Chapter 31

thirty-one

Isolde doesn’t comeout of her room for two days.

I knock on our shared door, which is now locked; I call the room’s phone from mine. I ask the butler delivering her meals to let her know I’m here if she needs me—which doesn’t earn me the skeptical expression it should, since Isolde’s told everyone she’s not feeling well, and he seems to assume I’m just being a considerate fellow passenger.

“Isolde,” I say through our adjoining door on the second day. “I’m sorry I didn’t?.?.?.? I’m just—”

My head falls against the door. “I’m sorry.”

I should have done so much more after I pushed myself to my knees in the dojo and realized what we’d done. I should have made sure she was okay; I should have apologized for the whole episode the minute I found my voice. But instead, I’d knelt there, frozen with guilt, while she’d scrambled, wild-eyed, to her feet and then fled. And I didn’t even try to follow her. I’d just stayed there on the mats, shorts wet, heart pounding, ashamed and wanting more and strangely alive with all of it. Pulsing, tingling, rushing.

It reminded me of being at Morois House, of being Mark’s, being so thoroughly inside my own skin that the world itself seemed sharper and brighter.

But there was no untangling that feeling from how I’d gotten there. From what I’d done to get there.

And so now Isolde doesn’t answer me through the door, and I don’t blame her.

We cheated on Mark. There’s no getting around that.

But she also deserves to know about Strassburg and about Isabella Beroul and about me. She deserves to know so that she doesn’t feel like she was the first to break the trust between them.

I close my eyes and think about the semen all over her shorts. Her wide eyes and her pert breast slapped red. Despite everything, blood surges to my groin.

I want to do it again.

I want to do it again and do more. I want to feel her naked pussy. I want to kiss it. I want to kiss her, kiss that soft mouth, see if she tastes like she smells, like honey and earth. I want to sift her hair through my fingers and run my nose over her neck. I want to hear her tell me more about ancient pastoralism in that rich girl voice; I want her to feed me more of those low, heartbreaking observations about myself.

And ah God, I feel it, I feel it, that curse of mine, twisting its vines around my ankles and up through the spokes of my ribs, seeking out my heart, my central nervous system, my brain.

No—fuck. No.

I’ll beat it back. Falling in love with Mark was one thing, but his bride too? Being in love with a husband and wife both?

Lunacy. Torture.

I step away from her door, drag in a breath, and then go down to the gym to burn away the vines already winding their way to my heart.

* * *

The next day dawns clear,and I stare at the soft sunrise for a long time before I go into my room and get ready for the day.

I want two people.

I’m not able to have either of them.

How did I get here? I keep asking myself. How did I get here?

I don’t try knocking on Isolde’s door today. I subject myself to a punishing workout in the gym, and then after I shower and change, I pace the small length of the library, trying to gather my thoughts.

Two things become clear amidst the noise in my head.

First, I have to get Isolde to talk to me. I need to know if she’s okay, and I need to apologize for my behavior. There’s no excuse for it, none at all, because as much as this yacht feels like a little vessel of timeless paradise, I’m still on the clock. I’m still working for Mark.

Which leads me to the second thing?.?.?.

I have to quit this job.

When we get back to Manhattan, I’ll get Isolde to Mark and then I’ll—well, I don’t know how much Isolde will want him to know, but I also don’t know if I can lie.

Either way, I can’t claim to be a good bodyguard when I’m currently two for two on having sex with the people I’m supposed to be protecting.

And I’ve proven myself unable to be trusted in the most egregious way.

Isolde’s not at dinner, and so I’m required to eat suckling pig in peppercorn sauce on my own, and after I finish, I drain a glass of whiskey for courage and go to knock on her hallway door.

There’s a tray by her door, with a metal-lidded plate and a glass filled with ice water and covered with plastic wrap. Dinner that she hasn’t brought inside yet.

Worry scratches at me. I give our shared door another try—locked—and then I go out my balcony door to the balcony itself, and give myself two seconds to accept that I’m about to do something extraordinarily stupid.

I climb onto the balcony railing and jump.

It’s an easy jump, and I make it without issue. I try not to think about how long it would take someone to notice that I wasn’t on the boat if I’d missed.

