The wedding took twenty minutes.
There were no flowers, no guests, no music. A judge with tired eyes read the words in a monotone while I stood in a plain white dress that Mr. Voss had somehow gotten in my exact size.
And beside me, in a massive motorized wheelchair, sat my husband.
I tried not to stare.
I failed.
He was enormous, his body heavy and rounded, wrapped in a dark tailored suit that strained at the seams. His hands were thick and covered in raised, shiny scars. The left side of his face was twisted into a landscape of old burns, the skin pulled tight and uneven, the left eyelid drooping. His hair, thin and gray at the edges, was combed carelessly back.
But his eyes…
His eyes were what I couldn’t understand. They were dark, steady, and cold as a winter lake.
“Do you, Don Baste, take this woman…”
“I do,” he said, in a voice so deep and rough it sounded like gravel being dragged across stone.
“And do you, Clara Hale…”
I looked at my father, who stood in the back, avoiding my gaze.
“I do,” I said.
The judge pronounced us husband and wife. Nobody clapped. Nobody kissed anyone.
Don Baste turned his wheelchair toward the door and said, without looking at me:
“Come.”
His mansion sat on a cliff above the harbor, a gothic fortress of gray stone and dark windows. It had more than forty rooms, and I would later learn that he used only three.
Mr. Voss showed me to my bedroom on the second floor. It was beautiful, with a four-poster bed, silk curtains, and a view of the sea. It was also very far from his.
“The agreement doesn’t require…” I started awkwardly.
“Mr. Baste has no interest in that,” Mr. Voss said, without a trace of expression. “Your duties are different.”
I soon discovered what he meant.
