Page 50 of Bitter Burn
Also I’m waiting on a call back, but I’m pretty sure I found Cara Sims. Once I hear more, I’ll be in touch.
And then another one, right after.
Okay, extra fuck off now.
I run my hand down my face. God, this day already feels a year long, and it’s not even time for lunch.
I sit at my desk right as Dinah comes in. The two weeks between Saturnalia and New Year’s Eve comprise our slowest season, and everyone save for Andrea and myself tends to dress more casually. So today Dinah is in an MIT sweatshirt and jeans instead of her usual latex and leather. The giant glasses perched on her nose and the reusable coffee cup in her hand are more casual academia than in charge of Roman orgies. Which makes sense, as I’d lured her away from a tenure-track career with the promises of more spanking and less grant application paperwork.
“There you are,” she says, dropping into a chair in front of my desk. “I’ve been looking for you all morning.”
“Impromptu meeting with Geoffrey Laurence,” I say and then smile at the face she makes. “I know.”
“I’m feeling grateful that my risk of having a father-in-law is quite low.”
“Or you could end up with five at the same time.”
Her laugh is bright and fast, followed by a you got me there smile. She’s a bit of a tomcat. “It would take five to pin me down.”
“Or just one if she’s a certain princess…”
For that, I’m given a look that could score glass. Dinah doesn’t like talking about the princess. “I didn’t find you this morning to chat about my lack of fathers-in-law. I’m here because of Isolde.”
I hear the disapprobation in her voice, and I turn serious. “What about her?”
“What about her? Mark, have you seen her?”
“Yes,” I say and look down at the ring on my finger. No longer her ring, instead the black and silver one I’d given Tristan before he left for Ireland. It’s fitting, I think, that he should have mine. It should have always been his, and the wedding should have been theirs, and they should be together right now, happy and untroubled by a living ghost like me. “I’ve seen her.”
“I thought maybe it was just Saturnalia, that maybe once we weren’t pretending we were senators and praetorians hatching plots over wine, the whispers would die down,” Dinah says. “But they haven’t. Even after you spoke to Andrea.”
The final night of Saturnalia, after I’d helped Isolde up from between my feet and walked her to the apartment, where she woodenly shut the door in my face, I found Andrea in the lobby of the club and told her to knock it the fuck off.
“I’ve never asked you to forgive Cashel for what he took from you, and I’ve never asked you to like Isolde,” I told my treasurer. “But don’t insult my empathy by humiliating my wife in public again.”
Andrea had the grace to look slightly ashamed, but the defiance outlined in her jaw was just as unmistakable. “If she wants people to speak of her better, then maybe she should have behaved better. She?—”
“Didn’t want to marry me, doesn’t want to be here, and can hardly be blamed for loving Tristan. Even I couldn’t stop myself from doing that, you know.”
Andrea looked back at me with an unhappy gaze. “She’s not a victim, Mark. She’s a saint with enough blood on her hands to paint over the inside of the Sistine Chapel and have plenty left over. She is the enemy.”
“She is mine,” I said sharply, and even though it was no longer true, probably wouldn’t be legally true for much longer, it felt so good to say that I said it again. “She’s mine. And I’ve welcomed her back here, so I’ll ask you not to betray my hospitality.”
Andrea hadn’t asked and if I do? even though it was all over her face. But she swallowed it down, forced it back. “You and I have been partners for all these years, and I’m grateful for it, because I couldn’t have gotten this close without you. But that girl will be the death of you if you’re not careful.”
“My plans are extremely careful. That’s all that matters.”
Andrea had nodded then, and since that night, she’d stopped her own whispers and stares in the hall. She instead pretended Isolde didn’t exist, which was an improvement at least.
But the rest of the club still whispers at night. Every night.
“Tell her she doesn’t need to come into the hall,” Dinah is saying now. “There’s no point. It’s only been two weeks since she’s been back, and she already looks like a vampire has been feeding on her for years.”
Dinah doesn’t know about Ys or even about the saints, so I must be careful explaining things. “I’ve mentioned before that this marriage was arranged?—”
“Yes, and that Isolde and Tristan left because they found out it was more arranged than they’d thought.” Dinah had given me hell the morning I’d been found tied to my chair, firm in her belief that whatever had happened to me, I’d thoroughly deserved. I liked her more for it, for her steadfast protectiveness toward Isolde when it feels like everyone else at Lyonesse is determined to hate her.
“The reasons for the arrangement still stand. Are still rather pressing. It’s important that Isolde and I appear…connected.”
