That made him feel a little better. But really...what did he want from this trip? Would he get anything out of this other than awkward chit-chat, if that? Was this all a mistake?
Kingsley might have returned to the car had he been alone. But he couldn’t humiliate himself in front of Søren by chickening out. Instead he matched Søren’s long strides and carried on toward the grand house with the riverstone facade.
They reached the door and Kingsley paused, not quite ready to ring the bell.
“I never know how to dress for these occasions,” Kingsley said. He’d worn black trousers, a white shirt, collar open, and a black jacket. Søren wore a gray suit, no tie, to look “inconspicuous,” he’d said. He was six-foot-four, a Nordic god with steel-gray eyes that could best a hawk in a staring contest.
Inconspicuous he was not.
“Do I look okay?” Kingsley asked. He straightened his jacket, smoothed his shirt.
“You look, as Eleanor would say, stupid handsome. Now ring the bell.”
Kingsley took a steadying breath. “No. Kiss me first.”
Søren made a disgusted face. “Do I have to?”
“What if she kills us? Last chance for a kiss goodbye.”
“She won’t kill both of us.”
“You don’t think?”
Søren glanced over his shoulder in the general direction of the gate—their escape route.
“I can outrun you,” Søren said.
Kingsley sighed heavily. “I could be grilling in boat shoes right now.” He reached for the bell.
Before Kingsley could hit the button, Søren grasped him by the back of the neck for a kiss, a hard one. Kingsley’s mouth was forced open. Sparks sparked when their tongues touched. Even more and even better, was the pressure of Søren’s fingers digging into Kingsley’s skin, right at the top of his spine, immobilizing him like a kitten dangling from his mother’s teeth. Kingsley went limp against Søren, limp but for one part of him that was decidedly not limp.
Limp and hard, the perfect slave to a perfect sadist. Then Søren broke the kiss and slapped his cheek.
“Now ring the doorbell before your erection does it for you,” Søren said.
“Fine.” Before Kingsley’s finger touched the button, Søren spoke softly.
“I won’t let her hurt you again,” he said. “That’s my job.”
“What if she hurts you?” A real possibility. They were walking into the lion’s den. But, Kingsley reminded himself, he would be fine. He had a wolf with him.
“Nothing hurts when I’m with you.”
Kingsley rang the bell.
Chapter Three
At first, nothing happened. The house echoed with only silence.
Then Kingsley heard footsteps approaching the door, soft and quick, female footsteps in high heels.
The door opened to reveal a beautiful woman who said simply, “Yes? Hello?”
She had long straight chocolate-brown hair, dark eyes, olive skin, and a tiny beauty mark on her chin.
“Hello, Colette,” Kingsley said. “And hello, Georges.”
He had her at a disadvantage. He’d half-expected to see Colette on this trip. She’d likely imagined she’d never see him again as long as she lived. But though so much time had passed, he knew she recognized him. She must have. Only explanation for why she slammed the door in his face.
At least she tried to slam the door.
Before the door could close all the way, Søren stopped it with his hand.
Kingsley couldn’t decide what was more surprising—Colette’s fearful reaction or Søren’s aggressive move to stop the door from shutting them out.
“He’s not here to hurt anyone,” Søren said in his flawless French.
Colette’s wide eyes finally seemed to take in Søren’s presence.
“Are you certain, Monsieur?” she asked.
“I promise,” Kingsley said. “I came only to see Madame and pay my respects to her.”
Colette hesitated, saying nothing but studying his face intently.
“You were told never to return,” Colette said.
“I know. But if there’s a chance I could speak with her, if only for a moment... It’s been twenty-six years. At least ask her before you send us away. And, as you see, I’m unarmed.”
He opened his jacket to show he carried no weapons.
“And your friend?” She lifted her chin in Søren’s general direction. She already seemed to have taken a dislike to Søren. Kingsley didn’t really blame her.
“I’m a pacifist,” Søren said.
Colette snorted in derision. “What are you? A Buddhist monk?”
