Forbidden Game: Seducing the Bride at the Altar novel · Chapter 1 of 32
Chapter 1: The Bride Says No
On the eve of her wedding Thalia overhears the groom and her sister plotting her death for the pearl he wears, and at the altar she says no and orders his disowned brother to marry her before moonset, and her sister smiles: one moon.
The night before my wedding, I found out my groom planned to watch me turn to foam on the chapel steps.
I had gone down to his study with a present.
It was a conch shell, pink inside, the first thing I ever brought up out of the sea for him.
I'd kept it for five years.
His door was open a hand's width.
Corbett's voice came through it, low and pleased.
"She says I do at four. The moon sets at six tomorrow morning. By breakfast she's sea foam."
I stopped with my hand on the frame.
A woman laughed.
I knew that laugh. I grew up with it.
"And the pearl?" my sister asked.
"Mine for good, the second she says the words."
I looked through the gap.
Vespera sat on the edge of his desk in black silk.
Corbett stood between her knees.
He held up his right hand, and the black pearl in his gold signet ring caught the lamp.
He had worn that ring every day for five years.
He told me he bought it at an estate sale.
He told me it was lucky.
It was my heart.
Five years ago I pulled him out of the water off Morris Island while his father's yacht went down.
He wasn't breathing.
My sister rose out of the dark beside me and offered me a trade.
My pearl for his breath, and a pair of legs so I could stay with him.
I said yes before she finished the sentence.
I thought she'd taken the pearl back down into the sea.
"You staged it so well," Corbett said.
"I sank a yacht for you," Vespera said. "Well is the least of it."
She pulled him down by his tie and kissed him.
He kissed her back.
Then he said, "After her little funeral, we do it properly. Just us."
The conch slid out of my fingers.
I caught it an inch from the floor.
My fingertips were wet.
Not with sweat.
White bubbles fizzed at the end of every finger and floated off.
I knew the terms. I had agreed to them.
If the man I saved ever betrayed me, I would go to foam at the next moonset.
Unless a man who wanted me, and not the pearl, made me a vow first.
I went back up the stairs without a sound.
I sat on the bed in the dark with my hands in my lap and watched them fizz.
Then I made a list of every man coming to my wedding.
The bankers. The board. The harbor pilots. The senator.
Every one of them had raised a glass to Corbett's luck at the rehearsal dinner.
Every one of them wanted a piece of it.
Except one.
Jasper Stoddard hadn't raised a glass.
He was Corbett's younger half-brother, the one the family had cut out of the will.
At his father's funeral he stood up and said Corbett had sunk the Lady Margaret on purpose.
Everyone laughed at him.
Corbett seated him in the back row of our wedding "so he can watch me win."
At the rehearsal dinner Jasper passed me at the bar and murmured without looking at me.
"Don't marry him."
I thought he was being cruel.
I didn't sleep.
At noon Vespera did my makeup in the bridal room and hummed our mother's songs.
"You look pale, little sister."
"Wedding nerves," I said.
I put on the long lace gloves.
By three the foam had reached my knuckles.
At four, the chapel doors opened onto three hundred people and the harbor glittering behind the altar.
I walked down the aisle alone.
Corbett waited in a white suit with his ring hand folded over the other.
He smiled at me.
The officiant read for a long time.
Then he asked, "Do you, Thalia, take Corbett to be your husband?"
"No," I said.
The chapel went silent.
Corbett squeezed my hand hard enough to hurt.
"Sweetheart," he said, smiling for the front row. "Say it again."
"No."
I pulled my hand free.
I twisted off his diamond and dropped it into his breast pocket.
"I heard you last night," I said. "You and her."
I looked at the front pew.
Vespera sat with her hands folded on her black purse, smiling at me.
I turned my back on both of them.
I walked down the aisle the way I'd come, with my train dragging and three hundred phones lifting.
Jasper sat in the last row in a black suit, arms crossed.
He watched me come the whole way.
"Stand up," I said.
He stood.
He was taller than I remembered, with a white scar through one eyebrow.
"You told me not to marry him," I said.
"I did."
"I'm not. I'm marrying you."
Somewhere behind me a woman dropped her glass.
Jasper looked at me.
"Is this a joke?"
I peeled off my right glove and held up my hand.
White foam fizzed off my fingers and drifted onto his shoe.
He stared at it.
"I have until the moon goes down," I said. "I need a vow from a man who doesn't want anything from me. You're the only one in this room."
"Thalia." Corbett was coming down the aisle. "Stop this."
"Jasper," Corbett said. "Sit down."
Jasper's jaw moved.
"You've been telling me to sit down my whole life," he said.
He looked back at me.
"You're sure?"
"No," I said. "Yes."
"Then what do I say?"
"Say it and mean it. That's all it takes."
He took my bare hand, foam and all.
His palm was rough and warm.
"I'm Jasper Stoddard," he said, loud enough for the back of the chapel. "I take you. I don't want his money, or his luck, or whatever this is. I'll keep you breathing."
"I take you," I said. "In front of all of them."
"This isn't legal," the officiant called from the altar.
The sea doesn't read licenses.
It reads vows.
"Can I kiss you?" Jasper asked, very quietly.
I nodded.
He kissed me once, hard and short, with three hundred people watching.
He tasted like coffee and salt.
When he let go, my fingertips were dry.
Pink. Whole.
The foam was gone.
Corbett reached us and grabbed my arm.
Jasper moved me behind his shoulder without letting go of my hand.
"You don't know what she is," Corbett hissed.
"No," Jasper said. "But I know what you are."
Over his shoulder I found the front pew.
Vespera hadn't stood up.
She was still smiling at me, and she lifted one finger.
"One moon, little sister."
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