Author: Tiffany Reisz

“I miss her,” he said, and Grace believed him. “I won’t lie. She and I had an amazing passionate night together. I saw another world with her, a world I never even dreamed existed. It was eye-opening to say the least, and I’m certainly glad I got to see it. But it’s not my world. You’re my world.”

“You’re my world, too,” she confessed, smiling through tears. They’d only been apart two days and she was already getting emotional and maudlin. Damn Zachary for being so lovable, so missable.

“So we’re all right? You forgive your husband for occasionally having fond reminisces about a wild American girl he once—”

“Once?”

“Or twice. Or...more than twice.”

“It’s unfair. I know I’m supposed to be jealous that you had a night of sex with a beautiful woman who writes torrid books and lives a scandalous life,” she said in her most dramatic Masterpiece Theater voice. “But really I’m jealous that you got to see that world. What does she call it?”

“The Underground.”

“Yes, you got to see the Underground. S&M clubs and Dominatrixes and wealthy and powerful deviants. Meanwhile, I was falling asleep in my tea while Ian droned on about bloody exchange rates.”

“So you’re telling me that you’re not jealous that I slept with Nora Sutherlin and still miss her from time to time. You’re jealous that I had more fun committing adultery than you did.”

“Entirely correct.”

“You’re not far from the city. Call Nora. Tell her to show you the Underground. Have some fun adultery for once.”

Grace felt her conscience bite her. Not much of a bite. More a nibble.

“I did call Nora already,” Grace confessed. “Got her voice mail. Thought we could meet for a drink.”

“Nora doesn’t have one drink. She has drinks—plural. And kinks—plural. Be prepared for a long night if you end up in the passenger seat of her car.”

“I’ll say my prayers. Are you sure you’ll be fine with me spending some time with her?”

She heard him sigh and her heart clenched to hear it. She could picture his face right now, so striking with his ice-blue eyes and thoughtfully furrowed brow.

“Gracie, I know you’ve been under so much stress lately. I know how hard this has been on you.”

He didn’t have to say what “this” was. This was their failed quest to get pregnant that had left them both emotionally exhausted.

“A little,” she admitted in a choked whisper.

“Go have fun, darling. You deserve a night off.”

“So...how much fun are you willing to let me have?”

“As much as you want. I had mine. You go have yours. Be careful and don’t give me any details about it the next day. Ignorance is bliss.”

“What if you find a black tie in my coat pocket that smells like some handsome bloke?”

“I’ll think positively. I’ll pretend you murdered a stranger and kept the tie as a memento.”

“Fair enough.”

“Call Nora again. Give her my lust. And tell her to please write a book that isn’t specifically designed to get us all arrested next time. Oh, and remind her that her edits are due on Monday.”

“I’ll pass the message along. If you need me, I’ll be in the Underground. So try not to need me.”

“Have a good time. Be safe. Stay away from men in collars.”

“Are the male submissives dangerous?” she asked, feeling rather proud she knew the terminology.

“I was talking about priests.”

They bid their good-nights and Grace hung up the phone. Priests...as if she could stay away from Nora’s priest. Ever since Zachary first told her about Søren, Grace knew she had to meet this man someday. During her first phone call with Nora, she’d grilled her relentlessly, fascinated to speak to a woman who had a Catholic priest for a lover.

A priest...really?

My priest. He’s been my priest since I was fifteen years old. I hope you’re scandalized. It’s no fun if you’re not scandalized.

Thoroughly scandalized. Is he handsome?

Is the pope Catholic?

I’ll take that as a yes. Zachary’s not very fond of him.

Zach has terrible taste in men.

He said Søren wasn’t nice.

Søren isn’t nice. But he’s good.

Good? How good?

He’s the best man on earth.

That’s quite a claim. I’ll have to meet this man if he’s the best man on earth.

I’ll introduce you someday. One word of advice—show no fear.

Show no fear?

Seriously. He’s like a big cat with a catnip toy if you give him your fear to play with.

How big of a cat are we talking about?

Lion. Big damn lion.

You make him sound dangerous.

Oh, he is dangerous. Just part of his charm. But he’s not half as dangerous as Kingsley is. Søren calls the shots. Kingsley’s the triggerman.

And what do you do?

You already know the answer to that, Grace. Anything I want to.

Grace found herself smiling again at the memory of the conversation. Zachary did say he trusted her, and she had to admit she’d rather regret not taking him up on his offer. She and Zachary almost always vacationed in Rhode Island in August, the week before her school year started again. Only his conference in Australia had been moved and now they were on opposite ends of the earth. Would be nice having a little adventure. And she did want to meet this priest of Nora’s. Any man who scared her husband, the infamous London Fog of publishing, that was a man she had to meet.

Grace picked up the phone again and dialed Nora.

This time someone answered.

But it wasn’t Nora.

5

THE PAWN

Laila slipped off her shoes and socks and stepped onto the lush green grass eager for the reunion she knew was at hand. She crossed the lawn toward the dense copse of trees. The sidewalk could have taken her there but she’d much rather dig her bare feet into the earth. All her life she’d dreamed of America, dreamed of this country so much larger than her own. Maybe it was even big enough to hold all her hopes and dreams. Denmark felt like an old relative she’d long worn out with courtesy visits. America seemed new and fresh to her, not covered in the dust of dead kingdoms.

