“I walked from St. Luke’s down your street,” Søren continued. “It was dark. Kingsley kept tabs on you as well as he could and while we were apart he fed me bits of information to keep me going. You were safe. You were happy. That’s all he told me. I sensed he was keeping something from me. When I went to see you and ask you to come back to me, I found out what that was. Who that was.”

“Wesley.”

Søren paused before nodding solemnly.

“As I walked from St. Luke’s to your home, my heart swelled with hope and happiness. I knew you loved me. I knew it like I knew my own name. But there he was. Eighteen years old. Innocent. Untouched. And he was moving into your house. I watched from the shadows under an oak tree and saw you two carrying in boxes and talking. Laughing. Finally you’d brought all the boxes in. You stood by his car and asked him, ‘Did we get everything?’ And Wesley said—”

“He said, ‘Only one more thing.’ He made me hop on his back, and he gave me a piggyback ride into the house.” Details of that day had gone hazy in her memory. She hadn’t recalled that it was the day after Christmas that Wesley moved in, but what she did remember was the happiness she’d felt, the optimism, the joy of having someone to share her life and her home with for once.

“You smiled and bit Wesley’s neck to make him laugh. I know what you look like when you’re in love. You were in love with him. You might not have known it yet, but I knew. I saw it.”

Nora buried her face in her hands before looking up at him.

“And I had never known such pain,” Søren said, his face a blank mask. “Even the day you left me could not compete with the agony of seeing you so happy as he moved into your house and into your life and into your heart. Standing there watching you two together was pure masochism. Yet I couldn’t stop looking at you and him. It was my penance. I’d waited too long. I’d lost my Little One. St. John of the Cross spoke of the ‘Dark Night of the Soul.’ Then, finally, that moment, I knew what he meant.”

Nora lowered her head. Her eyes were watering. She felt shame and sorrow and regret—foreign feelings to a woman like her.

“I’ve always wondered what changed...” she said. “After that year with my mother, I came back and you and I fought. But it never felt like a real fight. At the club you always gave me a hard time, but it was a joke, a role we played for the sake of everyone watching. Two gunslingers facing off at the OK Corral but when I was alone with you, you were you. Loving. Caring. Someone I could go to when I wanted to talk. Someone I wanted to go to when you needed me. But after you came back from Syria, I waited for you to call me and you didn’t. And when I saw you again, you weren’t you anymore. You were someone I didn’t know. Someone who scared me.”

“Kingsley enjoyed accusing me of making decisions solely to punish him—I became a priest to punish him for leaving me after his sister died, I chose you over him to punish him, I went to Syria to punish him. None of that was true. But when I came home and found Wesley moving in with you and Kingsley had known the whole time and not told me...then I punished you both.”

Nora shivered at the winter in his voice.

“You barely spoke to Kingsley after you came back unless it was to threaten him. And that night I went to you for our anniversary, you were brutal. So much more brutal than you’d ever been with me. You left bruises on my face that night...” He’d held her face in his hand hard enough to leave bruises on her cheeks, kissed her hard enough to leave bruises on her lips. Bruises she couldn’t hide under long sleeves and jeans. Wesley had seen those bruises and nearly left her when she defended herself, defended Søren. “You diabolical priest, you did it on purpose. You left bruises on my face and neck to scare Wes away.”

“It almost worked, didn’t it?”

It had almost worked. In fact, it had almost worked so well she knew if she ever needed to truly send Wesley away, that was the way to do it.

“Yes. But he didn’t scare as easy as you thought he would.”

“Much to his credit. I know I was unbearable that year.”

“You were an asshole.”

Søren gave her a tight smile. “I won’t argue with that assessment. I was punishing you for having the audacity to move on when I’d finally come around to the idea of you being Nora, punishing Kingsley for hiding your relationship with Wesley from me because he was afraid I wouldn’t come back from Syria if I knew.” Søren paused to laugh a cold mirthless laugh. “Wesley was everything I wasn’t—young and innocent and untouched. I couldn’t accept that he was what you truly wanted. I refused to accept it. I used every trick in the book I could on you, Little One. Every mind game I had in my arsenal.”

“And it worked,” she said. “Because here I am.” She stood up but only long enough to stand in front of him and kneel on the floor at his feet. “I came back. Finally.”

“You did. And the night you came back to me was the first night I ever called you Nora.”

“And the last night,” she reminded him with a smile. She remembered waking in his bed in that familiar darkness and Søren’s words, We’ll talk when it’s time. When she woke, he told her he would let her keep the clients she wanted to keep if she wanted to keep them. If she wanted to be Mistress Nora still, she could be. He wouldn’t stop her being Nora with everyone else as long as she was always his Eleanor, his Little One, when she was with him.

Nora put her head in his lap and felt the comforting touch of his hand on her hair.

“Will you forgive me?” he asked. “Kingsley knows all this. I’ve told him and he’s forgiven me. But will you forgive me?”

“Do you really need me to tell you I forgive you?”

“No, but it would comfort me to hear it.”

“I can do something better than forgiving you.”

Søren raised his eyebrow at her. Nora lifted her hands and unclasped the necklace she always wore that held the two wedding bands Søren had given her as a Christmas gift four years ago and the pendant her lover and submissive Nico had given her to wear when they were apart. She slipped the necklace and pendant into the pocket of her dress. Looking up at Søren she took his left hand in hers and slid the band onto his ring finger.

“Forever.” She whispered her vow to him, the vow written on the band, a promise made, a promise she would keep.

Søren gazed down at his hand as if seeing it for the first time. Then he took the other ring—the one engraved with the word everything—and slipped it over the fourth finger on her left hand.

“Everything,” he said.

No other words necessary. No other vows. They wouldn’t bother vowing to forsake all others because they both loved others. Kingsley was Søren’s heart as much as she was, as much as God was. She would no more ask him to give up his nights with Kingsley than she would ask him to stop giving his days to God. He would no more ask her to give up Nico than he would ask her to give up writing. This was how they were faithful to each other, by letting each other be faithful to their own hearts.

“What therefore God hath joined together, let no man put asunder.”

“Amen,” Nora replied.

Amen.

So be it.

She rose up on her knees and they kissed in the chapel, they kissed to seal these, their true Final Vows.

Never before had he kissed her so tenderly, so gently, as if she were fifteen again and this the only kiss he could trust himself to give her.

“Make love to me,” she whispered into the kiss.

Søren smiled against her lips. “Here? In the chapel?”

“Roomier than a confessional booth, right? Please, sir?”

He cupped her chin in his hand and brushed his thumb across her bottom lip.

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

Søren stood and pulled her off her knees and into his arms. With his hands in her hair, he pulled her head back to expose her neck to his kisses. His lips were gentle on her skin, gentle enough to make her shiver and sigh. He sat down in the first pew and tugged her down into his lap. She went willingly, straddling his thighs with her knees as his hands slipped under the skirts of her dress, her Scottish wedding dress she’d worn on this night, her wedding night.