I’m more worried about Isolde having gone missing, and sure enough, when I slide open her balcony door, her room is empty. I observe the tightly made bed, the rosary on the table next to it, wrapped in neat coils around the sheathed honeysuckle knife. Everything is in its place, except for the wardrobe and its contents. The doors are hanging open to show several dresses that I’m almost certain she didn’t have room for in her two compact suitcases.

I check the bathroom, also empty, and feel time ripen into a slow, vivid thing, palpable as the deck moving gently beneath my feet.

Ten minutes.

If I can’t find Isolde in ten minutes, I’m raising the alarm. I mentally calculate how long it’s been since she’s been definitively seen, how long in the water that might translate to.

Cold water. Open Atlantic.

Help would have to come from the Azores—planes at first—and another boat would take at least three days—

I bite off the panic, swallow it, move quick as my thoughts move quicker. First the dojo, then the chapel. Then everything else on that level. The library and the spa. After that, I’m alerting the crew to search their quarters, and then it will be time to declare a passenger overboard.

With so many other likelier spots, I almost don’t bother checking the aft deck on the lower level. It’s not a pretty space, and its only purpose is for climbing on and off the moored tender when the ship is in harbor. But I duck back there anyway, the part of my mind that thinks in grids and sectors needing to check it off my mental map.

And then I stop, my ribs frozen midbreath.

She’s here.

She’s okay.

Isolde is here and in a green dress and she’s safe. She’s not drifting facedown in the Atlantic.

But my relief curdles in an instant.

She’s huddled in a corner, her back to the wall and her shoulder against the deck railing, with her knees drawn up to her chest and her hair loose around her shoulders. Taffeta is spilling everywhere, shifting from emerald to sage to chartreuse, and it’s spattered with ocean spray. The hem is caught around one of her thighs, leaving one leg uncovered, and I can see that she’s barefoot.

Tears are tracking slow and clear down her cheeks. When she slides her defeated gaze to me, I get the impression she’s been crying for a while.

While there’s plenty of mist and splash this close to the water, the deck is sheltered from the wind and out of the way enough to be a good hiding place. I see why she chose it. I just want to know why she needed to choose it.

I squat down next to her, careful of the skirt.

“I was worried,” I say. “I couldn’t find you.”

She leans her head against the wall, exposing her throat and collarbone. The dress has a low neckline and no sleeves; a row of small buttons the same color as the dress marches down the middle, leading to a thin sash tied at her narrow waist. The surfeit of silky fabric in the skirt, the immaculate tailoring of the bodice?.?.?.?it’s sumptuous and rich. Even barefoot, even without any jewelry other than her engagement ring to set it off, she’s redolent of money.

“I dressed for dinner,” she says, her eyes closed. “I thought—I thought I was ready to see you. But I wasn’t. I came here instead.”

This is my fault. Her crying in a dinner dress on a yacht deck—my fault.

I open my mouth to start my apologies, to ask how I can make it right, but before I do, she speaks, her voice a whisper.

“I think I’m losing my mind.”

It’s like a kick to the throat. “Isolde,” I whisper back. “I’m so sorry.”

Her eyes are still closed. The thin lids are purple-tinged, sleepless and miserable.

“It’s not you,” she says. “It’s him. It’s Mark. He’s in my head, and I think, I always think, I’m guarded against it, but—” She opens her eyes, staring straight ahead at the sunset-orange sky and the water disappearing behind us. Her fingers find the dress’s neckline and dance over it. With every breath, her breasts swell against the fabric. “This dress was in my quarters. There’s a whole closet of them, and they all fit perfectly, and they’re all exactly what I would choose if I could. There’s a dojo and a chapel. That swimsuit, which?.?.?.?”

I blush remembering the swimsuit, and I see a blush on her cheeks too. She must have realized when she got back to her room how revealing the suit was after a swim.

Isolde looks at me. Her eyes are still so wet, her gold lashes spiky with tears.

“It was all by design, this whole trip. To break me down and get in my head. And it’s working.” The spray has left dark dots of green on her skirt, glistening streaks on her calves and feet, and her tears drop to her bodice, leaving matching spots there too. “The only thing that hasn’t worked is him being here to see it working.”

