Chapter 26

twenty-six

I wake early enoughthe next morning that I can see the sun lift itself, small and cadmium orange, over the water. It’s been almost a week of waking up without Mark, and I’m still not used to it. To a bed being cold, to being able to move freely without his thighs wrapping around mine or without being hauled even tighter against his chest so he can bite my neck.

I’ve given up wondering why it feels better to wake up that way, weighted down and in immediate danger of being nipped at. Maybe years of body armor and war have ruined me for anything else.

I watch the break of day from the balcony of my suite, glancing occasionally at Isolde’s neighboring balcony. The curtains are drawn shut over the door, but I see a splinter of light coming through. She’s awake.

My mind is on Isolde when I step back inside—whether she’s slept okay, what she wears to bed—and I’m trying to drag my thoughts back into professionally interested bodyguard territory when my phone rings.

It’s Mark. It’s still late at night where he is, and I’m surprised I don’t hear the noise of the hall in the background when I answer.

“Sir,” I greet as I close the balcony door behind me.

“Tristan,” says Mark. His voice is rough and a little warmer than usual. Almost like he’s pleased to hear my voice.

Which is wishful thinking on my part. Would he be pleased to fuck me? Tie me up and top me? Absolutely. But he doesn’t miss me.

Still, I feel that warm tone of voice like a hand spread between my shoulder blades, firm and wonderful.

“I want to make sure everything is going well so far,” he says. “The Philtre is good? Isolde is comfortable?”

“I only saw Isolde at dinner last night, but I presume she is,” I say. I open the wardrobe where I’d unpacked my clothes and stare at the collection of suits I brought.

“I want you to make sure of it,” says Mark. “She’s very driven—to a fault—and I don’t think she’s accustomed to relaxing. She’ll need your help.”

I stare at the neat row of jackets in my wardrobe. “I don’t know that I’m good at relaxing either, sir.”

A noise, fond and low. Like a laugh. I don’t hear anything around him, so I surmise that he’s alone in his apartment.

Oh God, I hope he’s alone.

“Then do it for my sake. For Isolde’s. She won’t enjoy the ship unless you make her, and you’ll only be able to make her by enjoying it yourself. Just pretend to be me.”

Yes, because you’re so relaxed, Mr. Ripped My Own Stitches Disobeying My Doctor, I want to say. But I wisely stay silent.

“I mean it. Make her relax. That’s an order.”

“Yes, sir,” I say, and then I almost ask him about—no, no, I shouldn’t. It’s not my business, no matter how much it feels like it.

Except Mark knows, somehow, that I was about to say something, because he says, “Yes, Tristan?”

“It’s not my business, sir.”

“If it involves Isolde, it’s my business, which then makes it your business because you are my proxy. What is it?”

I hesitate and then forge ahead. “Just?.?.?.?last night at dinner, Isolde didn’t know that you’d been stabbed, sir.”

A pause. “Is there a question in there?”

I don’t know.

I don’t know what I want to ask, what I want to make sure of. And anyway, it’s not my business.

“No, sir,” I say finally.

“We’re both very busy people. I didn’t want to bother her with something I’m already handling.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And we’re not in the habit of talking frequently,” he says. “It’s been about two years since I’ve seen her.”

Two years?

I’m glad that he can’t see my face because I’m sure I’m not disguising my shock right now. Even deployed soldiers see their sweethearts more often than that.

There’s another pause, and then Mark asks—slowly, almost as if he’s willing himself not to, “What’s she like now?”

I think of clear, sea-colored eyes, a slender throat. An expression composed enough to rival Mark’s at his most reserved. The feeling of a winter sunrise over the snow-covered forest, untouchable sweetness.

“She’s lovely,” I say. And then the inside of my skin tingles with a hot rush, realizing what that sounded like. “I mean, she seems like a lovely person. A little solitary, maybe, but we just met.”

If Mark found my lovely comment strange, he doesn’t remark on it. “She’s rather solitary by nature,” he says. “Her mother died when she was young, and her father was more concerned with decorum than with affection.”

