The Prince (22 page)

Kingsley nearly made another joke, but stopped himself. Christian was right. Why fight the truth?

“
Bien sûr.
Of course I still grieve for her. More lately than in years. Being here doesn’t help.”

“It makes it much harder to forget, I’m sure.”

“Talking to you helps. Admitting that I was in a large way responsible for her death.”

Christian shook his head. “I’m not sure that you were. To kill oneself…that is the gravest of all sins. To kill another is to kill one person. To kill oneself is to kill all people. Seeing her husband with her brother, terrible? Yes. Absolutely terrible. But to murder the entire world for that? Perhaps there was more going on.”

“More?”

Christian stood up again and started making a circuit of the small cottage. Kingsley remembered this habit of his. During study groups Christian could never sit still. He had to walk and walk if he wanted to think.

“A photograph of you and Stearns, the one I took, was sent to you anonymously. You take that as a threat.”

“It is a threat. The other incidents…they, too, have been threatening. Father Stearns’s childhood bed was burned to ashes. And a file was stolen from my office. The file contains private information about Stearns. Information that could ruin him. Not that he deserves that. If any man deserves to be a priest, it is he.”

“So you say and I’ll believe you. So all of these threats have to do with Stearns’s private life. And Marie-Laure died on that rock out there. And the threats…all these threats…”

“They all involve him,
oui.
We know that.”

“Who else do they involve?”

“Three people. The only three people who he has ever been with, and that is all I can say.”

“Only three?” Christian smirked and Kingsley caught a glimpse of the wicked teenage boy he used to know. “Even I have him beat there.”

Kingsley exhaled through his nose and stared at the bare wood by the fireplace where he and Søren had once huddled under blankets together for warmth on a bitter winter night. Kingsley had never before been so grateful for the cold.

“I simply don’t know who would dare do this to him…”

“Kingsley, I’m going to tell you something and I don’t want you to hate me for it.”

Kingsley looked up sharply at him.

“Tell me.”

“I hated Stearns. Back when we were in school. I don’t use the word
hate
lightly.”

“I know he was envied.”

“Envied and loathed. He was better than the rest of us. And no, I’m not saying he thought he was better than us. I don’t believe he did. He actually
was
better than all of us—smarter, more handsome by a mile, still more handsome by a mile than any man I’ve ever seen. He could learn a new language faster than I could learn a new hymn on guitar. He played piano like a god. And the priests here worshipped him. And when your sister, the most beautiful girl anyone had ever seen, came to visit, it was him she fell in love with and married. Thirty years ago, I wanted him dead.”

“And now?”

Christian shook his head. “Teenage hormones and angst. Now I can only admire him. And worry a bit for his congregation.”

“Do not worry. They are in the best hands. But what are you saying?”

“I’m saying that someone obviously hates Stearns. Still hates him. If they knew something about you and him, about Marie-Laure...if someone loved her even more than I did, and blamed Stearns for her death…”

Christian needed to say no more. The motive that had eluded Kingsley all summer, since he’d discovered his pack of rottweilers drugged and Eleanor’s file gone…suddenly all became clear.

Søren’s first lover had been his own sister Elizabeth.

His second lover had been Kingsley, a student when he’d been a teacher. Forbidden fruit in so many ways.

And his Eleanor, his true wife so much more than Marie-Laure, had been only fifteen when Søren and she had fallen in love. Fifteen and a member of his congregation.

“Christian, you might be right. Someone might have loved Marie-Laure, loved her enough to seek vengeance against Father Stearns even after all this time. You were friends with everyone at school. Who else was in love with her?”

Christian sighed heavily. He walked over to a small rolltop desk and opened the middle drawer. From it he pulled out a framed photo and carried it to Kingsley.

Kingsley took the photo from Christian and stared at it.

His breath caught in his throat and he couldn’t quite swallow.

A girl barely twenty years old stared at him from inside the frame. Nothing but clichés could describe her beauty—silken russet hair, copper eyes framed by infinite lashes, a laughing smile that didn’t quite meet those unearthy eyes of hers. She had a dancer’s graceful neck and hands, and an olive complexion just like her brother’s.

“Ma soeur…”
Kingsley touched the glass with his fingertip. He wrenched his gaze from the photograph to Christian.

