Page 21 of A Lesson in Thorns (Thornchapel 1)
Becket cracks a wide smile, looking like a charming, eligible clergyman from some Masterpiece show. “He looks too sexy to be a librarian, doesn’t he?”
“Becket.”
“Don’t worry, you do too,” he says, with an angel-eyed wink I wouldn’t have thought him capable of giving.
“Becket!”
The priest just laughs, shuts his door with a wave, and then drives off, Sir James Frazer barking back at me the whole way down the drive.
Chapter 6
The equipment comes the next day, and supervising the delivery and installation takes almost until dinner. By the time the too-early dusk comes, I’m almost too tired to make myself a quick sandwich, but I force myself, knowing I’ll probably sleep for twelve or thirteen hours, and I hate waking up with low blood sugar. I eat, brush my teeth, and then fall into bed like I’ve never been there before. I do indeed sleep for twelve hours.
But the next day, I go into Thorncombe around lunchtime, after I’ve worked a few hours in the library getting the digitization software up and running. After a pie and a beer—and a second beer for courage—I walk down to the library, which is off the main street through the village on a small side road that has an arresting view of the St. Brigid’s graveyard.
High in the far corner of the cemetery, a glossy black headstone frowns over the weathered gray teeth of the other markers, gleaming and distinct. GUEST is printed across the top in massive letters, with two sets of dates underneath, and there are no flowers decorating it, no wreaths or plants, just a rectangle of grass that looks newer than the rest.
Auden’s parents.
I stop and take it in for a minute, the graveyard and the church, and after a while, my gaze drifts to the rest of the street, so pretty and so lonely all at the same time. While there are signs of modernity—a banner flapping against the fence for the church’s nursery school, a pharmacy, a bank—it feels shoved to the background, as if the stones and streets of the village itself refuse to be dragged into the present day. A beautiful spot to visit, but it makes me a little wistful . . . and a little unsettled. It’s like the village is keeping secrets, just like the estate it originally served, and there’s this feeling—thin and filament-like, too fragile to really examine—that it’s all connected, that Thorncombe is keeping Thornchapel’s secrets or vice versa, that somehow this deep seam of river and forest in the middle of nowhere knows something I don’t.
It’s a feeling only strengthened by the way people look at me while I walk around. I’m from Kansas: I know small towns. And so for a while, I chalk it up to the usual who are you vibe people give off when they see a stranger. But I can’t deny that there’s something different too; it’s not clannishness or suspicion—or not only those things. It’s expectation. Like they’re waiting for me to say something or do something, and I have no idea what it is. Apologize for being here? Explain why I’m here?
Not drink two beers by myself in the middle of the day?
I’m relieved when I push my way into the Thorncombe Library and find it empty. And though the building itself is all old stone and brick, the inside is fairly modern, if displaying the usual public-building shabbiness that American libraries also have in abundance. I step onto the industrial carpet and walk past a cheerful children’s section and a bank of public computers—all empty—until I find the desk in the back, which judging from the scribbled notes littered around the keyboard and the carts of books lined up behind it, doubles as a reference desk and a circulation desk.
No one’s there.
Life would be so much easier if he had an Instagram or a Snapchat or a Twitter account like everybody else, but no, St. Sebastian is one of those people, and I feel distinctly stupid as I look around the empty space.
Is this how people really used to find people before iPhones? By asking other people? Out loud? With mouth-words?
Ugh.
The longest rows of stacks continue on from the desk, and I can make out a half-empty cart at the end, so I decide to go ask whoever’s shelving if they know St. Sebastian.
But when I find the row the librarian is currently shelving in, it’s not other people, it’s St. Sebastian himself. He’s half-kneeling, one arm laden with books, a hand expertly wedging a title between the others on the shelf. And with the messy hair and lip ring, I expected him to be in a T-shirt and boots again, but he’s in slacks and glossy shoes and a charcoal zip-up with a collared shirt underneath. Cheap business casual, but on St. Sebastian’s tight body, it looks delicious.
“May I help you find something?” St. Sebastian asks without looking up.
“Yes,” I say. “You.”
He nearly drops the book he’s trying to shelve, just barely managing to catch it between his palm and his knee with a thwacky sound. “Jesus Christ,” he mumbles, finally looking up at me. “Proserpina?”
“Poe is easier,” I suggest, shrugging off my coat and draping it over the cart. I kneel next to him and take a couple of his books. He starts to protest, but I give him a look. “I have my master’s in library science. Do you really think I can’t handle shelving large-print mysteries?”
His sigh is one of defeat, and I take that as permission. We start shelving side by side, finding an easy, efficient rhythm that’s unbroken by words until he finally asks, “Why are you here?”
I decide to ignore his grouchy tone. “I wanted to see you.”
He makes an impatient noise, shelving his last book and turning to face me. “But why?”
I still have books to put away, so I don’t return his gaze. “Because we knew each other as kids and now I’m back. Isn’t that enough?”
He steps over to me, taking a few of the books out of my arms. His warm hands brush against my arm, and I can’t help but remember yesterday, what it felt like to be stretched out on top of him, what it felt like to have my legs tangled with his. His hair isn’t long enough to tie back but it is more than long enough to tug on, to twine my fingers through. To feel brushing over my stomach as he kisses his way down to the wet place between my legs . . .
I blush and look back at the two books left in my arms, staring at the labels on the spines while I try to force my mind away from sex.
