“You know a Mistress can’t resist a man who begs.”

Chapter Twenty

“In sickness and in health…”

Marguerite wondered if brides and grooms ever listened to their ceremony while it was happening. That magical moment of joining when the words held so much power.

A power to last a lifetime, if the heart was open to claim their truth forever.

She understood now why knights did an overnight vigil on a stone chapel floor before taking an oath of fealty. She had, in a way. She’d sat in the little chapel on Tyler’s property through the long hours of the night before their wedding, thinking over what those words meant, realizing how holy and sacred they were. Tyler had kept watch with her. He rarely let her out of his sight and she accepted that. In the quiet way she walked in his soul and he walked in hers now, knowing one another without words, she had understood that he had needed the time. After the honeymoon she would firmly insist on going back to work, but she’d given him the month before their wedding. They’d both needed it.

“Honor and obey…” She met his gaze as she said the words they’d specifically instructed left in the vows. Watched Tyler’s eyes turn to burnished gold at the complex meaning of the phrase between them.

“Honor and cherish…” His voice was strong and tender both. Strong enough to be heard by all, tender for what could not help but be in his voice when he looked at her, bringing Chloe to sniffles just behind her. And he would cherish her. He already did.

She felt it like a photo she’d once seen in a magazine of an Afghan hound, abandoned and left in a shed for forty days without food, the only water coming in from rain through a leaky roof. The dull coat, protruding bone, the nearly fatal dehydration, had shown a body close to death. But the eyes had lived. Tyler had told her that was what had frightened him so badly, to see that light almost gone from her eyes, rousing his fury and love to screaming pitch. Now she was feeling like that dog, the picture taken six months later. The shadows of fear and the nightmares were part of her forever, but she chose to brave standing out in the light of his love and dared them to follow, for he would protect her from all the fears that mattered.

Love nourished her, not just returning her to health but bringing her to a place she’d never been before. It shone in her eyes for everyone to see. She’d asked Chloe and Gen to serve as her maids of honor. Komal and Mr. Reynolds sat in the first row where her parents would have been. She’d wanted to honor the spirits of her parents, who they had been to her before tragedy had destroyed their family.

David would have walked her down the aisle, so bestowing that honor had been easy.

When she’d stepped out the back door of the Gulf house with Chloe and Gen, Brendan had waited for her.

Resplendent in black tie, his dark hair a silken fall to his shoulders, he had a sprig of lavender carefully pinned in his lapel that picked up the beautiful color of Gen’s and Chloe’s elegant sheath dresses.

He put his hand over his heart. “Ladies, I’m overwhelmed.”

“I was about to say the same,” Chloe responded, eyes merry. “Marguerite can walk herself down the lawn in that dress. It’s my knees that are weak.”

“Ignore her,” Gen informed Brendan. “We all do.”

He smiled, but turned his eyes to Marguerite, covered all of her, and apparently heedless of what her two friends would think, he went to one knee, bowed his head.

She cupped his jaw and he turned his head, kissed her hand, placed his over it so he held on to it when he rose, stepping close enough so they would not hear how he chose to address her. “You honor me, Mistress.”

“It’s my pleasure,” she replied softly, squeezing his hand. He gave her another lingering look then stepped back, withdrew an envelope from his jacket, offered it to her. “Tyler asked if you would read this before you came down to him.” He moved away, taking a step toward Chloe and Gen to give her privacy as she opened it. Marguerite noted that he put a hand beneath Chloe’s elbow, proving he’d noticed as she had that Chloe was trying to shift all her weight onto one foot to relieve the ache in the still healing leg. She’d refused to use crutches or even the cane she’d brought and Gen had done a credible job of covering the lingering remnants of the bruises on her face. Tyler had paid for the cosmetic surgery that gave her back her two front teeth when insurance wouldn’t and Chloe had regaled him with several renditions of the popular Christmas carol in joyous gratitude. Smiling a little, Marguerite opened the folded letter.

Dearest Marguerite:

You’ve taught me a great deal about stillness. About the many things that can drift into your mind and heart when you shut down the barricades created by noise. Unexpected gifts of insight, revelation and wisdom.

I wanted to teach you about love. Thinking it would be an easy lesson, because you already know the basics. You’re right, it’s a miracle. There are those who desperately seek it like a drug, an answer to problems, an aching need they cannot describe. But you taught me that love is found in stillness. It is the space between objects. It’s the star you can’t see if you look directly at it in the night sky, but if you look away, look forward, you see it in your peripheral vision, beside you, watching over you. If you lie down on the earth it’s there, beneath you, cradling you.

