Page 30 of Honey Cut
I’m scared I’ll fail my uncle and my God. I’m scared Mark will discover every secret I’ve been keeping and use every single one of them against me.
I’m scared that I’ll betray myself for the love of him.
My father takes my arm, and I barely feel it. The music changes, and we walk around the corner to the white-marble aisle. My heart is pounding like it did that first morning in Rome, knowing I was doing something that couldn’t be undone.
And then we step in front of the famous bronze doors to walk to the altar. The neo-Gothic ceiling fans move above us in dizzying vaults and arches. Sunlight pushes through the jewel-toned stained glass, more blue than anything else. The nave is full. The rich, the powerful, and the famous are bristling, stirring, and pushing to get a glimpse of me.
Through my veil, I see Mark at the stairs before the choir, surrounded by the majesty of the cathedral and matching it entirely. Wide shoulders, perfect jaw, gold hair as bright as the ciborium over the altar.
I can feel the heat of his gaze all the way from the other end of the nave. I can see the slow, dangerous curve of his smile.
I am a saint of the Church who is yoking herself to a fallen angel, and with each step forward in my fairy-tale shoes, I offer desperate, agonized prayers to God.
Please let me survive Mark Trevena.
eleven
ISOLDE
My father kissesmy cheek at the end of the aisle, the picture of paternal tenderness, and then he places my hand in Mark’s.
I look down at the way Mark’s hand swallows mine and try to ignore the thrill the sight gives me. When I look up at my almost-husband, he is staring down at my bouquet. White peonies and pink honeysuckle and—because I could—green and purple tapers of hyssop.
His mouth twitches as he realizes what he’s looking at, and when his eyes meet mine, there’s something amused in his gaze.
A thrill skates over my nerve endings and leaves goose bumps everywhere. He’s recognized the offering in the gesture, the truce. My safeword is literally between us right now, a more powerful symbol of my trust than the ring he’ll slip onto my finger later, than the papers we’ll sign. I’m agreeing to play his game by his rules and on his board.
God help me.
We walk up the shallow steps past the pulpit and into the choir. The high altar sits before us, its canopy of bright bronze gleaming in the combination of sunlight and hanging lamplight, sprays of peonies and creeping tendrils of honeysuckle at its base. The honeysuckle spills down the steps elevating the altar and tangles across the black-and-white-checkered marble, nearly to our feet.
Bryn follows us, as does Melody, and they stand behind Mark and me as we approach the archbishop of New York. My uncle stands just behind the archbishop, cloaked in scarlet and milk-white vestments, and priests and deacons stand behind him. An army of men in robes, here to see Mortimer Cashel’s niece married in state.
Uncle Mortimer gives me a quick wink before the music dies away and the ceremony begins. I wish it made me feel better. Mortimer has been more of a father to me since my mother died than Geoffrey Laurence has, but he can’t do this part for me.
I am alone.
The Mass rolls into its ancient cadence, and ornately carved chairs are moved onto the checkered marble for Mark and me to sit on; Bryn and Melody get chairs of their own. Melody’s high-heeled foot swings, dangling from a crossed leg. Mark’s gleaming dress shoes stay as they are on the marble; he never shifts during the readings or the homily. Only once do I see him betray his own stillness—it’s when I betray my own. A figure moves on the far side of the altar, behind the wooden screen that separates the sanctuary from the ambulatory beyond.
Tristan.
Unlike the attendants and the guests, he’s not in a tuxedo, only a black suit, and his positioning makes it clear that he’s on duty, picking one of the few places where he can see directly down the nave to the massive bronze doors at the front.
His eyes meet mine in a shock of summer green, and for a moment, the world thins to nothing, to vapor, and all that’s left is him.
I break my gaze away, back down to the checkered marble, to where the toes of my silver-blue shoes peep from under the lace of my gown. I can feel Mark looking at me and then looking into the ambulatory—subtly enough that he barely moves. But the effect of his look must be powerful because when I dare a glance back up, I see a flush on Tristan’s cheeks and naked pain scrawled across his features. He moves, the silent stride of a bodyguard on the prowl, but I think it’s so that he doesn’t have to look at us anymore.
Or at the very least, risk us looking back.
And you asked him to stay, Isolde.
He wanted to leave, and I begged him not to. Even knowing that he loved Mark, that he felt something for me. Because I was terrified of being alone, and now here I am, lonely anyway.
We exchange rings, and I see something etched on the inside of my band before Mark guides it easily over my finger. I wonder if Mark will see what I’d secretly commissioned to have etched onto his: delicate lines of honeysuckle, all around the inside of the band. For good luck, if anyone asks, but also for the sake of a beautiful knife given to me years ago.
There is singing and there is communion, a slow affair with so many guests, and then at last, the archbishop declares us wed.
Before the standing crowd, as the organ fills the air, I turn to my husband and he turns to me. He once flogged me in front of a packed hall at Lyonesse and then shoved his hand down my panties, and yet the moment he lifts the veil to press his warm mouth against mine feels just as intimate. More so, although I can’t explain why.
