The Mistress

“Where’s Elizabeth?” Nora demanded. “And Andrew?”

“Gone.” Marie-Laure waved her hand dismissively. “My husband apparently told her to leave the house and take her sons with her. Too bad. I would have liked to have met my sister-in-law at last.”

“Sons?” Nora caught a glimpse of a family photograph at the end of the hallway. Elizabeth, who was about Marie-Laure’s age, stood under a tree with her son Andrew at her side and a much younger boy in her arms.

“Oh, oui. She adopted another son three years ago. His name is Nathan. You didn’t know?”

Nora shook her head. Three years ago... Back then she did everything she could to stay out of Søren’s life. She knew if she stayed one second too long in his world, she’d never leave it again. Or she thought she’d never leave again if she went back. She thought Søren would never have let her. But he had and now she’d ended up here with his maniac dead wife. Never before had she more longed to be chained up to his bed with nowhere to go. Not for sex this time but for safety.

“I didn’t know. He doesn’t talk about Elizabeth much.”

“Never thought such a brave man would be so scared of his sister,” Marie-Laure said in a tone so taunting that Nora briefly considered trying her luck on a double murder/escape attempt.

“Not scared of his sister. Scarred by his sister. There’s a difference.”

“Scarred? Perhaps. Kingsley told me about Søren and Elizabeth...what they did together as children. He thought it would convince me that I’d married a man too scarred to love. I believed it for a day or two, wanted to believe it. But...”

“But what?” Nora asked, not sure she wanted the answer. Still it seemed expected of her to ask so she decided to play along for the time being.

“Damaged, my brother called my husband. Broken. Lies, obviously. He wasn’t broken. He was stronger than anyone I’d ever met. So I thought perhaps he was too strong to love me. Love makes one weak, makes one vulnerable. Perhaps he didn’t love me because he would not allow himself to be so weak. But he was weak.”

“Søren is not weak. Not now. Not ever.”

“Is that so? Let me show you something.”

Marie-Laure continued down the hall and Nora followed, the bodyguard Andrei right next to her not speaking but never once taking his eyes off her.

She entered a bedroom, large and opulent. One of the nicer guest rooms, Nora guessed, as it held no photographs or personal items that seemed to belong to the house or its inhabitants. Although Marie-Laure had clearly made herself quite at home. She sat on the cream-colored silk covers and gathered her robe around her like some princess in repose. From the nightstand she picked up a Bible with a white leather cover.

“One of the priests at the school gave me this as a wedding gift,” Marie-Laure said, caressing the engraved words on the front. “Father Henry. He even wrote the date of our marriage inside with our names.”

Marie-Laure smiled wanly at the book. She brought it to her lips and pressed them to the cover before looking at Nora again.

“I had such dreams for us. This Bible was my most precious possession. I loved to open it and see our names inside and our wedding date. I thought he wasn’t touching me because we still barely knew each other. I thought in a week or two, he’ll be more comfortable with me. If I give him enough time, then he’ll make love to me.”

“I’m sorry he couldn’t be what you wanted,” Nora said, mustering a modicum of real sympathy. But not sympathy for Marie-Laure, the kidnapping psycho on the bed. Only sympathy for the girl she’d once been, the girl who’d loved someone who would never love her back.

“No, you aren’t sorry. If he could have loved me back, we still would have been married. And where would you be if he hadn’t been your priest?”

“Dead.” Nora said the word quickly and simply and without hesitation. She said it because it was true. Had Søren never come into her life, she would have followed in her father’s footsteps. She would have followed them right into the grave.

“Dead. So love saved your life. It ended mine.”

If only, Nora thought, but decided to keep that remark to herself. Her cheek might not survive another slapping.

“I wanted to show you proof. You say my husband is not weak. I disagree. This is my Bible. My husband had his 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 g*y 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.”