The Prince

Christian stepped to the window of the hermitage and pushed back the curtain. He pointed up to the ridge, where Kingsley and Søren had been standing less than an hour earlier. “What happened that day, King?”

“She was angry with me. She ran away. She fell and hit the rock.”

“Fell…or jumped?”

Kingsley couldn’t meet Christian’s eyes. The priest has asked him the same question Kingsley has been asking himself since the moment he’d gazed down upon his sister’s shattered body.

“She jumped…I think. But I can’t say for certain. She’d converted when she and Father Stearns married. She’d be denied Catholic burial if she’d committed suicide. Mais…”

Christian gave him a look of deep compassion. “You said you’d fought. What had you fought about?”

Kingsley groaned and squeezed the bridge of his nose. “She…Marie-Laure…” He found himself momentarily unable to go on. Talking about that time, about Marie-Laure’s death, filled him with an emotion he rarely if ever felt—shame. “She caught Father Stearns and I together. She saw us.”

“Good Lord.” Christian raised a hand to his forehead. “It happened, you and him, after he married her?”

Kingsley nodded.

“Marie-Laure and I had nothing—not a cent to our names. We wanted to stay in America, stay together, but couldn’t. She had to go back to Paris, to her ballet company. I couldn’t lose her again. And Stearns, he offered the perfect solution. If he married, he would receive the trust fund his father had set up for him—millions of dollars upon his twenty-first birthday or the day he married, whichever came first.”

“So she knew it was a marriage in name only.”

“You’ve seen le prêtre. You remember what he looked like then—almost as handsome as he is now. She agreed to the marriage and said she understood it was only for the money. But she loved him.”

“She loved him and we hated him.”

“Because you didn’t know him. I loved him. Anyone who knows him at all loves him. And if they don’t love him, then they do not know him.”

Christian continued to stare at Kingsley. “You still love him, my friend.”

Kingsley tried meeting Christian’s eyes and couldn’t.

“It’s the one sin I’ll let you absolve me of.”

Christian came to him and laid a hand gently on Kingsley’s forehead.

“Love isn’t a sin. It’s the one thing you’ve told me I don’t want to absolve you of.”

Laughing, Kingsley took Christian’s hand off his forehead and pushed it into the priest’s own head. Thirty years gone with one playful shove. They were men now and yet still boys.

“Does he know?” Christian asked. He sat on the kitchen table and pushed the teacups out of the way.

“Oui. He’s always known. I loved him when we were boys and he never loved me back. Not then. Not now. Not in the same way. Or perhaps in the same way but not as much.”

“He shouldn’t have used you like that then.”

“Peut-être. But even if you’d told me then he didn’t love me and never would…” Kingsley found his wicked grin again “…I wouldn’t have changed a thing.”

“Except for Marie-Laure’s death, of course.” The statement came out as a question, and Kingsley was forced to answer it.

Had Marie-Laure not died, what would have happened? She and Søren would still be married. What would that have meant for them both? Søren had wanted to try to make a life with Marie-Laure. Once he realized that his young wife truly loved him, he had been determined to be a good husband to her. Their marriage had gone unconsummated for months after the wedding. Søren had been waiting for the right time to tell her about his needs that only inflicting pain would fulfill.

He’d confessed this plan to Kingsley. And then they’d fought more bitterly than the day Christian took the photograph. Kingsley had gone mad with rage and grief at the thought of Søren with anyone else, especially his own sister. Any other brother would have been defending his sister’s honor, refusing to allow her sadist husband to tell her he needed to beat her if they were ever to become lovers. But Kingsley’s pain had been for himself alone. If Marie-Laure wanted pain, she had the whole world to give it to her. But Søren’s violence belonged to Kingsley.

He’d threatened Søren, threatened to tell everyone at the school that they were lovers. A foolish, idle threat that would have had no impact even if Kingsley had gone through with it. Søren’s trust fund had already come through. He and Marie-Laure were rich now. Free to go wherever they pleased. Kingsley feared that more than anything—that Søren and Marie-Laure would go and leave him behind.

Søren had stayed calm during the worst of Kingsley’s tantrum, and at the end, when he had exhausted himself with grief and anger, Søren had taken Kingsley’s face in his hands and kissed him. And the kiss had turned into something more. When Kingsley’s shirt slid off his shoulders and landed with a whisper on the ground, and Søren had dipped his head and dug his teeth into Kingsley’s collarbone, causing Kingsley to groan with the pleasure and the pain and the sheer relief of it all…that’s when Marie-Laure had walked in on them. And although her heart would beat for only a few minutes more as she’d raced through the forest…that had been the moment Kingsley knew she’d truly died.