pain of her life.

“It was a dark and stormy night,” Nora began again, opening her eyes to look at Søren. He returned her gaze with placid, waiting curiosity. “And I was leaving you. Forever.”