Her steps slowed. She found the house hidden deep in the trees and smiled at the sight of it. No wonder her uncle Søren loved it here so much. No wonder he never let them send him anywhere else. Such a pretty house, this little two-story Gothic cottage that looked like something off the cover of a mystery novel.

Laila knocked once and received no answer. Another knock. Still nothing. Strange...she would have thought at least one of them would be waiting for her at the rectory. Last week she’d received an email from her tante Elle offering to fly her to the States for a week. “Shh...” read the note. “Let’s give your uncle a big surprise.”

So where was her aunt? And where was her uncle? With a nervous hand, Laila turned the doorknob and found the door unlocked. The flight had been delayed an hour in London. Maybe her aunt and uncle were home. Perhaps they were...occupied. She wouldn’t put it past them to steal a spare hour. Laila found herself smiling as she stepped into the kitchen.

She’d worn that smile before when she’d caught them in an embrace during a visit last year. An embrace and a whisper, a whisper and a kiss... Laila had seen the glint in a pair of green eyes, a glint that hinted the embrace was merely a prelude to a nighttime symphony.

“Wipe that smile off your face, young lady,” her uncle had ordered her as he’d pulled back and crossed his arms across his broad chest.

“Why?” she’d asked. “Am I not supposed to know about—” and she dropped her voice to a whisper “—sex?”

“No, you are not.” He’d given her a look so stern it nearly scared her. Or would have scared her had someone else not reached up and flicked him on the ear.

“She’s seventeen. She’s allowed to know about the birds and the bees and that you and I very often engage in the birds and the bees. More bees than birds. Like last night, for example. And this morning. And—”

And whatever came after the “and” got muffled under her uncle’s hand.

“Laila,” he said with deliberate, menacing calm to Laila and the woman he gently, playfully suffocated under his hand, “is not to know about sex or talk about sex or have sex. Ever. I’ll never have children. She is therefore my honorary daughter. With her love of animals, Laila was no doubt destined for the Franciscans. I have the perfect convent picked out for her. Her room is already reserved. Now I have spoken. Nod if you understand.”

And Laila and the woman in his arms nodded even as she giggled all the way back to her bedroom.

Of course she knew about sex. She knew he had it all the time with her “aunt,” as she and Gitte, her sister, thought of her. Not that it bothered her. She wasn’t Catholic, after all. Why should she care if he had a lover?

And such a lover he had... No one seeing her could blame him for what he’d done. Then again, no one seeing him could ever blame her, either. As a younger girl, she’d envied her aunt in a way. Her feelings about her uncle made her ashamed of herself sometimes until she got a little older and realized she didn’t want him so much as she wanted what they had, her onkel Søren and tante Elle. What they had...it seemed like magic to her. She even thought of it as not a thing so much or a feeling, but as a place. The Enchanted Kingdom of Adulthood, she’d dubbed it. Adults alone lived in that world and as a girl she’d longed to gain entrance into it and learn all its secrets.

Whenever around her aunt and uncle she felt like she stood outside the gate and could see through the bars. She only needed the key. Love. That was the key. Adult love. Private love. Passionate love between two people who told secrets with their bodies. She’d learned about love watching her aunt and uncle doing nothing but talking to each other. There had only been those few visits, once a year, sometimes twice, but they were enough to teach her that love wasn’t something one found only in books. The kind of love that knights fought for and kings died for and ships were launched for and poets recorded for posterity—it was real. She’d seen it. She wanted what they had, wanted that secret that they told each other without even saying a word. She’d seen it pass between them with every glance. Maybe she would have that someday, she wished every time she’d seen it. Maybe she’d find it here in America.

Silence filled the rectory. She heard nothing, no one. What if he was with her now in his bedroom? Maybe that’s why the quiet all about her resonated with restless energy. In a house so small surely she could hear the sounds of passion even upstairs and behind closed doors. Or was it possible to make love entirely in silence? She doubted her aunt could. As a girl of ten, Laila had discovered that if she sat on the floor with her ear to the wall, she could hear them at night. That young she never quite understood what she heard—breathy gasps, warm, illicit murmurs, a moan followed by silence. Sounds of pleasure caused by...what? Then she hadn’t known. She’d heard other sounds, too—whimpers, cries, quiet noises that sounded far more like pain than pleasure. It gave her the strangest feeling in her stomach to sit by the wall at night and force herself to stay awake and listen to them in their bedroom. Sometimes she felt something like jealousy. Sometimes her whole body shuddered with a need for something she couldn’t name.

Shuddering...that’s what it was. The house seemed to shudder as soon as Laila stepped foot into the kitchen. Laila’s happiness here started to falter. Something didn’t feel right. Never before had she breached her uncle’s home, but she knew the house, like him, would be meticulous, nearly immaculate. And it was. Nothing out of place. Nothing disturbed. Nothing wrong. But still...everything seemed wrong. She passed through the kitchen and into the living room. Beautiful, of course. A thousand books. One perfect grand piano. A fireplace naked without a fire. She found a staircase and took it to the second floor. She found the bathroom, the office.... When she stepped into the bedroom, she almost blushed.