Chapter 11
My father kissesmy cheek at the end of the aisle, the picture of paternal tenderness, and then he places my hand in Mark’s.
I look down at the way Mark’s hand swallows mine and try to ignore the thrill the sight gives me. When I look up at my almost-husband, he is staring down at my bouquet. White peonies and pink honeysuckle and—because I could—green and purple tapers of hyssop.
His mouth twitches as he realizes what he’s looking at, and when his eyes meet mine, there’s something amused in his gaze.
A thrill skates over my nerve endings and leaves goose bumps everywhere. He’s recognized the offering in the gesture, the truce. My safeword is literally between us right now, a more powerful symbol of my trust than the ring he’ll slip onto my finger later, than the papers we’ll sign. I’m agreeing to play his game by his rules and on his board.
God help me.
We walk up the shallow steps past the pulpit and into the choir. The high altar sits before us, its canopy of bright bronze gleaming in the combination of sunlight and hanging lamplight, sprays of peonies and creeping tendrils of honeysuckle at its base. The honeysuckle spills down the steps elevating the altar and tangles across the black-and-white-checkered marble, nearly to our feet.
Bryn follows us, as does Melody, and they stand behind Mark and me as we approach the archbishop of New York. My uncle stands just behind the archbishop, cloaked in scarlet and milk-white vestments, and priests and deacons stand behind him. An army of men in robes, here to see Mortimer Cashel’s niece married in state.
Uncle Mortimer gives me a quick wink before the music dies away and the ceremony begins. I wish it made me feel better. Mortimer has been more of a father to me since my mother died than Geoffrey Laurence has, but he can’t do this part for me.
I am alone.
The Mass rolls into its ancient cadence, and ornately carved chairs are moved onto the checkered marble for Mark and me to sit on; Bryn and Melody get chairs of their own. Melody’s high-heeled foot swings, dangling from a crossed leg. Mark’s gleaming dress shoes stay as they are on the marble; he never shifts during the readings or the homily. Only once do I see him betray his own stillness—it’s when I betray my own. A figure moves on the far side of the altar, behind the wooden screen that separates the sanctuary from the ambulatory beyond.
Tristan.
Unlike the attendants and the guests, he’s not in a tuxedo, only a black suit, and his positioning makes it clear that he’s on duty, picking one of the few places where he can see directly down the nave to the massive bronze doors at the front.
His eyes meet mine in a shock of summer green, and for a moment, the world thins to nothing, to vapor, and all that’s left is him.
I break my gaze away, back down to the checkered marble, to where the toes of my silver-blue shoes peep from under the lace of my gown. I can feel Mark looking at me and then looking into the ambulatory—subtly enough that he barely moves. But the effect of his look must be powerful because when I dare a glance back up, I see a flush on Tristan’s cheeks and naked pain scrawled across his features. He moves, the silent stride of a bodyguard on the prowl, but I think it’s so that he doesn’t have to look at us anymore.
Or at the very least, risk us looking back.
And you asked him to stay, Isolde.
He wanted to leave, and I begged him not to. Even knowing that he loved Mark, that he felt something for me. Because I was terrified of being alone, and now here I am, lonely anyway.
We exchange rings, and I see something etched on the inside of my band before Mark guides it easily over my finger. I wonder if Mark will see what I’d secretly commissioned to have etched onto his: delicate lines of honeysuckle, all around the inside of the band. For good luck, if anyone asks, but also for the sake of a beautiful knife given to me years ago.
There is singing and there is communion, a slow affair with so many guests, and then at last, the archbishop declares us wed.
Before the standing crowd, as the organ fills the air, I turn to my husband and he turns to me. He once flogged me in front of a packed hall at Lyonesse and then shoved his hand down my panties, and yet the moment he lifts the veil to press his warm mouth against mine feels just as intimate. More so, although I can’t explain why.
Maybe it’s the new rings on our fingers, the new name I’m leaving the cathedral with. Or maybe it’s the firm grace of his lips, the almost chaste coax of his tongue. It’s the kiss of a groom who can’t wait to taste his beloved, and the honesty in it nearly rocks me back.
Just as a noise catches in my throat, he breaks away, breathing hard as he looks at me.