“Who was in love her?” Christian repeated. “Kingsley…we all were.”

SOUTH

As soon as they entered the guesthouse, Nora got on her laptop and on her phone. For some reason, Kingsley wasn’t answering his private line. She tried calling his assistant and got nothing but the cryptic runaround. Kingsley—he was just the man she needed for this job.

“Nora, let it go,” Wesley said as she tried Kingsley’s hotline again.

“He’s going to answer.” Nora hit the number on her cell phone again. “It’s the hotline. He always answers the hotline. I’ve heard that man fucking so many times, I’ve lost count, because no matter what he’s doing or who he’s doing, he always answers his hotline.”

“Stop calling him. If Spanks for Nothing died from electrocution or something, the investigators will figure it out and fine whoever needs to be fined.”

“But that’s Talel’s horse.” Nora turned to Wesley, who sat on the corner of his bed, watching her where she sat on the floor. “I know Talel. He wouldn’t hurt a fly, much less electrocute a horse.”

Wesley got off the bed and stood in front of her.

“Look, Nora, I know he’s a friend of yours and that’s great. But horse racing’s a rough business. It’s not all silks and Millionaires’ Row. It’s brutal and dangerous and messy.”

“But Talel…” Nora started scrolling through her cell files. Surely she had Talel’s number in here somewhere. She had to talk to him about today. She knew him. Biblically, even. He wanted to be hurt—that was his kink. But to hurt another? Never. She refused to believe that.

“Talel’s a millionaire horse owner and a kinky freak like the rest of your friends. He’s not a saint, okay? You know how you can tell if a Thoroughbred mare has been bred?”

Nora heard the barely restrained anger in Wesley’s voice.

“No. How?”

“Because the mare has scar tissue and visible stitching under her vagina. Yeah. Fact. They cut the mare open so it can take more stallion. Then she gets stitched up. Then cut again for the next breeding. Then stitched up. Then cut again. Over and over.”

Nora clamped a hand over her mouth in disgust. “You’ve got to be—”

“Kidding? No. I’ve seen it myself. That’s just part of the shit that goes on in this Sport of Kings. Your best buddy Spanks for Nothing could have lived thirty years or more. But either someone wanted some insurance money off him, or wanted him to have a few more wins to get those stud fees up there. You saw a horse, a pet. Talel and every other horse owner sees a dollar sign. Lots of dollar signs. Horses are just like race cars to these people. You crash the car, you call the insurance company and get a check. I don’t like it, either, but that’s how it is.”

Nora’s stomach tightened into a hard fist of guilt. “Race cars aren’t alive. They can’t feel pain. They…”

“Now you know why I’m not all into the family business.”

“Yeah, I can see that. I’m sorry, Wes. It’s just, Talel and I go way back and he’s a good—”

“You slept with him, didn’t you?”

Wesley asked the question without a hint of malice in his voice, and no accusation, either. Only sadness. She would rather he’d called her a whore to her face like his father had.

“Yes, I did. A few years ago. He gave me my Aston Martin.”

For a moment Wesley didn’t speak. Nora only stared at him as he seemed to search for words. She’d rarely seem him so somber and so silent. Back when they’d lived together, he’d joked with her constantly, teased her constantly. And she’d gloried in his young male attention. But Wesley wasn’t a teenage boy with a hard-on for an older woman anymore. He’d admitted he loved her, still loved her after fifteen months apart. And he’d had his chance to have sex with his beautiful older girlfriend and hadn’t taken it. No schoolboy crush this—Wesley loved her. And she’d left Søren, left her collar, for Wesley. For how long, she didn’t know. But Søren had forbidden her to run from him, and the second she’d been out of his sight she’d kicked off her high heels and raced as if the world depended on her getting to Wesley in record time. She loved him, too.

Whether she wanted to or not.

“Wesley?”

“You know,” he said, giving her a broken smile, “I could afford to buy you all the Aston Martins you want.”

Nora tossed her cell phone aside and pushed her laptop onto the floor. Coming to her feet, she started to reach for him, but he took a step back.

“I’m gonna go feed the catfish. I’ll be back.”

He turned on his heel and abruptly left the room.

Looking around the empty space, Nora could only repeat, “Feed the catfish?”

She started to follow him, but her cell phone rang—Ravel’s
Bolero.