You learned to create a stillness, a peace within yourself, doing it with a very select filter.

Together we found that love heals, it laughs, it cries, it feels. It is where truth begins and ends. It cannot be described or contained and it changes every moment. It has more faces and forms than we can count. Let me in, Marguerite. For once and for all, remove any and all filters between us.

Let me in to share it with you, experience it with you. In this lifetime and however many after we’re granted.

God is beyond our description, so we describe our ways of worshipping God instead. So it is with my love for you. I think of you sipping from a teacup, your pale blue eyes changing their expression every moment. I think of your tears on my neck, your trembling body in my arms. I think of you teaching me about tea, the importance of the rituals. Of you teaching a teenager how to be a woman. I think of your fury, like a storm goddess, taking you over the edge of that building, your hands reaching for that child as though she represented all that must be saved from the heartless evil in men’s hearts. You’re my angel, my tormentor, my woman, my love. I no longer draw breath without a part of you in the act. As I have said before, I will always be there for you, but now I want to take a chance and beg you to love me back, beautiful Mistress.

To always be there for me as well. For I know you can take care of my heart like no other.

Your Master and slave both.

Tyler

She folded it back up, held it against her heart, her eyes closed, head bowed over it.

Then a small smile crossed her face and she turned, looking toward Brendan.

“I’m ready.”

She took his arm, felt the grip of his hand stay sure and steady over hers as he escorted her through the gardens, Gen and Chloe just ahead of them.

As they stepped into the arbor that would take them out of the garden, she could see down the slight incline to the wide expanse of lawn. Two hundred people in a wide crescent of white wooden folding chairs were arranged before a platform with a trellis.

Their altar, all of it decorated with flowers and framed by the spreading branches of the two live oaks. Her gaze sought the figure of her groom, but a movement to her left caught her attention.

There were two people waiting for her at this exit from the gardens and Brendan had turned her to be sure she saw them.

Natalie carried a basket of flower petals. She was dressed in lavender silk and gauze, a lovely wide-brimmed hat on her small head. Shyly, she stood before her mother, who was dressed in pale green with tasteful amethyst jewelry, both of them looking like the promise of spring.

Natalie looked up at Marguerite, her brown eyes round. “You’re so beautiful, Miss M. Mister Tyler said you needed a flower girl.”

He had given her perfection. Every gift she could ever want that was within a man’s power to give. Marguerite turned away, her hand going to her mouth as she saw Natalie’s mother step out from behind the child. Brendan touched her bare nape.

“Mistress?”

Just a murmured word and she nodded, acknowledging him, but the sobs had started and she couldn’t stop them, not even in respect of the painstaking time that Gen had put into her makeup. Fortunately it had been lightly applied since Gen had pronounced, “Good Lord, you have eyelashes as thick and pretty as a baby’s.” She felt other hands then. Raising her head, she saw Tina touching her shoulder and Natalie now in front of her, holding on to a small handful of her dress. Chloe and Gen stood back a respectful step but their eyes were already brimming.

“God, where’s the photographer?” Chloe muttered, looking around, but Gen stayed her with a hand.

“Some moments you don’t forget,” she murmured.

“Oh, Marguerite.” Tina wrapped her arms around her and Marguerite slipped her arms around her in return, feeling this new joy in reaching out. Touching, caring, letting pain go in the form of tears to wash it away and bring happiness, contentment. Natalie’s little arms wrapped around her legs and she reached down with her other arm, held her close. Cupping that precious head, the little skull she covered as they hit the side of the building.

“Please don’t cry on this wonderful day. I can’t bear knowing I gave you one moment of guilt or unhappiness. I was so awful to you, so awful.” Tina raised her face and made a noise of protest as Marguerite shook her head, still unable to talk through her tears. “No, don’t you dare deny it. I help run a domestic abuse shelter, for God’s sake… And yet, when I saw her there that day, I couldn’t stop myself from blaming you and I knew— knew—what it is to run from someone. The damage they can wreak when all you’re trying to do is care for those around you.”

“It doesn’t matter. Just…thank you. You’ve made this day so much more wonderful and I didn’t think it could get any more wonderful.” Marguerite at last let her go and turned to find Brendan there with a handkerchief, which he carefully applied to her eyes for her, being her mirror. With a smile, he even dabbed at her running nose.