“Oh,” I say. It’s almost involuntary when I add, “Like me.”

“Which is why I think if anyone can coax her into letting her guard down, it’s you. And if that fails, just pretend to be me.”

Him, the bossiest person I know? “You are awful at coaxing people,” I say, and that surprises a laugh out of him.

“Is that so? I seem to recall coaxing you into several interesting situations over the last month.”

“I had to coax you first,” I counter, and he laughs again, and there’s a burning hook in my chest, just behind my heart. I don’t think I can handle this, us, the teasing, the warmth, like there’s nothing behind us but easy, happy sex.

“I should go,” I say. “I know it’s late where you are. Is your shoulder okay, by the way?”

“It’s fine,” he says. “And I mean it about relaxing. Isolde won’t if you don’t.”

“Right. Just pretend to be you.”

“Now you’ve got the idea. And Tristan?”

“Sir?”

“I put you in your suite for a reason. I want you to be close in case Isolde needs anything.”

I bite back a sigh. I had really wanted to see if I could change rooms today. It doesn’t feel?.?.?.?healthy?.?.?.?to be so close to her.

“Yes, sir,” I say reflexively.

“Also, I have clothes you can borrow in the dresser. You’re on a yacht; you don’t need to look like you’re dressing for a job interview.”

“You’re the one who wanted me in suits. Sir.” But I go over to the dresser in question and find shorts, linen pants, both short- and long-sleeved T-shirts. They look light and comfortable and tempting.

“Well, I changed my mind about the suits, at least while you’re in the middle of nowhere. Since I can’t enjoy you in them anyway.”

It feels like flirting, but from him, it’s just honesty. “Yes, sir,” I say, and after I hang up, I dress in a pair of his shorts and a T-shirt.

They smell like him.

* * *

I findCaptain Duval to check in, and I’m assured that everything is running like clockwork—or like marine chronometer-work, she adds with an eyebrow arch, letting me know this is a boat reference I won’t get—and then with nothing else to do, and it still being early enough that I don’t want to pester Isolde with my company, I decide to head to the basketball court and see how bad I’ve gotten.

I’m walking down the narrow hallway that leads to the gym, the basketball court, and the room with the racks full of wooden weapons when I catch movement. Instinct has me stopping just before I reach the doorway, using the wall-length mirror to see inside without revealing myself. It’s an instinct I’m grateful for, because it allows me to stand there and watch the incredible sight within: Isolde Laurence, knife in hand, fighting an enemy only she can see.

Her hair is pulled back in a braid that looks like it started neat and has been trying valiantly ever since, and thin strands of hair cling to her damp neck and forehead as she spins, slices, stabs. She’s wearing only a sports bra and bike shorts, and I can see that her rich-girl clothes from yesterday hid muscles.

Lean ones, yes, tight and subtle—but for-real, no-shit muscles that any soldier would be proud of.

They flex and lengthen as she moves, every part of her body working in concert to kick or pivot or block. Her feet make almost no sound on the mats, and even though I can see the strength behind each movement, she’s not out of breath. There’s an ease to her, a practiced grace, that makes me think she’s done this sequence of movements before, that it’s not spontaneous. It doesn’t take away from the beauty of it, or the skill—even when the yacht sways, she moves with it, as unbothered as a leaf on a branch in the wind. Her knife flashes in the morning light, and gold glints on either side of her fingers. Some kind of inlay into the hilt.

I catch winks and drops of red—rubies, I think. Her knife has rubies in the handle.

She finishes with one knee drawn up, her other arm extended behind her, and she could be the tiny ballerina inside of a music box—save for the look on her face, which is deeply, if beautifully, grim.

Well, that and the knife.

I wait until she puts her foot on the mat and makes a small bow at the air before I step inside.

I see the moment she senses me, her spine lengthening and her eyes finding mine in the mirror.