“Close enough,” Søren said. His eyes were hard, cruel. He met Colette like an old enemy.
Or a jealous boyfriend.
Kingsley was enjoying this immensely.
“I don’t like him,” Colette said to Kingsley.
Kingsley replied, “Your taste in men is impeccable, as always.”
Søren’s eyebrow cocked a millimeter or two. And Colette...she smiled. A little. A very little. Un petit peu.
Then she stepped back and let them into the château.
Søren went inside first. As master or shield, Kingsley couldn’t say, but he appreciated it either way. Kingsley entered after him and the very second he did, he knew for certain Madame was still alive.
How? He could smell her perfume in the air. Lavender water, like his mother used to wear.
The scent comforted him. Not much could have changed if Madame were still alive and Colette here.
Kingsley followed Søren and Colette down a hall to the drawing room where Madame had taken him the first night and the last day.
She said nothing but Kingsley wanted her talking again. He had a thousand questions but knew Frenchwomen did not respond well to being interrogated.
“Seems so quiet,” Kingsley said. “Has everyone left?”
“We have a second house now,” she said. “In Troyes. So many children and grandchildren, the village school couldn’t handle all of them. We spend the week in Troyes and the weekends and holidays here. But Madame prefers it here. So do I. Good memories.” She smiled, a little shyly, and Kingsley had to return the smile.
“You’re more beautiful now than you were then,” Kingsley said as she opened the door to the drawing room. “And you were stunning then.”
A compliment, yes, but not empty flattery. She was still slim and lovely. She wore tight jeans, a crisp white blouse, red high heels and a matching red scarf in her hair. The math said she was forty-four but his eyes refused to believe it. If he’d passed her on the street and they’d been strangers, he would have guessed she was thirty-five.
“Too kind,” she said, her tone dismissive though he thought he glimpsed a gleam of pleasure in her eyes. “You look well, too. But you should have worn a tuxedo.”
“Like I wore when we got married?” he asked. She smiled broadly now.
“Married,” she repeated, rolling her eyes and turning the word into a joke. That was how he felt about marriage, too.
“I’m touched you even remember me,” Kingsley said.
“A girl never forgets her first.” Colette touched him lightly on the chest, over his heart. Søren cleared his throat. Colette pulled her hand away as if she’d been scalded.
Or scolded.
“Wait here, please,” she said.
She left them alone in the drawing room. Søren stood at the fireplace where a low fire smoldered. Kingsley wandered the room, too nervous to stand still.
“You feeling a little possessive, mon ami?” Kingsley asked, hands in his trouser pockets, playing casual.
“She faked a pregnancy to torture you.” Søren turned and rested his back against the mantel. “I won’t allow her to pretend that didn’t happen.”
“I like this side of you.” Kingsley shook his finger at Søren. “I enjoy watching you be vicious to other people almost as much as I enjoy it when you’re vicious to me.”
“Good. I intend to continue to be vicious until we’re gone.”
“Maybe I won’t leave?” Kingsley couldn’t help but push his luck a little. “Maybe they’ll make me an even better offer than last time.”
“I will carry you out if I must, and if I don’t, Juliette will.”
He smiled at the mere thought of Søren and Juliette teaming up to bodily remove him from this place. As if he’d ever leave either of them—not for all the kink, sex, money, and châteaux in the wide world.
Kingsley continued to pace the room. It looked as it had in his memories—beautifully furnished with antiques, though now black and white photographs in black frames hung on the walls where paintings once had. Kingsley recognized Polly in one photograph, dressed in an evening gown with one of the men of the household on her arm. One fabulous photograph showcased all the women of the house arrayed like a family photo, all of them in matching gowns of white.
“Søren, come look.” Kingsley pointed at series of photographs hung in a line on the wall. Søren walked over and leaned past Kingsley’s shoulder to study them.
“Who is it?”