Is this what Mark imagined when he pictured Isolde wooed? Pliant? Did he imagine her sobbing and wet from the sea?

She pushes her legs down so that they’re stretched in front of her. The farthest edge of her skirt is caught by the air and flutters at her ankle. Her eyes are searching mine, questioning.

“It’s not real, you know,” she says, finally looking away.

“What’s not?”

“Anything to do with him. Anything at all.” An exhale. “But I mean the engagement, the whole marriage. It’s not real.”

I stare. “Like in a philosophical sense, or?.?.?.?”

She gives a rueful laugh. “I wish my only problem was that the institution of marriage is ridiculous. No, I mean that the marriage is arranged. It’s a transaction.”

Arranged.

A transaction.

“I don’t understand.”

“My father wants me to marry Mark to grow Laurence Bank’s reach, and Mark agreed for the same reason but in reverse. Lyonesse’s information coupled with the financial power of Laurence Bank. It would make everyone happy.”

I look at the girl in her ocean-mottled dress, with her tear-streaked face and her shoulders slumped against the wall. “Everyone except for you,” I say.

“Everyone except for me,” she agrees.

It’s starting to make sense now. The reason why she and Mark barely talk, the reason why they haven’t seen each other in two years. Why Mark never spoke about her.

What he did with Strassburg and Isabella Beroul.

And me.

I sit next to her, pressing my back to the cool wall. “Mark never said anything about?.?.?.? I had no idea. He spoke about it like it was real.”

“We want as few people as possible to know the truth,” she explains. “It’s more effective that way.”

Betrayal is a pinprick right to the heart, slipping between membranes and muscle fibers to puncture some vital inner mechanism.

Why wasn’t I immediately one of those few people? Why would he let me believe it was real? Why didn’t he say anything when I told him things had to end between us?

Would I?.?.?.?would I still have ended things between us if I’d known his marriage was arranged?

And then I look at Isolde, at the hair tangled around her shoulders and at the soft creases of her lips, wet with tears, and know the question is infinitely more complicated than it would have been two weeks ago.

“Isolde,” I say slowly. “You should—you should know that he’s been with other people.”

I can’t decipher her expression when she rolls her head along the wall to look at me.

“It’s not a real marriage,” she says woodenly. “It doesn’t matter.”

“So he can just fuck whoever he wants while you wear his ring?” It’s absurd that I’m being defensive of her given my history with Mark, but still. It doesn’t feel fair.

“No, he—” She stops, lifts a hand, drops it in her lap. “He doesn’t want any perceived gap between us. No lover or affair that could be used as a wedge because it would make leveraging each other’s power and connections less effective. So he wants me to be faithful after we marry, and he’s promised to be as faithful as I am. And as far as our agreement is concerned, the wedding day is Day One. The beginning of fidelity.”

“So nothing before the ceremony counts?”

It still feels enormously unfair that Mark has been indulging himself without reserve, and here’s Isolde miserable in a pile of crumpled taffeta.

“He asked me once if I wanted him to stop playing with other people,” she says. “I told him no.”

I watch her. The defeat in her curled shoulders, in the limp nests of her hands.

“Did you want him to stop?”

She rolls her head back so that she’s staring at the ocean again. “Yes.”

“Then why didn’t you ask him to?” Mark is many things, but he’s also the most direct person I know. He wouldn’t have asked if he wasn’t ready to hear whatever answer she might have given him.

“I’m already not going to be a real wife or a real submissive, and it felt selfish asking him to stop when I wasn’t going to be giving him myself in return, at least not in the way he wanted. And I wanted to hate him! I didn’t want to want him to stop playing with other people. I didn’t want to feel anything about him at all, but?.?.?.?”

She stops. There are so many tears spilling now.

“He infected me,” she says after a long minute. “None of it mattered because he infected me anyway.”

Recognition comes, dizzy and certain. Because I know this, don’t I? The torment of having Mark Trevena inside your mind, your body, twisting you into someone you barely know.

I know this because Mark infected me too.

“I thought I was ready this time,” Isolde murmurs. “I thought that two years away was enough to make me strong. Impervious. But here I am, lost all over again. A week and a half, and I’m completely, stupidly lost. And he’s not even here.”