“So this room was all for you,” I say with a smile. “The captain and I weren’t sure.”

“It was kind of Mark to have it here,” she says. Her voice is neutral, and her face too. It’s not distant necessarily, her demeanor, but it’s so self-possessed that it’s close. “I wouldn’t have thought to ask for a space like this on a yacht.”

“The whole boat is nonsense,” I agree. “There’s a basketball court. And a spa. And that’s a really cool knife.”

I don’t mean to say the last part, it just comes out, but now that I’m closer to it, I can see the intricacies of gold and ruby in the handle, the wavy patterns in the steel blade, and it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen.

“It was a gift from Mark, for my birthday,” she says. She flips it easily in her hand, catching it by the blade with alarming confidence, and then holds it out to me.

I take it and trace my fingers over the floral pattern in the hilt.

“Honeysuckle,” she says. “It’s supposed to bring good luck to a marriage.”

I look up at her and hand it back with a smile. It’s so easy to smile at her, easier than it’s been in years. I’m not sure why, since it’s not like she’s smiling much back. “And if it doesn’t bring good luck, you can always stab him with it.”

“A shame he seems remarkably resilient to stab wounds then,” she says, and there’s the tiniest flicker of her eyebrow. My smile widens. Her dry riposte, her eyebrow—it feels like a victory somehow, like the rush of taking a hill in the forest or a contested bridge over a river. I’m ready to plant a flag here between us, right in front of her bare, delicate feet.

Her gaze drops to my mouth, and then her eyebrow lowers again. She turns away, walking over to where the knife’s sheath rests on the mat near the mirror.

“You looked lethal as hell, doing all that earlier,” I say, not wanting this moment to be over. “You could give Mr. Trevena lessons. He could have used them when Lyonesse was attacked.”

She picks up the sheath and slides the weapon inside as she stands, every shift and gesture as graceful and deliberate as her movements earlier, when it was just her and the mirror and the knife. “Did you see the attack? When it happened?”

“Yes.” I lean one shoulder against the mirror, my hands in the pockets of Mark’s shorts. “I was too late. Mark was trying to fight the guy off, but he was—” I pause, loyalty to Mark stilling my tongue. “Well, he’s been retired from the CIA for a while,” I hedge instead.

Her lower lip catches briefly on her teeth, like she’s trying to make sense of this. “I’ve only sparred him once, but he was incredibly good. Unfairly good,” she says, and there’s a tinge of irritation to her voice, like this still stings. “It was a long time ago, though. These things can change.”

“I suppose.” I glance out the window, where a light drizzle has started. “What are you going to do with your day? I’m under strict orders to help you relax, you know, so please don’t say work.”

“My firm is able to spare me for a bit,” she says, “since I’ve just started there. So no work.”

“Good. I’ve always said that everyone needs a break from art history once in a while.”

She’s doing that mouth corner thing again, the almost-smile. “You’re not wrong about that,” she admits. “I actually wanted to major in theology instead of art history. Well, truthfully, I didn’t want to major at all because I wanted to become a nun after high school. But my father was not so keen on the idea.”

“A nun?” I’m fascinated. It’s quite a step from nun to Mark Trevena.

The almost-smile deepens. “Yes, a nun. But my father convinced me otherwise. He wants me to take over Laurence Bank one day, and that would be difficult as someone who’d taken a vow of poverty. So?.?.?.?college. A double major in business finance and art history: finance for my father, and art history for me, because if I couldn’t be a nun, I still wanted to have a part of what I love about my church—the history and the beauty. I’ll get to spend every day looking at religious art and artifacts and making sure they’re finding the right homes.”

“And the bank?” I ask, desperate for her to keep talking. It’s the most she’s said at one time since I met her. “Doesn’t your father want you to come work for him and not for?.?.?.?Catholic artifacts?”

She’s drifted over to a window ledge now, unscrewing the top from a glass bottle of water. She takes a drink before she answers, and I look down at my feet on the mat. Cross my ankles, one foot propped on the toe of my shoe. Because watching her throat when she drinks feels like the uncleanest prurience right now.