“Jacques, the baby. Not a baby anymore.” Kingsley watched Jacques age in the photographs from an infant to a toddler, to a school-aged boy with crooked front teeth, to a handsome smiling teenager with a rakish grin. In the last photograph he stood in front of a shining new VW, his arm around Madame’s waist. Madame looked like a doting grandmother who’d given a car to her grandson on his graduation day.
“He’s twenty-five, twenty-six now. Nico’s age,” Kingsley said. “I wanted children so badly, and had no idea I had a son already.”
Kingsley had made this same lament before. Søren squeezed Kingsley’s shoulder in sympathy.
But Søren’s attention was taken by another photograph. Kingsley moved over and saw Søren gazing at a picture of Colette with two young women on either side of her. They all three sat on a divan in this very room and smiled at the camera. They were beauties, all of them.
Colette returned to the drawing room just then. It was clear she knew what photograph they were studying and what they all were thinking.
She walked over to them and pointed at the girl on her right who wore a ruffled sundress.
“Salome,” she said. “She’s nineteen. Heloise.” She pointed at the girl on her left who held a bouquet of violets in her hand. “She’s twenty-two. My only children, if you were wondering.”
“I was,” Søren said. Colette stiffened, feeling the insult. “Heloise… she who caused her tutor Abelard to be exiled and castrated. Salome, who demanded and received John the Baptist’s head on a platter. Interesting choice of names for your daughters.”
“I don’t hate men, Monsieur.”
“Sheer coincidence then that your daughters are named for women who destroyed men?” Søren asked.
“I didn’t say that.” Colette smiled wickedly. “I enjoy hurting men. But I don’t hate them. You seem to hate strong women, however.”
Kingsley snorted. He couldn’t help it. It just came out. Colette looked at him as if he’d lost his mind.
“Sorry,” Kingsley said.
“As Kingsley’s so very attractive snorting attests,” Søren continued, “I don’t dislike strong women at all. I happen to love one, as a matter of fact. My dislike of you, I assure you, is purely personal.”
“I won’t apologize for what we did to him.” Colette lifted her chin again, shameless, fearless, delicious. “He was warned. Not our fault he was too stupid to listen to Madame.”
“You played your part,” Søren said. “You didn’t have to, did you?”
“I was only eighteen. I did as I was told,” she said, her eyes blazing with pure indignation.
“Ah, so you’re her submissive then, not a dominant. Now I understand,” Søren said. “All’s forgiven.”
God, Kingsley had never wanted popcorn more in his life. He was in absolute Heaven. Was this a new kink of his? Watching Søren be unconscionably bitchy to his former lovers? This was so much hotter than a whipping.
“Madame,” Colette said, as she pointedly turned her back to Søren, “is very ill. Very, very ill.”
“I’m sorry,” Kingsley said. “Truly.”
“But she is awake, and she will see you for a few minutes.”
“I won’t keep her long.” Kingsley knew it would be hard to see her so old and fragile but he’d come this far.
“You misunderstand.” Colette pursed her lovely lips and both her hands tightened into fists. “She does not want to see you, Kingsley. I was speaking to him.”
“Him?” Kingsley pointed at Søren. “Why him and not me? She doesn’t even know him.”
“Because she’s already played with you,” Søren said. He sounded irritated but not particularly surprised. “I am, as they say, fresh meat.”
“Exactement,” Colette said. “You wait here.”
She waved her hand as a queen would summon a lowly servant. Søren followed her from the room, but on the way out, he winked at Kingsley.
Alone in the room, Kingsley spoke one word—in English, since there was no precise French equivalent.
“Motherfucker.”
Chapter Four
Kingsley seethed. He’d come all this way...twenty-six years...crossed an ocean... He even got his hair cut...
And Madame would only see Søren?
And he had to wait here like a child while the sadistic love of his life had an intimate tête-à-tête with the most remorseless mind-fucker Kingsley had ever known? Apart from Søren, of course.
Who did they think he was? A suburban father with a grill, boat shoes, and a Ford Explorer? He was Kingsley-Fucking-Edge and there were grown men who still pissed themselves when they heard his name whispered in their nightmares.