When we turn to face our guests, there is a clear division between those uninitiated into Lyonesse—who look stunned at the evident display of desire—and those who count themselves as Mark’s night children. They are smiling.
We’ve shown them the story of the former killer falling for a submissive young heiress… Now we just need to sell it for good. And sell it we will at Lyonesse tomorrow night, where half these people will be watching Mark and me on the stage, sealing our new vows in the most depraved possible way.
My sins to save God’s kingdom, I remind myself, and Mark and I walk down the aisle to music and applause.
I can’t see Tristan through the crowd.
* * *
The reception is justacross the street, on a rooftop with a gasp-inducing view of the cathedral. I change into my reception dress with Bryn’s help, and she gives a low whistle as she comes around the front to assess her work.
“Your father is going to be furious,” she says with some delight as she takes in the dress.
I don’t consider myself rebellious or subversive by any means, but I do get a thrill as I look at myself in the mirror. Without the veil, I’ve opted for a white ribbon to frame my ballerina-like bun and another white ribbon around my neck. The dress itself is tea-length, made of lace and a smooth, translucent tulle. The skirt falls in big structured pleats, the strapless bodice is a boned corset, and it’s only the embroidery on the bodice and the lacy slip I wear underneath that keep the dress from breaking New York’s public decency laws.
And with the ribbons and the ankle-strap heels I pair with it, I look every inch an angel that the devil took to wife.
“If my father hates it, he has no one to blame but himself,” I say as I find my clutch and we leave the bridal room. “He’s the one who married me to the owner of a kink club. He can’t be angry that I’m going to play the part.”
“I don’t think your new husband will mind,” notes Bryn as we find the elevator bank and wait for a car. “I’ll be shocked if you make it through the reception unmauled.”
I wonder what Tristan will think—and then I quickly put the thought out of my mind. It’s going to be a miserable road if I consider Tristan every time my body is on display, especially after we all get back to Lyonesse.
“I’m not sure about the mauling,” I murmur. An elevator arrives, and we step on. I’ll meet Mark at the top, where we’ll make an entrance together. “We’re pretending, you know. Everything we do is for the sake of selling our marriage.”
She shakes her head. “There was nothing pretend about your kiss earlier. Or the way he slipped those shoes on your feet in the dressing room. Didn’t you say you were hoping to make things more real between you? I think you’re well on your way.”
“It’s best for everyone if this becomes a real…partnership. But it’s not real yet.”
Bryn gives me the same look she used to give me when I’d forget to tuck my chin while sparring. Like I’m missing something so obvious that she’s not going to bother correcting me. But she knows how Mark left things in my bedroom almost three years ago. She knows that he barely spoke to me after that, that we only saw each other once more for my collaring ceremony before Tristan came to get me in Ireland.
I don’t doubt that Mark will enjoy everything we do for the sake of our performance. But trust me? Feel real affection for me? The chances of that died in a shadowy Manhattan penthouse years ago. And I spent my adolescence getting kicked, punched, and grappled to the ground; I have craved holy pain; I have craved pain with my cunt slick and my nipples erect.
But never again do I want to feel what I felt when Mark left me that morning.
The elevator doors open just as I discreetly check the seam in my tulle skirt—I moved the pin given to me by the Scales from my ceremony gown to this one earlier. It’s there, ready and waiting. Now I’ll just need to dance with the Serbian banker.
“Isolde,” I hear Mark say as Bryn and I step off, and I look up in time to see the unguarded surprise in his face when he sees my dress. Sees me.
His eyes drift to the white ribbon around my neck, so like a collar, and I see the knot of his Adam’s apple lift and then lower above his bow tie.
“Told you,” Bryn whispers as she moves past me.
Once we’re alone, Mark steps closer. “You’re wearing a different dress.” His voice is neutral, and his expression has settled back into its usual inscrutability, but his eyes flick down, lingering on where the skirt pleats over the shallow curve of my hip, where the embroidery veils most—but not all—of my breasts.
I touch him, reaching for his hand.
A small crease etches itself between his brows. I’ve so rarely initiated contact with him that it’s no wonder that he’s not sure what I’m doing now.
“Half the people here are your people,” I say, wrapping my fingers around his. “I know we plan to give them a show tomorrow, but tonight I wanted no doubt. I’m yours.”
