Author: Tiffany Reisz

“Celibacy wasn’t always mandatory for the priesthood. New Testament church leaders were reported to have had wives. It wasn’t until the eleventh century that it was spelled out as obligatory in the First Council of the Lateran. The Second Council of the Lateran banned jousting.”

“Jousting?”

“Yes. They were apparently of equal theological weight.”

“You don’t joust, do you?”

“Only with Eleanor.”

“I remember my European history. I don’t think many of the popes even adhered to the vow of celibacy. Rather unfair to enforce it among the priests.”

“It hasn’t been enforced. Not consistently. Most African priests do get married and the bishops turn a blind eye. Eastern Rite priests are allowed to marry. Only the breaches that reach the public are punished.”

“So what’s the purpose of the vow? Psychological torture?”

“There are varying theories. When the church became rich, it had a vested interest in keeping itself rich. Married priests meant sons. Sons inherited money and land. The church wanted to keep that money and land in its own hands. Thus was born the vow of celibacy. Now, of course, most bishops knew the priests would still have lovers and mistresses. But if they weren’t allowed to marry, their children would all be illegitimate and couldn’t inherit.”

“That’s the reason?”

“One of several. I would say it’s the real reason, which is why it’s difficult for those of us who know church history to take the vow as something God intended. The church’s official position is that priests are to be celibate because Christ was celibate. It’s also why women can’t become priests.”

“Christ was also Jewish and circumcised. Do they require all priests to be of Jewish descent and circumcised, as well? If that were true, then my husband would make a better priest than you. And I promise, he wouldn’t. It’s ludicrous to draw the line so fine.”

“I won’t argue with you. The Jesuits have always been more liberal on these issues. A married Catholic woman on birth control is considered unchaste even if she’s faithful to her husband. We tend to overlook those types of glaring absurdities.”

“And overlook the occasional lover?”

Søren started to smile at her question before composing his face once more.

“I know a few Jesuits who also have lovers. Other men, mostly.”

“Do they know about you and Nora?”

“The only Jesuit who knows is the priest who hears my confessions.”

“And what does he say?”

Søren smiled and something in that smile made her toes curl up inside her trainers.

“He says to send her his way when I’m done with her.”

Grace only looked at him before bursting into laughter.

“I’m not joking, I promise.”

“I believe you.”

“He’s in his seventies, my confessor. I’ve warned him a night with Eleanor would mean the end of him. He said he was quite content to go out with a bang and meet Saint Peter with a smile on his face.”

“I like him already.”

“I asked him thirty years ago before I went to Rome if God would let someone like me be a priest.”

“You told him what you were?”

“I did. It might have been one of the more awkward conversations of my life. But he listened, asked a few questions, asked if my needs could be met without intercourse, which they can. I never intended to break the vows of chastity and celibacy.”

“So why did you?”

“Let’s simply say that a young Eleanor Schreiber drove a hard bargain. Fifteen years old and she was already trying to get me into bed. I should have taken her up on it, not made her wait for four years for me. All that time we could have been together...and now time is running out.”

His words, so simple, so sorrowful, hit her like a fist in her stomach.

“We can’t think like that.” Grace shook her head. “You can’t think like that. We know where she is, don’t we?”

“Yes, we do.” He pulled Laila’s necklace from his pocket and opened it. Grace leaned in close to look at the pictures inside.

“Your mother was beautiful.” No one could doubt the young mother in the pictures had given birth to the man sitting next to her. They had the same intelligent eyes, the same complexion, the same coloring, the same Nordic beauty. He’d even inherited his mother’s mouth...the lips sculpted and inviting.

“She was. Laila looks very much like her. My God, I can’t believe Marie-Laure stooped so low to make my niece a pawn in this.”

“How did she get here?”

“Marie-Laure got into Eleanor’s email somehow. Laila and Eleanor email each other all the time. Laila thought Eleanor was bringing her to the States to surprise me. Nasty surprise.”

“That poor girl. Is she all right?”

“She will be. I made her call her mother and tell her she was visiting me. Laila refuses to go back until we find Nora, and I don’t have the heart to make her. Laila...she’s worked at a veterinary clinic after school every day for four years. My sister, Freyja, is very well-off.” He smiled faintly and swallowed hard. Grace wanted to touch him for comfort but pulled her hand back at the last moment. “So Laila doesn’t have to work. She was out walking one day and found a dog on the side of the road. He’d been hit by a car. That fourteen-year-old girl picked him up and carried him into town to the vet’s office. That’s how she got the after-school job. Because when the vet asked her why she’d carried this stray mutt so far Laila said that not even a dog deserved to die alone.”

“My God, what a beautiful heart she has.” No doubt Laila was distraught at this very moment, worried her own aunt might die alone.