It had been a long time but Kingsley was a former spy and had a spy’s memory for layouts and escape routes. He took off his jacket, opened the sash on the window behind the sofa, and slipped out of the house, shutting the window behind him. No screens to contend with as summer was still two months away.
He needed and found a rainspout with iron bars that strapped it to the stonework. It was nothing to shimmy up the spout like a ladder and jump onto the balcony. And the balcony, as he remembered, ran the entire length of the second story. He walked it until he found an unlocked door, slipped into a darkened room and only when he reached the hallway door did he recall what room this had once been—Jacques’s nursery.
Kingsley glanced around, seeing in his mind’s eye the rocking chair, the bassinet, the little nightlight in the shape of a lamb. It was in this room where he’d held Jacques against his bare chest while Madame had interrogated him about Søren. That night had been the first night Kingsley had spoken of him in seven years.
No time for reminiscing. The hall was clear. Kingsley ran for it.
He reached the end of the wing and two doors greeted him. On the left, Madame’s bedroom. On the right, the room that had once been her husband’s before she kicked the man out of the house, burned their bed to spite him, and turned his room into her dungeon.
Leaning in, Kingsley heard the murmur of Colette’s voice coming through the door on his right. Why would Madame, a very ill 74-year-old woman, be in her playroom and not her bedroom? Kingsley didn’t have time to wonder about it. He slipped into Madame’s bedroom, the door on the left, and into the Jack and Jill bathroom that connected her room with her husband’s old bedroom.
Kingsley crept to the bathroom door and listened, ears perked as he heard Colette speaking sharply.
“You can’t mean that,” Colette said. “You don’t even know him. I would never leave you with a stranger. Especially this stranger.”
Ah, so Madame wanted to be left alone with Søren and Colette disapproved.
Søren, wisely, kept his mouth shut and let the women argue it out.
“But I do, don’t I?” Madame’s voice was soft and tremulous. Kingsley winced to hear Madame sounding so
faded.
“Deep calls unto deep,” Søren said.
Kingsley’s brow furrowed. Where had he heard that before? Deep calls unto deep? Back in school. Had to be a Psalm. That’s right. Some Psalm. Intuitively he understood what it meant. Deep calls unto deep. Søren was saying he and Madame were, deep down, the very same.
“Go, child. Off with you. I’ll be fine.”
Kingsley pictured Madame waving a weak hand to shoo Colette from the room.
“Fine,” Colette said. “If you want to be insane, be insane. I want no part of this. If they kill you and steal the silver, it’s not my fault.”
Colette left with a huff and a slam of the door.
God, Kingsley did love a woman with a French temper.
But thank fuck he didn’t end up with her. Juliette didn’t have a temper. She didn’t need one. She only had to look at him, expressionless, and Kingsley went out and bought her six dozen roses, orchids, and jewelry.
Now Søren and Madame were alone.
Plus, one eavesdropper.
“Forgive her,” Madame said. “She hides her fear behind her anger.”
“I may have gotten on her bad side.”
“Good,” Madame said. “She’s spoiled. Always has been. She needs to be told ‘no’ more often.”
“I promise, we aren’t here to kill you or steal the silver,” Søren said. “Unless it’s very good silver.”
“I’ll be dead soon. Have at it.”
Søren laughed softly, politely. “She does seem afraid. I assume Kingsley isn’t the first of your old playthings to pay you a visit?”
“Three others have come,” she said. “One came back to demand money or he’d reveal my location. Another came back to demand I apologize. The third wanted to kill me.”
“He didn’t succeed.”
“My husband dealt with him.”
“Your husband?” Kingsley heard the surprise in Søren’s voice, surprise that mirrored his own. “You and your husband reconciled?”
“Finally, yes. Not long after Kingsley left us. He’s buried here in his family’s plot, as he always wanted.”
The Return (The Original Sinners) Page 2