I close my eyes. The waves slap against the hull, pushing and rocking the yacht. I try to shove away the fresh, puncturing pain that Isolde has fallen for her future husband. Knowing the marriage is arranged should make it better, right? So why doesn’t it?

Why does it feel worse?

And why do I want her undivided attention when I myself am still in love with Mark? What kind of greed is that? Especially when I know the kind of man Mark is, the effect he has on pride and sanity and need. There’s no fighting him.

Isolde’s voice is as opaque as the water when she asks, “How many people?”

I turn my head to look at her, dread pooling in my stomach. I can see from the haunted look on her face what she means.

“How many people has he fucked?” she asks.

I was the one who wanted her to know, who wanted to alleviate her guilt about what we did. But I still feel miserable when I answer. “Three that I know of. Strassburg, his former bodyguard. A submissive from Montreal named Isabella. And”—a long breath—“me.”

She looks back at the ocean, blinks. Shakes her head. “I should have—of course.” A pause as she inhales slowly. “Will it end at the wedding?”

“It’s already ended,” I say quickly. “When I found out he was engaged, I told him it was over.” Which is hardly a moral high ground after I came all over his fiancée, I know.

“Are you in love with him?” she asks, voice still frustratingly opaque.

She’s been so honest tonight, and I owe her my honesty in return. “Yes.”

“Are you loyal to him?”

That is a more complicated question, with a more complicated answer. “Yes, but?.?.?.?”

“But?”

“He’s made it clear that you are a part of him and his world.” I roll forward to my knees and face her so she can see how serious I am about this. “My loyalty is to you too, Isolde.”

I can’t tell if she believes me or not. Her lips roll together, and they’re wet, because through all this, she hasn’t stopped crying.

I touch her hand. It’s cool and wet with tears or maybe water that’s splashed up from the waves. “Can I ask you something?”

She gives a quick, jerking nod.

“Why did you say yes? To marrying Mark?”

“I told you,” she replies. “My father wanted me to.”

I study her. “Is that really it?”

Her jaw is tight when she looks away. “It’s enough. And I can’t fuck this up. Too much is riding on this marriage. People need me to make it work.”

“I won’t tell Mr. Trevena. About what happened between us.”

Although privately I worry he’ll be able to tell anyway—or that I’ll confess after one cold, blue glance.

“It’s none of his business,” Isolde says suddenly, furiously. “Nothing until the wedding day is anyone’s business, and if it’s true for him, then it’s true for me too.”

Nothing until the wedding day.?.?.

My stupid body kicks to life at that phrase, at the layers of meaning that could be tucked behind it. What if she?.?.?.? No.

Better not to go there, even in my mind.

“What happened the other day still shouldn’t have happened,” I say. “I’m sorry. Even if this whole marriage is arranged, even if nothing matters until the wedding. I was trusted to take care of you, and I—”

“Don’t say took advantage,” she interrupts. She gets to her knees, facing me, and in the barely there light of evening, I can see the goose bumps covering her arms and the tops of her breasts. I can see the shine of stars in her eyes and the fresh tear tracks and the places where the tears have dried on her skin.

“You’re a good man,” she says, and when I open my mouth to argue, she presses her fingers to my lips.

I go still, transfixed. She could make me do anything if she touched my mouth like this.

“I know you don’t think you are,” she continues. “I know you think you’re corrupted and stained, but you are good, Tristan, and when I’m near you, I feel like I can be good too. I feel like I can be brave. And I want to protect you. Take care of you.”

Two days ago, I had her pinned to the floor, slapping her, and she wants to protect me?

But her eyes are completely serious, even if they’re still spilling slow, heavy tears.

I stare at her, feeling the curse blooming inside my chest, twining and thickening its roots. A wave comes, an abrupt pitch of the boat with a heavy spray surging up from the water and showering us both. We ignore it, our eyes locked.

“I don’t love you,” she whispers.

My lips move against her fingertips as I speak. “You don’t have to.”

And then she’s leaning in, I’m leaning in, and she drags her fingers from my mouth and replaces them with her warm, wet lips.

I can’t taste the difference between her tears and the sea.