The Mistress

“Report.”

“I miss you, monsieur,” came a rich, honeyed voice on the other end of the line. “How is that for a report?”

Kingsley sighed as he felt tension releasing from his body like air from a popped balloon.

“Jules, you’re breaking the rules,” he teased. Hearing her voice, her laugh, was everything he needed and the last thing he wanted.

“You can punish me for it when I come home. I know you told me not to call until you said I could, but I had to hear your voice. It’s been a week.”

“A very long week, my Jewel. And it’s only getting longer.”

Kingsley ran a hand through his hair and wished it was Juliette’s hand on him. Søren had destroyed him during their night together. He needed Juliette’s touch to restore him again. But that would have to wait.

“Let me come home. Let me take care of you. It’s my place.”

“You have to take care of yourself now. It’s not safe here.” He wanted to say more, to tell her the truth of what had happened. The risk was too great, however. No woman in the world submitted more beautifully in the bedroom and acted so independently outside of it. If she knew how bad it had gotten, she’d be on the next flight back to the city, his orders be damned. “You can come home when it is safe. No sooner.”

“Is it going to be like this from now on?”

“Oui,” he said without apology.

“Have you told le prêtre?”

“Non. He has too much on his mind now.”

“You try to protect us all,” Juliette said, and he heard the love in her voice—the love and the exasperation. “You must let someone take care of you. Let me take care of you.”

“I’m fine. I am. We all are.”

“Is he? Did Nora come back?”

Kingsley swallowed. He hated lying to his Juliette. She was as much his confessor as Søren was Nora’s.

“He’s been better. And non, she is not back yet. Juliette …” He paused to gather his words. With so many lies he had to give her some truth. “Søren and I, we were together.”

He heard that musical laugh of hers all the way from Haiti.

“No wonder you sound so tired.”

“It’s part of it, oui.” He laughed, too, but the laugh quickly died. “My Jewel, you know—”

“I know,” she said quickly and simply and without the slightest hint of judgment or fear in her voice. “I know you love him. I know he loves you, too.”

“He loves me? From your lips to God’s ears. He loves only her.”

“You forget we love more than one person. You do, she does, he does … I do.”

“You’ve fallen in love already?”

“Bien sûr. You’ll have to share me now.”

“As long as I have you at night.”

He pictured her now, his Juliette, standing on the balcony staring at the ocean, her statuesque beauty, her dark skin glowing in the fading evening sunlight. They’d met on a beach at the edge of the ocean, and he couldn’t see rising water without thinking of her. He’d never forget the first time he saw her. Some children on vacation had been pelting a native bird’s nest with stones. Juliette decided to give them a taste of their own medicine. A grown woman throwing rocks at the spoiled scions of white American tourists. He’d been doomed from the start.

“Every night, my love. All my nights are yours.”

Kingsley heard the front bell at the door and voices in the hall—Griffin and a woman’s voice. A woman’s voice he’d never heard before.

“I must go. No rest for the wicked,” he said.

“Mon roi,” she whispered, and Kingsley’s heart clenched at the name she called him only in their most private moments. “Please, be safe. I need you.”

A thousand times she’d whispered that to him … breathed it across silk sheets as she crawled to him, moaned it into his ear as he entered her. But those words had a new meaning now that had nothing to do with passion anymore.

“I need you, too,” he said. “I need you to do as I tell you. Stay there. Stay safe. You’ll be home soon.”

“Promise?”

He paused before answering. He could promise her nothing now, should promise her nothing.

“I promise.” Sometimes a needful lie was less a sin than the truth.

He hung up the phone and forced thoughts of Juliette from his mind. No time for emotion or sentimentality. No time for love, not when he had a job to do. And while no one on earth admired or adored women more than Kingsley, a battlefield was no place for them and he could not deny that his world had turned into a war zone. He and Søren would find a way to get Nora back. And her fiancé, Wesley, who was young but certainly no coward. Any man who braved the bed of Nora Sutherlin and the wrath of le prêtre could be called many things, but not a coward.

Kingsley stood up straight and took a deep breath. He felt better now. Juliette was safe and far away from all this madness. The three of them—Wesley, Søren and he—would find a way to deal with this crisis on their own. They’d put no more women at risk. He should ban them all from the house for the time being. He would exile them, send them all away. They were too fragile, too at risk in such a dangerous time.

He started toward the door to his office but it opened before he got to it.

A beautiful redheaded woman, her pale skin painted with freckles, swept into the office ahead of Griffin.

“Ma’am, you can’t barge in—” Griffin said, and Kingsley raised his hand.

“Hello,” the woman said, facing Kingsley.

“May I help you?”

“Yes, you can tell me what the hell is going on. Where’s Nora?”

“I would tell you if I knew, madame. Perhaps you could tell me who the hell you are?”

“My name is Grace Easton, and I know that means nothing to you, but I’m friends with Nora. I tried to call her and got Wesley. He told me someone had taken her and …”

She continued speaking in her light and musical accent. While she spoke Kingsley walked over to one of his filing cabinets, opened it and thumbed through files. He pulled one out, walked back over to her and let her finish her speech.

“… and I’m not leaving until someone tells me what’s going on or at least lets me speak to Wesley. I know I seem like a madwoman showing up out of nowhere and you have no idea who I am but I promise—”

“Grace Easton, neé Rowan, age thirty,” Kingsley said, opening the file. “Irish mother. Welsh father. Fluent in Welsh, I see. I think that’s the one language le prêtre doesn’t speak. You’re much more beautiful now than you were back in school, and you were très jolie back in your school days. No wonder Professor Easton deflowered you on his desk. Although had it been me, it would have been the desk, the floor, the wall, back on the desk but from behind …”