When it was her turn he stood behind her to one side, helping her get comfortable with the swing of the whip and how to control it.

“Can I crack it?” she asked.

“You can. Let me leave the room first.”

“What? You don’t trust me?”

“Your first time with a whip? No. Absolutely not.”

“That’s probably smart. Okay, back off. I’m going to crack it.”

“Put your safety glasses on first, or you’ll put your eye out.”

“Yes, Daddy.”

She said it mockingly, without thinking, simply answering sarcasm with sarcasm. But this was Søren and no such remark could go unremarked.

“Are we playing that game again, Eleanor?”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” she said, lightly throwing the whip, doing her best to ignore him.

“I could read you a bedtime story.”

She whirled and faced him. “Are you trying to make this more difficult than it already is?”

“What is ‘this’ you’re referring to?”

“Us. Us not being an us.”

“Then, yes, I am. I am trying to make it more difficult for you. It couldn’t possibly be more difficult for me than it already is.”

“You seem fine to me.”

“Fine?” Søren laughed as if she’d said the most absurd thing in her life, as if she’d said the sky was green and two plus two equaled cat. “Eleanor, I had to take a leave of absence after you left. I couldn’t work. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t pray. Everything I’ve gone through in my life—with my father, my sister, being separated from my mother for thirteen years—in a heartbeat, in an instant, in the twinkling of an eye I would have happily gone through that again before I went through the hell you put me through when you left me. I consoled a parishioner recently whose wife just died and when I told him I was a widower and could sympathize with his agony, I wasn’t speaking about Marie-Laure. I meant you.”

Nora swallowed. She raised her chin and met his eyes. They were blue now, not gray, and they blazed with something—rage. Against her? Himself? God?

“I’m not dead, Søren.”

“You were gone. How was I to know how you were, if you were? It was agony, and I don’t use that word lightly. They talk of Christ’s agony on the cross. Now I know of agony.”

Anyone who didn’t know Søren as intimately as she did wouldn’t have been surprised by the passion in his voice, the anguish. But she’d known him since she was fifteen. Søren was a brick wall and the mortar was made of iron, and he did not crack. He never cracked. He’d always been her wall, an impenetrable fortress, and no matter how hard she threw herself against that wall, she’d never broken it down. But when he said the word agony she saw a hairline fracture, and she knew the whole wall could come down any second.

She knew what he kept behind that wall. God help them all if it came tumbling down.

Last night she’d stepped in front of a man being whipped and put her body between him and the whip. Today she stepped between Søren’s pain and the wall.

She reached up and touched his face. That was all she did. He closed his eyes and rested his cheek against her hand.

“I didn’t leave you to hurt you,” she whispered.

“But it did.”

“I spent seven years on the receiving end of pain. I’m ready to be on the giving end.”

“Did you have to start with me?”

“Yes.”

He nodded his head, and she met his eyes. The crack remained, but the wall held. For now anyway.

Nora lowered her hand and picked up her whip.

“Will you show me the coachman’s crack again? I think I’m going to like a shorter whip with a longer handle.”

“If you can control a shorter whip, you can control a longer one. It’s best to learn on a shorter whip,” he said, his voice stronger than before, sturdier.

“Then let’s get back to work.”

They worked for an hour and at the end of the hour, Nora had learned the forward crack. He left for a moment and returned with a bundle of socks which he rolled into tight balls. First she tossed them up in the air for him and Søren knocked them out of the air—an impressive display of good aim. Then he threw them for her and she was able to hit one out of fifteen. A decent start.

“Unfortunately,” Søren said as he gathered the socks for a second round, “there’s no chance you’ll master the whip in time for this party Kingsley’s planning. You’d have to work ten hours a day from now until then and you’d still not be as good as I am or Kingsley is.”

Or Milady.

Nora sighed. “Well, I’ll figure something out. Whips aren’t the only way to hurt someone. I know me. I’m creative.”

“Yes, you are. You always have been.”

“It’s funny you say that,” she said. “You know, that I’m creative.”

“Why is that?”

“I...” She hesitated for a moment. “While I was away I wrote a book.”

“You did?”

“I did. A whole book. A big one. Like, four hundred and fifty pages. Amazing what you can get done when you’re trapped in a convent with nothing else to do. But I didn’t just write it. I sent it to a literary agent, and she’s representing it. Me. We’re doing some final fixes on it, and then she’s going to try to sell it. Crazy, right?” She laughed nervously.

“Eleanor, that’s wonderful.”

“It’s just a dirty romance,” she said, shrugging.

“So was Lady Chatterley’s Lover.”

“I don’t know if this is quite D. H. Lawrence, but...I’m really happy with it. I keep running to the library to play with it. Gotta make it perfect. I’m going to use the first money I make to buy a laptop—a really fancy one so I don’t have to work at the library anymore.”

“Is this why you’re working for Kingsley? For money?”

“Money is the reason everybody works,” she said.

“Kingsley has all the money in the world.”

“I want my own money, my own house. Freedom. Money is freedom.”

“I’m under a vow of poverty. Do you think I’m not free?”

“No, you aren’t. You have people you have to answer to. If you want to buy a car, you have to ask permission. If you want to go on a trip, you have to beg the Jesuits or the diocese for time off and you have to find someone in your family to pay for you. If you hadn’t donated so much money to the Jesuits and the diocese after your father died, they would have transferred you already five times. That doesn’t seem like freedom to me.”

“You think I should leave the priesthood?” he asked, a hint of dark mirth in his eyes.

“We are not having this conversation again. I will walk again, and I won’t come back this time.”

“You will walk the circumference of the entire globe and find yourself right where you started. Here,” he said, taking her into his arms.

Søren bent his head and kissed her. She didn’t return the kiss at first. Her dignity wouldn’t allow it. But in a fight between her dignity and her desire, her desire won every time.

Nora heard someone clear his throat.

“Ahem. Am I interrupting the lesson?”

They pulled away from each other and found Kingsley standing in the playroom doorway.

“No, we’re done for the day,” Nora said.

“Bien. And progress? It was made?”

“I’m okay at it,” Nora said. “But it’ll take months to be as good as I need to be.”

“We don’t have that much time,” Kingsley said.

“Perhaps you should have thought about that before you decided to put Eleanor on display to the entire world before she was ready.” Søren scowled at Kingsley.

“She’ll be ready one way or another. I have faith in her even if you don’t. Shall I show you out?” Kingsley asked, stepping into the room to leave the doorway empty and open. The air crackled between Kingsley and Søren, not with their old playful sexual tension but with true animosity. She’d wondered if they’d made peace with each other but clearly today was nothing but a temporary détente.

“I know my way out.” Søren released her hand and walked toward the door. “Eleanor. I hope to see you soon. You should come back to church.”