Salt Kiss – Episode 42
Isolde refused the rooms prepared for her until she received answers about the attack, the engagement, and Mark’s expectations. Her calm insistence brought all three of them to the same table before dawn.
“My father promised me as compensation for a conflict I did not create,” she said. “I will not be moved from one guarded estate to another and call it marriage.”
Mark did not dispute her account. “The agreement prevents bloodshed between our families.”
“Then negotiate peace without using my body as a signature.”
Tristan watched Mark absorb the challenge. He had expected domination; instead, Mark treated her refusal as a boundary requiring an answer.
“No wedding will occur without your consent,” Mark said.
Isolde’s surprise revealed how little choice she had expected. “And if I never consent?”
“Then I find another way to secure the peace.”
The promise changed the room, but it did not erase the threats surrounding them. Isolde remained valuable to anyone seeking leverage over either family.
Tristan presented the evidence from the estate and safe houses. The attacks had required information from both Laurence security and Mark’s network, suggesting cooperation between insiders.
“Someone wants the marriage to fail publicly,” he concluded. “Your deaths would work, but scandal might work just as well.”
Mark’s attention shifted between Tristan and Isolde. Their attraction could become precisely the scandal an enemy needed.
“So we hide what we feel?” Isolde asked.
“We control what the enemy can prove,” Mark answered.
Tristan heard the familiar refuge in the word control. “Secrecy already brought us here.”
Isolde agreed. She proposed that the three of them share all information concerning the threat and the engagement, with no private arrangements made on her behalf.
Mark accepted after a long pause. It was not romance or forgiveness, but it was the first agreement all three had chosen.
Before they could leave, a message appeared on the secure screen: surveillance photographs from the motel, including the moment Isolde touched Tristan’s face.