The Mistress (The Original Sinners 4)

“Paperwork...good word. It’s the only thing that separates you from me. A wife is nothing but a mistress with paperwork. At least he loved you. He never even gave a damn about me.”

“He did, though. He did. He was in love with Kingsley, but he never wanted anything bad to happen to you. He never wanted to hurt you.”

“But I know what he is now. Him not wanting to hurt me? That’s the final proof he didn’t care about me at all.”

Nora couldn’t argue with that. The two people he loved the most, her and Kingsley, were the two people Søren hurt the most.

“I lost face because of him.” Marie-Laure knelt down in front of Nora. “It’s a fine funny phrase—‘lost face.’ It means to lose honor, to be humiliated. A whole school of boys who worshipped me and the one who should have, my own husband, cared nothing.”

“He tried to care.”

“Only for Kingsley’s sake. And now, thirty years later, I have lost face again. Look at me. Look.” Marie-Laure grabbed Nora by the chin and held her with bruising strength. “I’m old now. I’m not beautiful anymore. My face...I’ve lost it. And he, he’s still so...fucking...beautiful.” With those words Marie-Laure’s face contorted into true ugliness.

“You’ll die,” Nora said, and meant it. “If you kill me, or you kill him, you’ll die. You know it. Kingsley will hunt you down to the ends of the earth if you hurt one of his own.”

“Maybe that’s what I want. Maybe I don’t want to live anymore.”

“Because you’re not as pretty as you were when you were twenty-one? Is that all you have? Is there nothing else to you but your beauty? You lose your beauty and what’s left?”

Marie-Laure let go of Nora’s chin and stood up.

“Only my hate.”

29

THE ROOK

Grace woke at dawn and knew something wasn’t right. Laila slept next to her in the bed. Usually Grace woke up gradually, downing cup after cup of coffee or black tea before coming fully to herself in the mornings. But now she vibrated like a live wire, alert and scared, although she didn’t know why.

She left Laila sleeping in the bed. Footsteps...she’d heard footsteps in the hall lingering outside the half-open door. That’s what had woken her. She entered the hall and followed the sound of the footsteps, her heart gripped in a panic she couldn’t explain, not even to herself.

At the top of the stairs she paused. Søren stood at the front door in his black clerics and white collar. Something about seeing him in his collar... She knew...she knew exactly why she’d woken and she knew exactly where he was going.

“No.” Grace raced down the stairs, her heart in her hands. “No...no, don’t go. Don’t.”

He turned around and came to her at the bottom of the stairway.

“It’s fine. It’s all right, Grace.”

She shook her head. “No, it’s not. You can’t go. Don’t...” And she wrapped her arms around him and held him tight to her, so tight it almost hurt her.

“I’m touched.” He laughed a little in her ear.

“Don’t.” She couldn’t get any other word past her throat. Let him laugh at her. She would hold him and keep him here if it killed her.

“I have to go,” he whispered, returning the embrace much more gently before pulling back and meeting her eyes. “It’s the only thing I can do.”

“But Kingsley...he was—”

“Kingsley went to Elizabeth’s house, and there was no way to get her out without killing his sister. I can’t ask him to do that, not even for me or Eleanor. I love him as much as I do her. I have to help them both now.”

“There has to be another way. I can’t...” She held his face in her hands. Never in her life had she felt such fear, such grief. Irrational, unreasonable...she barely knew the man and yet she felt to lose him would be to lose herself, to lose something priceless. She wouldn’t have begged for her own life this fervently. “Please...”

“I have to go. I have to get my Little One back. No matter the cost.”

“It’s too high. She killed that poor girl, that runaway. She’ll...you know she will.”

“It doesn’t matter. If it’s me she wants, then she’ll have me. She’ll have her vengeance. If there’s any chance at all Eleanor can come out of this alive, I have to take it.”

“There has to be a way, a plan. Something.”

“Grace...” Søren touched her cheek, wiped away a tear. “This was always the plan. I promised Kingsley a day to try. I knew he wouldn’t be able to go through with it. He’s grieved his whole life for the imagined crime of killing his sister. I can’t let him go through that again. Last time all he did was kiss me and he’s blamed himself thirty years for her death. How much will he suffer if he actually pulls the trigger this time?”

“You can’t save everyone. You can save yourself.”

“This is how I save myself.”

Grace shook her head, desperately seeking arguments, answers, anything she could say or do to convince him not to run off on this suicide mission.

“But Nora...she won’t want to live without you.”

“She already has. She left me years ago and made a life for herself. She’ll do it again. I’ve never known anyone as strong as she.”