Eleanor didn’t have to ask what reasons he meant. Søren telling the church he’d been married to an adult woman would be like holding up a big sign that said I’m a Red-blooded Straight Male. As suspicious as people were of the Catholic clergy these days, she couldn’t blame him for wanting to spill those particular beans.
“My marriage will be common knowledge in time, and I wanted you to hear about it from me and no one else.”
“Go on.”
“It’s a long and fairly sordid story, so forgive me for giving you the bowdlerized version. My best friend in school was half French. His parents had died in an accident outside Paris when he was fourteen. He came to Maine to live with his grandparents. They sent him to the school I attended—a Jesuit boarding school. His older sister, Marie-Laure, was a ballet dancer in Paris. Brother and sister missed each other terribly. Neither of them had any money between them. She couldn’t come to America. He couldn’t go live in Paris again. This might come as a shock to you, but my father had a great deal of money.”
“Shocked. Stunned. Flabbergasted.”
“I had a sizable trust fund I’d inherit when I married. I wanted my friend to be able to see his sister again. She wanted to live in America. Marrying her meant I would receive my trust fund, which I planned to give to them. Money and citizenship—I thought that would be enough for her. Everyone would win.”
“What happened?”
Søren’s lips formed a tight line. A shadow passed over his eyes.
“Nobody won. Money and American citizenship weren’t enough for her. I had warned Marie-Laure in advance that ours would be a marriage in name only. I had no romantic interest in her whatsoever.”
“Why not?”
Søren sighed and gave a low mirthless laugh.
“Let’s save that answer for another time. Suffice it to say she wasn’t my type. And I won’t speak ill of the dead.”
“She’s dead?”
“She is. She said she was in love with me. I don’t think she was. I think she considered my lack of interest in her a challenge. She pursued me obsessively and failed in her pursuit. She saw me kiss someone else and ran away in anger. She tripped and fell and died. Her brother thinks she committed suicide. I don’t believe she had it in her to destroy herself. She loved herself far too much. Either way, she was gone, and I was a widower mere weeks after marrying. Her brother took her body back to Paris to bury her near their parents and never returned to school. I traveled Europe the summer of my eighteenth year and in the autumn I started seminary. That is the story—as much of it as I can tell you tonight.”
Eleanor leaned into her hands and breathed. She had no idea how to react to this news.
“So you know how to waltz because of her?”
“I tried to distract her from her painful attempts at seducing me by asking her about ballet, about dance, about anything that interested her.”
“You never had sex with her?”
“The marriage was unconsummated.”
“Your own wife.”
“I barely knew her when we married. And she was the sister of my closest friend.”
“Still, it was legal Catholic fucking. And you said she was beautiful, right?”
“When I realized how strong her feelings were for me, I considered it. I didn’t want to, but she was my wife for better or worse. I felt duty bound to make her happy. I failed. And it’s for the best. I’m not the sort of person who can engage in sex simply to pass the time. The one person I was intimate with as a teenager loved me deeply and made sacrifices to be with me. I exact a certain toll on a person.”
“I’m almost eighteen, Søren. You got married at eighteen. Stop acting like I’m too young for you.”
“My reticence has little to do with your age and everything to do with me being a priest who has no desire to drag you into a relationship that will dangerously complicate your life.”
“I want you so much.”
“Eleanor, I could barely breathe watching you walk down the aisle today. Do you know how much it hurt knowing you will never walk down that aisle to me?”
Tears burned her eyes.
“It hurt me, too,” she confessed, and blinked the tears away.
He took her chin in his hand and tilted her face up to meet his eyes. When she looked in them she saw no mercy, no compassion, no love, no kindness—only the cold, bitter truth.
“Little One, to be with me is to hurt.”
“To be without you would hurt more. It did hurt more. You won’t scare me off. I’m not afraid of you.”
He released her chin and Eleanor took a deep breath. Learning the truth about Søren was like fighting the Hydra. Every question he answered spawned three more questions. The more she learned the less she understood, the harder she had to fight.