“He does,” she says once she’s swallowed. She screws the cap back on the bottle with a quick, practiced spin, and tucks it into the crook of her elbow so she can slide the sheathed knife into the waistband of her shorts. Like she wants her hands free as much as possible, which is a preference I share. Old habit from my combat days.

“He wants me working there yesterday,” she continues. “But I’ve told him it needs to wait. I’ve already compromised enough by not going into the church. He doesn’t get to take the rest of my life away too. At least not yet.”

“But you wouldn’t have joined the church anyway,” I remark as I join her and walk out of the small training room. “Because you met Mr. Trevena and fell in love.”

She pauses as we step into the hallway.

“Very true,” she affirms after a beat, like I’ve made an interesting, if irrelevant, point. “But as it stands, I still don’t want to be a banker just yet. It’s an ongoing argument.”

I look at her, damp and flushed from her training, that strangely pretty knife shoved into her shorts. “No, I can’t say I see you as a banker myself.”

“What will you do with the rest of your day?” she asks. It’s still in that polite voice, like she’s dispensing with whatever social obligation I represent, but her eyes are on me and she’s turned toward me too. I have her full attention, which feels good.

“If it stops raining, I might try the pool,” I say. “It’s heated, supposedly, so it should be quite nice.”

“I really want to swim,” she says with a glance through the doorway to the window. “But I didn’t pack a swimsuit.”

“Have you checked your room?” I ask. “This yacht is like the castle in Beauty and the Beast. It will provide anything you need—dojo, chapel, swimsuit.”

“The yacht will provide. I like that.” Another almost-smile. She’s still looking at the window.

I decide that I’ve hovered long enough and make one of those I should get going sighs, even though I have nowhere to get going to. Lunch is served buffet-style for us and the crew, and dinner isn’t for hours yet—and it’s not like I have a date. But as much as Mark wants me to put her at ease, I don’t want to smother her with attention. “I think I’m going to check out the basketball court and then maybe the gym, see if I can manage a treadmill on the waves.”

“Let me know how it goes,” she says. And then her eyelashes dip, once, and she looks at me. “Tristan?”

“Yes?”

“You weren’t hurt during the attack or anything? You’re okay?”

It’s not something I expected her to ask—or anyone to ask. No one asks if a bodyguard is okay because the whole point of a bodyguard is that they’re willing not to be okay for someone else.

“I’m okay,” I reply, not sure what to make of this, if I like it or if I’m vocationally insulted by it. “I wasn’t hurt. But it hardly matters, because Mr. Trevena was.”

“It still matters. But I understand.”

The yacht rolls gently under our feet. It’s a big boat, but we’re in the open ocean now, the dark coast of Ireland having disappeared behind us sometime in the night, and the rain has brought rougher seas with it.

“I didn’t think I would have to kill anyone after I came back from Carpathia,” I say, and I have no idea why I say it, because surely she doesn’t care, and it doesn’t matter. Those men are dead, and I would have done nothing differently anyway.

And I’m bad at talking about these kinds of things with civilians. How do you talk about killing people when it’s part of a job? Like paperwork or replacing a tire—except it’s paperwork that gives you nightmares, and a tire that you sometimes see in front of you when there’s nothing actually there?

“You were protecting someone you care about.” When she meets my gaze again, her eyes are clear. “And killing is a part of life, as far back as Cain and Abel.”

“Which is a story about how killing is bad.”

“It’s a story about how ancient Israelites thought pastoralism was morally superior to farming and city-building,” she says.

Uh. “That doesn’t seem like a very religious take on things,” I point out. “Maybe this is the real reason you’re not a nun.”

She doesn’t seem offended, although her shoulders move ever so slightly. A stifled sigh. “Maybe. But I know this: you kept people safe that night in the club, including my fiancé, and I have to think that was by design. Sometimes,” she adds solemnly, “God needs us to do his work for him.”