I pull his fingers to where the ribbon wraps around my neck, and he rests his fingertips against the satin.
“You are willing, then, to so quickly tarnish your reputation as the darling of Laurence Bank?” His voice is cool and businesslike, but he can’t look away from my throat. His fingers are stroking the ribbon now. “It’s not only my people out there, Isolde. It is your father’s colleagues and business partners. It is the frocked friends of your uncle’s. Donors and socialites. It is loosely known what I do for a living, and they will have wondered about our marriage, but the Lyonesse NDAs are strong enough that they could wonder for a long time yet.”
“It matters more to me that the members of Lyonesse see me as one of their own,” I tell him, and I mean it. “That I belong to you fully, even on a rooftop in Manhattan with reporters in attendance. That I chose this.”
He jerks his hand away from the ribbon, like he has to force himself to stop touching my throat.
“And so you did,” he says as he offers me his hand. The still-bright evening light of summer is pouring through the glass doors to the rooftop, catching on his hair and eyelashes and the rough gold now dusting his jaw. It catches the cling of his jacket to his shoulders and arms, the fine lines around his eyes. With me in a dress like this and him looking like he does, there is no mistaking the differences in our ages or in power.
It should be diminishing, but as we clasp hands and walk through the doors to music and applause, it feels…good. Like his age and his power are mine to borrow and steal and use.
Or maybe I’m just a masochist and I secretly like feeling small next to him.
The reaction to my dress is as expected, but I’m ready for it and field all the pointed comments and arched eyebrows with murmured demurrals about how much I adore the designer. There is cake, followed by champagne, and then Mark and I share our first dance, so much like our actual first dance years ago, when I’d been certain he hated me.
My eyes wander as we move, Mark’s hand firm and guiding at the small of my back, his steps graceful.
“Who are you looking for?” asks Mark in a murmur.
“Just taking in the crowd.”
Which is a lie. I’m looking for Tristan. I need to be more careful.
“If you’re noticing the absence of our bodyguard,” Mark says, and his voice is low but casual, uninflected, “he asked if he could go ahead to our hotel to evaluate the security there.”
Tristan asked to leave? I know it’s selfish to want him here, but there’s still a corrosive hollow in my stomach knowing that he’s gone.
“Logical,” I say, and my voice is as casual as Mark’s.
“A shame,” Mark says. “He is missing you in this dress.”
The hollow in my stomach creeps up to my chest, but I force my nervous system not to register his words as a threat. Even if he knew about Tristan and me, it was before the wedding. It didn’t count. So I need to stop worrying about it.
Tristan guessed from the lack of yacht footage on Mark’s computer that either Sedge had deleted the recordings or Mark had. In one instance, it meant that Mark didn’t know. In the other, it meant that he did know and had decided not to prosecute the case.
I lean toward the first option; I think Mark is too fond of psychological mindfuckery to have resisted using Tristan and me against one another. But he’s not the only one with leverage here.
The green-eyed sword of Tristan cuts both ways.
“A shame he’s missing more of you in this tuxedo, then,” I say softly, and Mark’s eyebrow lifts.
“Yes,” he says, and nothing else, and then the dance ends.
There is more dancing after that, of course, me with my father and Mark with Melody, as their parents are long dead. We mingle as a couple and then separately, and then finally I come across the Serbian banker, who is all too eager to dance with me and who can’t take his eyes off my breasts the entire time.
I don’t complain. It makes it very easy to bug him.
The night grows dark, and the guests grow drunk. My dress is less shocking in the city glow, and people are free with their chatter. Melody is looking at her wife like she’d like to bite into her like an apple, and Mark is at the far corner of the terrace, leaning against the wall and talking to a thin man with dark-olive skin, wire-rimmed glasses, and a shock of black hair. They are smiling, their postures easy, gesturing like old friends telling stories, but there is something about the way Mark is listening to him that strikes me as notable.
But I can’t watch them as much as I’d like because I’m in demand for small talk and dances and more toasts.
Until at last, Mark arrives to kiss my cheek and declare that it’s time for us to go. We are subjected to hugs and goodbyes and ribald grins, but Mark keeps us moving, until finally Mr. and Mrs. Trevena have left their wedding behind them and are on their way to their hotel.