He moved his attention from her arm to her leg. Søren raised her ankle to his legs and kissed the soft spot above the outer heel. She braced herself for what was next. When Søren covered her mouth with his other hand, she made no protest.

With two fingers and two fingers only he dug deep into the cavity under her ankle bone. The pain came so sharp and sudden she screamed against his palm.

For what felt like an hour he traversed her body with his hands, finding all the pressure points on her that when touched the right way would send acute agony flashing through her body like lightning. By the time he stopped, she lay panting and sweating on the rug. She had not a single mark on her body, not a single bruise. A flogging would have hurt less.

Søren licked his fingertips and pressed them into her clitoris as he pushed her thighs wide open with his knees.

Pleasure pooled between her legs and radiated out through her entire body. He kissed her mouth, her neck, her nipples, and she raised her hips into his hand.

“Please...” she whispered, desperate to have him inside her. Making her wait was always the cruelest of his tortures.

Tonight he didn’t make her wait. He moved her onto her stomach and raised her knee to her chest to open her more for him. He pushed inside her, releasing the slightest of groans as she raised her hips to take him deeper. As he thrust into her, he kissed the back of her neck, her shoulders. He pressed her wrists into the floor, holding her arms immobile.

“Jeg elsker deg, min lille en,” he breathed into her skin. “Du tilhører mig.”

I love you, Little One. You belong to me.

“Tonight, I do,” she whispered back in English.

He lingered inside her, not rushing, not hurrying to the end. She relaxed underneath him and cherished each moment of their joined bodies. She felt pleasure with other men, ecstasy even sometimes...but only when Søren was inside her did she feel whole.

Søren came with his hand digging into the back of her neck and his teeth in her shoulder. She turned her head and kissed his upper arm before he let her go.

They rarely traveled together—it was far too great a risk. Tonight she threw caution to the wind and had booked the same flight but seats on opposite ends of the plane. She’d give her grieving priest the first-class seat. She’d hide out in coach. They wouldn’t even get to speak to each other for the entire trip, but even apart for the eight-hour flight, she would keep something of him inside her.

Once in Denmark they could relax. A wonderful thing to come to a country so secular where no one knew him or her. When Søren told her years earlier that less than one percent of the Danish population was Catholic, she asked if they could move here. He’d laughed but she hadn’t been joking. Once at his sister’s house, the peace she felt being in such a safe and secular country evaporated. At the door she felt a sudden fearfulness, a sense of not belonging here anymore. Søren seemed to sense her fears for he took her hand in his, kissed it and whispered, “This is your home, too.”

The girls broke her heart—Laila and Gitte. They’d worshipped their grandmother as much as they worshipped her son. Nora spent all evening with Gitte on her lap and Laila at her side. By nightfall Søren had to pry both unconscious girls off her. They’d fallen asleep after wearing themselves out with tears. Gitte she carried to bed. Laila had gotten so tall only her uncle could lift her. She woke up as he’d started to gather her in his arms.

“I can walk, you know,” she said into his shoulder.

“Are you going to?” he asked when she leaned her head sleepily against his chest.

“No.”

He laughed as he hefted the almost six-foot-tall girl off the sofa and into his arms.

“Want to trade?” Nora asked Søren. “This one’s a little more manageable.” Gitte was getting tall, too, but she still didn’t weigh much.

“Yes. I’ll toss you Laila. You throw me Gitte.”

“Terrible idea,” a half-asleep Laila murmured when they reached her bedroom. “Throw Gitte first.”

Søren tossed Laila onto her bed and ordered her to go to sleep immediately. She shut her eyes and started to feign snores.

“Good girl,” he said, pinching her nose before turning the lights off and shutting her door behind him. Nora watched from the door and smiled at them through her tears. In Gitte’s room, Søren pulled the covers down and left Nora alone with the little girl as she helped her into her pajamas.

“Mormor’s not coming back, is she?” Gitte asked, half in English, half in Danish.

“No, baby, she’s not. She’s in heaven with her mor and far. You’ll see her again someday.”

Gitte had nodded, taking comfort in the promises of grown-ups even if she didn’t understand them.

“Are you coming back?”

Nora had swallowed hard against the rock in her throat.

“I never left,” she said, kissing the girl good-night and fleeing before more tears could fall.

Alone at last with Søren in the small but elegantly furnished guest room, Nora collapsed into his arms and set her tears free. It should be a simple thing to let go of someone so good. She believed in God, trusted Him...why was it so hard to let Him have Søren’s mother? She wanted Gisela back for her sake, for Søren’s sake. Her own mother didn’t understand her, didn’t trust her judgment, didn’t believe her when she said, despite appearances, Søren was the best man alive and that he would never hurt her, not in the way that mattered. But Søren’s mother had loved them together. From day one when Eleanor Schreiber had first set foot in this house, Gisela had embraced her, called her a daughter, told her she was happy her son had someone who loved him so much.

Every year, sometimes twice a year, she and Søren would sneak away to Denmark for a week. The church knew he had family in Europe and one of the priests at Saint Peter’s loved taking over Søren’s masses at Sacred Heart. No other congregation in the diocese was so devoted, so devout, so respectful of the priesthood as Søren’s. For her twenty-third birthday, Søren had brought her home again. Nowhere else had Nora ever felt such love, such ready acceptance. The family loved not only her and not only him, they loved them, loved her and Søren together. She’d carried Laila on her back and when Gitte was born carried her in her arms. She taught the girls songs she remembered from her own childhood days in Sunday school. She showered them with gifts of books.

Nora remembered standing in the doorway of the nursery and watching in awe as Søren paced back and forth with a colicky six-month-old Gitte on his shoulder, letting her cry it out for an hour until she finally slept. Even then he still held her, worried putting her in her crib would wake her back up again. It had hurt to see that, hurt more than she ever wanted to admit to. Most of the time, having children wasn’t even a blip on her radar. Her heart yearned for other types of creation than motherhood. Søren, though, would have been the best of fathers. Patient, fearless, kind and terrifyingly protective. She’d been afraid to ask him back then if he wanted her to have his children. He wouldn’t have been the first priest with a shadow family, after all. But she hadn’t asked because she feared the answer. A “yes” would have broken her spirit of independence. A “no” would have broken her heart.

This was her family, Søren’s family. They knew she and Søren weren’t allowed to be together. They no more cared what the pope said about their relationship than they cared what the weatherman said about a rainstorm in China. And so on her twenty-third birthday, after Freyja had put Gitte to bed and Søren had left with Laila for a bedtime story, Gisela had given her the white cloth.

Without explanation, Nora had known what the square of linen meant, where Gisela had gotten it.

“I can’t take this,” she said. “This belongs to you.”

“And I am giving it to you,” Gisela said, laying her hand gently on Nora’s face. “I know you and he can never marry. I would have loved to have seen that wedding, watched the church bless you both...but it’s only a dream. I want you to have it. Please do me the honor of letting me give it to the woman who should be my daughter-in-law. Even if the church can’t bless you, I can. This is my blessing.”

She’d taken the linen cloth and held it to her heart. She’d said nothing, could say nothing. There were no words.

* * *

“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.”