The Mistress. Tiffany Reisz

own Bible, too. He always kept it with him, and read from it all the time.”

      Nora suppressed a mad, tired laugh. All zee time. Wherever Marie-Laure had been living, she hadn’t completely lost the French accent there.

      “He is kind of gay for the Bible,” Nora agreed. “So what?”

      “So, I watched him one night opening his Bible. He turned to a page and smiled. I’d never seen him smile like that. I know he didn’t see me watching him. I know he wouldn’t have smiled like that for me to see.”

      “Smiling at the Bible? Must have been reading Song of Solomon.”

      “Not quite.”

      Marie-Laure opened her Bible and took out a scrap of paper, yellowed slightly with age.

      “He’d stepped out for a moment. Father Henry came for him. Alone with his Bible, I told myself I simply wanted to see if he’d written our names and the date of our marriage in it. He hadn’t, of course. My heart broke but still I turned the pages. Perhaps I’d find some comfort in this book he read so much. I found no comfort, but I did find this.”

      She handed the note to Nora. The bodyguard made no move as Nora reached out and took it from her. Carefully she unfolded it and read the words.

      You Blond Monster, I’d give my right arm for another night like last night. Knowing you, you’d take it.

      At the bottom of the note were two more words.

      Je t’aime.

      French for I love you.

      Kingsley had left Søren a love note in his Bible, and Søren had kept it.

      “There were dozens of them,” Marie-Laure continued, the mad smile now gone from her face. “Dozens of notes from my brother to my husband. Most were like that—a mix of hate and love. Some were only love. Some only hate. One note …” Marie-Laure paused to laugh. “One note simply said, ‘Bad news—I’m pregnant. It’s yours.’ My brother and his sense of humor.” She shook her head like an older sister would at the stupid joke of her younger brother.

      Nora wanted to laugh, too, at young Kingsley’s thirty-year-old dirty joke, but at the sweetness of it, the silliness, the absolute intimacy implied by the stupid crack that Kingsley felt the need to write down and tuck into Søren’s Bible for him to find and laugh over later. No one finding those notes could have missed the meaning of them. Kingsley and Søren—it wasn’t sex or lust that brought them together again and again. They’d been in love. Nora knew it. She’d known it for years. But Marie-Laure hadn’t known it until that moment.

      “I kept this one note as evidence if I needed it,” Marie-Laure said, her voice now cold and emotionless again. “I left the rest where I found them. My husband … I’d never met anyone so intelligent. And yet, love made him so weak and so foolish that he left two dozen pieces of evidence of his affair with my brother inside his Bible. Oh, yes, my husband was weak. Love made him weak. And I realized then love had made me weak, too. I didn’t want to be weak anymore.”

      “I know they would have told you in time about them. Kingsley doesn’t like talking about that part of himself. But he would have. Eventually I know he would have.”

      “Doesn’t matter. They lied by omission. They used me.”

      “Used you? Søren told you that he wasn’t in love with you. You knew that before you married him. He thought you wanted the money, thought you needed it.”

      “I wanted him, loved him. And he didn’t love me. My own brother didn’t even love me. Kingsley loved my husband more than his own flesh and blood. My husband loved my brother more than his own wife. I didn’t know what to do. The notes I’d read … the words were burned into my mind. I prayed all the time. Days and days of walking alone in the woods trying to clear my head, trying to find an answer. Instead, I found the hermitage … their hermitage. And I got the miracle I’d prayed for.”

      “What miracle?”

      “A girl, a runaway, hiding out in the hermitage. Long dark hair, almost my height. It was meant to be. Destiny. She was perfect.”

      “Perfect for what?”

      “I’d given all the options so much thought. I could tell Christian what was happening. He loved me, worshipped me, thought my husband insane for never touching me. If I’d asked him he would kill my husband for me … kill my brother. But then I thought of those notes and how much they must love each other. And I did love Kingsley even though he’d stolen my husband’s affections from me. So I knew what I would do. I would kill myself.”

      “But you didn’t. You killed that poor girl.”

      “She had nothing. Nothing at all. She thought she’d find a new life in America. I merely saved her the heartache of disappointment.”

      “By murdering her? Yeah, you’re all heart.”

      “She was a gift. She made it so easy to disappear. No one even looked for me. I found the road, hitchhiked into Canada, found someone to take care of me … so easy to die.”

      “You didn’t die. You murdered someone.”

      Marie-Laure only shrugged as she sat her white Bible back on the bedside table.

      “Someone had to die for their sins, their lies. But I’m starting to think …”

      Her voice trailed off and she tapped her chin.

      Fear shivered over Nora’s skin.

      “Think what?” she whispered.

      “That one death was not enough.”

      

       12 THE PAWN

      Laila watched as her uncle and Kingsley spoke to each other in hushed French. She ached to know what the note said that she’d delivered. As the carrier, she felt she deserved to be told what it said. The anguish on her uncle’s face, his naked fear, however, kept her from demanding more answers. He’d tell her in time if she needed to know. No matter how scared she was, she trusted him.

      “Hey,” came Wes’s soft voice at her shoulder. “Let’s go get your face cleaned up. Okay?”

      She let him take her by the hand as she stood up on shaking legs. He led her to a bathroom at the end of the hall. While Wes dug through drawers she sat on the countertop by the sink.

      “Wow.”

      “Wow what?” she asked, keeping her back to the mirror behind her. She didn’t even want to see how bad she looked.

      “There is, like, an entire hospital full of first-aid supplies in this bathroom. I’m not even going to think about why.”

      Laila smiled. “I can probably guess.”

      Wes washed his hands in the sink for a solid two minutes. He scrubbed his nails, used tons of soap and scalding water and dried them on a new clean towel.

      “You wash your hands like a surgeon,” she said.

      He smiled ear to ear, a smile so bright it was like a sunbeam breaking through the clouds. But the cloud came back in an instant and both sun and smile were gone again.

      “I work in a hospital. Part-time orderly stuff. I want to be a doctor someday, though.” Wes tossed the towel aside.

      “I work in an animal clinic. I’d be too scared to work with people. They talk back.”

      “That’s my problem with working with animals. They can’t tell me where it hurts.” He stood directly in front of her so that her knees almost touched his hips. “Can you tell me where it hurts?”

      “I think I’m okay. I’m