“She does. She takes after my mother in more than her appearance. My mother survived a great deal of trauma and tragedy and went on to have a happy life.”

“Is she still alive?” Grace asked before she let her mind wander any farther down any path that ended at Søren’s mouth.

“No. She died a few years ago.”

“You loved her very much. I can tell.” His eyes softened when he spoke of her. She rather liked seeing that.

“I did. She...” He paused and closed the locket. “It’s a long, ugly story. I won’t bore you with it.”

Grace nearly laughed at that.

“You couldn’t bore me if you read me the phone book. Talk to me. I’d rather hear your words than the thoughts in my head.”

He nodded sympathetically. He must have felt the same. Better to talk of anything except what was happening right now.

“My mother came to America on a music scholarship and took a job with my father and his wife as an au pair for my half sister Elizabeth.”

“And he fell in love with her?”

“No. He raped her.”

Grace covered her mouth with her hand.

“My father was a bitter man. A penniless English baron of all things.”

“Are you serious?”

“Quite. His father squandered the family fortune. He came to America and leveraged his title to marry wealth. He tried to recapture the glory he thought should have been his. He made everyone call him Lord Stearns.”

“I live in England where we still have a peerage, and I can’t even imagine growing up in such an environment.”

“He was an evil man, my father. Highly manipulative, charming. He commanded respect wherever he went. No one would cross him. No one would dare. They had no idea what kind of person he was.”

“But you knew.”

“I knew.” He tightened his fingers around the locket. “I knew my mother feared him. I learned to fear him, too. Most mothers tucking their children in tell them bedtime stories. My mother recited her full name and address back in Copenhagen to me every night. That was my bedtime story. Her name, her address, her father’s name, names of relatives. Gisela Magnussen, datter af Søren Niels Magnussen, 23 Halfdansgade 2300 København S....”

Søren closed his eyes as he recited his mother’s bedtime story to him. Grace stopped breathing as his voice dropped to a whisper. She saw the girl, only eighteen, pale hair, gray eyes, sitting on the edge of a small boy’s bed. She watched the young, scared mother bring the covers to his chin as she whispered to him in a language no one else in the house spoke. Did she tell her young son why she made him learn names and addresses by rote? Or did she make a child’s game of it?

“Every night she told me the same story. Every night I had to repeat it all back to her. She knew it was only a matter of time before he shipped me off to school and tired of her.”

“She feared you two would be separated?”

“She thought he would kill her.”

Søren met Grace’s eyes a moment before looking away again.

“Instead, he simply let her go and moved on to a new victim.”

“My God, what your mother must have suffered....”

“It’s unbearable to think about. She loved us, my half sister Elizabeth and me. That’s why she stayed and didn’t leave, didn’t run away. Love kept her a prisoner in that house. Love for me.”

“Were you separated?”

“When I was five. He sent me to an English boarding school. My mother was summarily dismissed and returned to Denmark. She married and had my other half sister Freyja. I didn’t see her again or meet my half sister until I was eighteen.”

“What was it like when you saw her again?”

He paused and seemed to ponder the question.

“I can only answer your question by saying that I hope heaven is full of half the joy our hearts were that day. Even now that she’s gone, I still hear the echoes of that joy, still feel the aftershocks.”

Grace’s throat tightened.

“I can’t even imagine.” Grace thought of the child she once carried. A child never meant to be and yet still a small part of her grieved for what could have been. “What she must have felt losing you and then finding you again....”

He fell silent and stared at the pictures in the locket. Grace ached to touch him—his hand, his face—but the priest’s collar he wore around his neck and the wall he’d warned her to stay behind kept her from reaching out to him.

“And now the only other woman in the world I have ever loved is trapped in the very same house where my mother was trapped and raped and lived in fear. And for the same reason—for loving me. There is no way Marie-Laure did this on her own. She has help. She has... I can’t even think about it.”

“Then don’t think about it,” Grace said with more confidence than she felt. “Nora wouldn’t want us to. She’d want us to get her the hell out of there. We know where she is, yes? What’s the plan?”

“Kingsley will attempt to get her out. He begged me to let him try. I couldn’t say no.”

“Alone?”

“If anyone can rescue her without bloodshed, it’s him.”

“Without bloodshed?”

“He’s lived with the guilt of his sister’s death for thirty years. All this time he blamed himself, believing it was suicide. I can’t ask him to kill her again. I won’t.”

“If that doesn’t work, if he can’t get her out, is there a plan B?”

Søren didn’t answer.

Kingsley came up the stairs and faced them from the landing. “Daniel said to come anytime.”

“Who’s Daniel?” Grace asked.

Kingsley gave a cold sort of laugh. “He’s an old...friend, I suppose. His late wife and I were lovers before they met and got married. When she died, Daniel holed up in his house for a few years. Took his pet to get him back out again.” Kingsley pointed at Søren.