The Mistress (The Original Sinners 4)

“But what is it?” Marie-Laure interrupted. She held up the square of linen. “Why does it even matter? It’s linen. It’s nothing.”

“It’s not nothing,” Nora said, anger creeping into her voice. “That’s a maniturgium.”

“Speak English. Not Catholic.”

“When a priest is ordained, his hands are blessed with holy oils. The maniturgium is a linen hand towel that’s used to wipe his hands of those oils. It’s a tradition that the priest...” Nora paused and swallowed. “The priest gives the maniturgium to his mother. She is to be buried with it, holding it in her hands, so that when she goes to heaven the angels will see that she gave birth to a priest. And they will open the gates at once and let her into God’s presence.”

Nora shut her eyes tight. Tears escaped and rolled down her cheeks.

“And Søren’s mother gave it to me. She wanted me to have it because she said that with or without the church’s blessing or understanding or acknowledgment, I was the wife of a priest. I took it with me to her funeral. I’d left Søren, and I didn’t feel right about keeping it. I wanted his mother to be buried with it if that’s what he wanted. But it wasn’t. He wanted me to keep it. He wanted me to be buried with it someday. And I wanted to keep it. Forever.”

Marie-Laure stared at Nora, who sat on the floor tied up and weeping. She’d never felt so helpless, so hopeless, so broken.

“If you kill me,” Nora said between tears, “please let me die holding it. Please.”

Marie-Laure looked at Damon, who sat and simply waited.

“Cut her loose,” she ordered. Damon raised an eyebrow. “Do it.”

He came to Nora and pulled out a knife. He cut the ropes, cut the duct tape and left her sitting with only the handcuffs on her wrists.

“Give me the ring,” Marie-Laure said, “and I’ll give the cloth to you.”

Nora shook her head. “I can’t. It’s not mine to give.”

Marie-Laure reached in her pocket and pulled out a long wooden match. She struck it and brought the flame to the cloth.

The next sound anyone heard was the sound of a ten-carat diamond ring striking the floor at Marie-Laure’s feet. Marie-Laure blew out the match and handed the cloth to Nora, who clutched it to her chest.

“You should thank me, you know,” Marie-Laure said, picking up the diamond ring and placing it on her hand. “You’re one of those people who doesn’t know what she wants until she’s got a gun to her head and a match poised ready to burn her whole world down. The day I realized my husband was in love with my brother was the best day of my life. I learned what mattered that day. Me. Only me.”

“Thank you,” Nora said, grateful that she held the cloth in her hand again. It gave her peace, hope, although she didn’t know why.

“He loves you...my God, he does love you, doesn’t he?”

“Yes, he does.”

“And you left him. Why?”

Nora turned her head and smiled at the last morning she might ever see.

“I was so young...” Nora could barely speak through the tears. “I fell in love with him when I was fifteen. And he loved me, too. Even a palace starts to feel like a prison if you’ve been in it since you were fifteen years old.”

“But it was a palace.”

“It was paradise...” She smiled through her tears. “And paradise had a wall around it.”

“You don’t like walls, do you?”

“This was a big wall. When I was a teenager, Søren made me water a stick in the ground every day for six months. A goddamn f**king dead stick. A test of obedience. Jesuits are into obedience.”

“You didn’t like that?”

Nora glared at her through narrowed eyes.

“Do I seem like the obedient type to you?”

“But you did obey him.”

“As long as I could. As much as I could. Those were the old marriage vows, right? Love, honor, obey? I did all three.”

“Marriage vows? You compare your sick little world of collars to marriage? To a sacrament? No matter what blessing his mother gave you, you aren’t his wife, you never were, not in any way. He married me, not you. And he’s still married to me. I’m the wife. You’re the mistress. But don’t feel bad. I remarried when I was twenty-five to a powerful man. I didn’t love him but I respected him. And I hated that I wasn’t truly his wife because I had married another years before. Your priest—he made a mistress of both of us.”

“I don’t care what I am. I never have. It’s everyone else who cares. Not me. I don’t care if I’m his mistress or his wife. I only wanted Søren. People tell me to get married, settle down, have kids. Fuck them. They don’t know me. You know who never told me how to live my life? Søren. He asked me to obey him, not to change for him. That’s why I could never ask him to leave the priesthood, never let him marry me, because he never asked me to be somebody else so I won’t ask him to be somebody else. And I left Søren the day he asked me to marry him, because that was the one day he asked me to change who I was and that was the one day he tried to change for me. He’ll never make that mistake again. Look, I don’t give a damn about being a wife or a mistress. I am who I am. I don’t need paperwork to prove Søren loves me. I don’t need paperwork to prove anything.”