“King, thank God. I’ve been calling you all day. Well, for the last five minutes. Where the hell are you?”

“Maine,
ma chérie,
” Kingsley answered in his most debonair voice. “I see you called me many times. How much do you miss me?”

“Not a damn bit. But I have missed your connections. Guess who I ran into today?”

“Talel.”

Nora held out her hand and stared at the phone a moment before putting it back to her ear. “I hate when you do that, know more about my life than I do.”

“I pay attention,
ma chérie.
You, on the other hand, are a writer.”

“Point taken. Anyway, his horse died. And it might have been electrocuted. I don’t think—”

“Chérie…”
Kingsley exhaled heavily and Nora heard something in his voice she rarely if ever heard—frustration. “I’m afraid the death of a horse is the least of my worries right now. Your priest and I have much graver concerns.”

“But—”

“It’s for your own good,
Maîtresse.
Let it go. It’s only a horse. They make an excellent entrée.”

“But—”

“Nora?”

“What?”

“You’re on your own.”

And with those truly unhelpful words, Kingsley hung up.

Nora stared at the phone for a few seconds before tossing it onto the floor and racing after Wesley.

Feed the catfish? Did that mean he was actually going to…feed the catfish?

Outside the guesthouse, Nora paused and looked around. Where the hell had Wesley gone? She found a cobblestone path at the back of the house and decided to follow it. A low stone fence bordered the path. As she walked, Nora thought about the past couple of days with Wesley. Everything had been perfect and a wreck at the same time.

Their first hours together they’d done nothing but talk nonstop about the past fifteen months, everything that had happened while they’d been apart. Fifteen months had separated them when they’d embraced each other in the White Room at The 8th Circle. But as the hours passed and they told story after story, that gap between them closed. Nora told Wesley about reuniting with Søren, how weird it had been those first few weeks as his property again. The night they’d shown up at The 8th Circle with her in her collar again, the entire club had stared, aghast. She’d been so nervous, so uncomfortable—she’d been a Mistress, and now she’d become Søren’s submissive once more. How the mighty had fallen. But then she’d seen it—money changing hands. High-fives. Fingers pointing. And lots of told-you-so’s and I-knew-it’s. People had been making bets about when she’d go back to Søren. It had never been a question of if she’d surrender to him. Merely when.

And Wesley, he’d told her about what had happened in his world during those fifteen months after he moved out of their house and back to Kentucky. Nothing…nothing had happened, according to him. He’d finished out the school year in a daze, packed his things, gave away his beat-up yellow VW and flew back to Kentucky. A couple days a week he worked at a local hospital as an orderly, just to keep his head on straight about all the money and privilege in his world, and all the poverty and suffering everywhere else. The rest of the time he helped out on the farm. The Rails consisted of several thousand acres littered with million-dollar Thoroughbreds. The farm had not one but two equine hospitals on the premises, dozens of barns that were as palatial as mansions, even swimming pools…for the horses. Wesley admitted he felt more comfortable, more at home, in his room at Nora’s little Tudor cottage in Connecticut than he ever did on his parents’ farm. That’s why he hadn’t told her about the money, the farm, the fame that he wore like an ill-fitting suit in racing circles. That’s why he’d bought a used Bug to drive in Connecticut, and hadn’t brought his Shelby Mustang with him to school. That’s why he’d left his Gucci at home in Kentucky and had worn clothes from the GAP and Old Navy while at Yorke. And when Nora had decided to become a Dominatrix again, and Wesley had offered her every penny he had, that’s why she should have taken it.

Nora had fallen asleep in the middle of Wesley’s chest their first night back together. They hadn’t kissed, hadn’t made love…only talked. But their words had brought them back together that night. And words, being the powerful force they were, had tonight pulled them apart.

As she neared the end of the cobblestone path, Nora inhaled the scent of warm stagnant water and algae. Ahead of her she saw a high spotlight shining onto a wooden dock that overlooked a large pond. And at the end of the dock stood an ornate gazebo, as well-appointed as her own house back in Connecticut, with wild ivy twisting up its sides and half a dozen burning citronella candles keeping the mosquitoes away. Wesley stood at the edge of the dock, the gazebo behind him, staring out across the black water. A thousand stars shimmered across the still surface.