Chapter 8

eight

“Sister Mary Alice, I have—I have a question.”

Training had just finished for the day, the other students heading to the back rooms to change into street clothes. The middle-aged nun looked over at me from where she was setting rattan canes on a rack.

“Yes, Miss Laurence?”

I didn’t fidget or look away—two habits Mortimer had schooled out of me by the time I was sixteen. Actual nervousness or weakness should never be accidentally revealed, he’d told me over and over again. Any betrayal of emotion should be intentional, an act of misdirection. It was in this way that we made sure all conversations turned to our advantage.

I didn’t need the conversation to run to my advantage, but I mostly didn’t want Sister Mary Alice to think I was asking what I was about to ask out of cowardice.

“I want to talk to you about sex,” I said, and her hand paused on the cane she was putting away. I had surprised her.

“Let’s go to the office,” she replied after a long moment. I nodded, knowing it was for privacy. Classes were done for the night, but people left in clumps and waves, getting caught up in after-class chats or waiting until their bus was closer, and it was a small space. Chances of being overheard were high.

Except when we got inside the office, with the door shut and us settled on either side of the ancient metal desk, Sister Mary Alice pulled out a dusty bottle, followed by two less dusty glasses. I suspected this might have been the real reason we came to the office after all, but I didn’t argue when she pushed a glass of something gold across the surface of the desk to me. It made my eyes water when I held it close for a sniff.

It wasn’t until she had taken a long, un-nunlike drink that she spoke again. “This is about your engagement.”

I nodded. I wouldn’t have hidden such a thing from her or Sister Grace, not when it would mean me eventually leaving Manhattan, but the sisters and Uncle Mortimer were thick as thieves anyway, and had been since my mother’s death. I’d always figured it was about them keeping an eye on me while Mortimer was out of the country, since no one trusted my father with anything other than my physical wellbeing.

I looked down at the glass, knowing what I wanted to ask and still struggling. I couldn’t bear the idea of talking to Mortimer or my confessor about this, and it made more sense to talk to an actual sister anyway, someone already living the life I wanted to lead.

“I never thought that I would be married,” I started, my eyes on the liquor rippling in the glass. “But now I will be. I didn’t—choose it. For myself. But once I understood why it was important, I agreed to it. So it’s not what I wanted, but if I’m going to do it, then I’m going to do right by it. Does that make sense?”

“Your uncle says it will be an enormous gift to the church if you do this,” Sister Mary Alice said. “You will be an enormous gift to the church.”

We didn’t talk often—or ever—about what Uncle Mortimer was in the church. A cardinal, yes, and a fixer. But he was something more complicated than that. Ironically enough, I thought if I had to describe his actual work, it would be very close to something like what the CIA did. What Mark used to do.

Information was found. It was acted on.

A necessary job. And I would be a necessary asset.

“I need to decide how real the marriage is going to be,” I said, trying to speak levelly, dispassionately. “Uncle Mortimer says he can still furnish an annulment for me, no matter what, so…consummation…is not a barrier to the marriage ending.”

“Nor to you taking vows later on,” Sister Mary Alice added. “The Holy Father himself has said that a lack of physical virginity is not an issue for anyone seeking the sisterhood.”

“Right,” I said. I’d known that, but it was reassuring to hear again. I could still be a nun after Mark. I took a drink and then made a face. I didn’t drink very often—it messed with hydration, and therefore training, and in social situations, I preferred to be as sharp as possible—but when I did drink, it was more along the lines of a glass of champagne. Not something with the taste of old gasoline.

The middle-aged nun cradled her glass in both hands, the bottom of it resting on the knot of her neatly tied black belt. “I think you need to hear this, so I’ll be blunt. Your body is a tool. In every way. You are being called to use it now, like Ruth, like Esther. Like Tamar. This is where God has called you, and so you must sacrifice yourself fully to that calling. Give yourself entirely so that his will be done.”

Sacrifice. That word. A word I’d held precious since I first learned it, a word that had become more precious still after my mother had died. There was something beautiful about it, so stunning in its clarity.

Except…

“What if it doesn’t feel like a sacrifice?” I asked in a whisper and met the sister’s steady gaze. Her slow blink told me she knew what I meant. “What if it doesn’t feel like laying something on an altar?”

I thought of New Year’s Eve, of being in Mark’s lap. Of his thumb against my bottom lip, holding me open for his mouth. “What if I…want to?”

There. I’d admitted it. I wanted to. I wanted sex, and sex with Mark, and not because it would make me better at gathering information or leveraging his club to help the Church, but because he had glittering eyes and large hands and sometimes said things like I asked for you.

Sister Mary Alice drank down the last of the bourbon and set the glass on the desk. “I can’t tell you much about sex. I’ve never done it, and I’ve never wanted to. But fighting…” She breathed out, her eyes closing for a second. “I love it. Always have.”

She opened her eyes again. “Tell me, Isolde. Does loving fighting make me better or worse at it?”

I’d seen her fight only a handful of times, but she was deceptively strong and quick, with an instinct for seeking out weaknesses. “Better?” I offered.

“Do you imagine that it will be different in your marriage? That offering sex as a necessity, as a neutral transaction, will have the same impact as you wholeheartedly desiring it? I’ve heard plenty about Mark Trevena; I saw him sparring you that day. He’s not going to be fooled by someone closing their eyes and thinking of England—nor, I daresay, would he be interested in it. I think if this arrangement is to have any benefit whatsoever, then it will be precisely because you want it. Or parts of it, at least. Does that absolve you?”

“But do you think it absolves me in God’s eyes?” I asked quietly, my eyes back down on the bourbon. “It doesn’t make me fickle? Or inconstant to him?”

Then Sister Mary Alice did something that she never did.

She softened.

“My child. If God didn’t want us to be fickle, he would have never created the ages of seventeen through twenty-seven. Your feelings now don’t make you any less who you thought you were a year ago; they only mean that you’re getting closer to who you’re meant to be a year from now. Five years from now.”

She then gave me a sharp smile. “And our God would not send you to battle the dragon without just the very sword for the job.”

And that night, I emailed Mark an updated list of my limits, with yes, yes, yes marked next to all the different kinds of sex.