Page 44 of A Lesson in Thorns (Thornchapel 1)
I try to speak the words out loud, but I can’t, I’m too stunned, my mind still tripping over this weird and untrustworthy little speech of his. “The village doesn’t know me,” is all I can manage, all I can produce as a somewhat logical response.
“Don’t they?” Saint asks bitterly. “You haven’t noticed any stares as you’ve walked around? Any people watching you?”
I open my mouth to protest.
But I can’t.
Saint goes on, nodding at my aborted response. “They’ve known about you since you were a child, or at least they’ve known about Ralph Guest’s plans to marry you to his son once you two were old enough.”
“That’s—” I shake my head, still not making sense of anything Saint is saying. “Why would it matter what Ralph wanted? Why would it matter to the people in the village?”
“Of course it matters what the Guests want. You don’t pick up on the vibe here? Like this whole place is cloistered in a strange, timeless little bubble? Like a Sarah Waters novel but with pizza delivery?”
He’s right, but he goes on before I can agree with him.
“I don’t know why or how, but somehow they learned Ralph thought you were destined to marry his son, and that was that.”
“But that’s stupid,” I protest. “He’s engaged. Surely they know that from Abby working here.”
Saint’s hand falls from the door and he sighs. “They know. And they still think you’re some kind of chosen bride for the lord of the manor.”
“It’s . . . it’s just something for people to gossip about, that’s all.” But even as I say it, I remember Auden’s words in my room on my first day here, I remember him saying his father didn’t approve of his engagement to Delphine. Could that have possibly had anything to do with me?
No. No, that’s ridiculous. Bananas. Saint’s got the story mixed up somehow, or maybe the villagers do, but there’s no way any of this can be true. “I’m not a chosen bride,” I say firmly. “For anyone. I don’t belong to Auden just because his father willed it so, and I’m certainly not going to worry about what the people of Thorncombe think.”
Saint almost speaks then. He lifts a hand and parts his lips, and whatever it is that he’s about to say has him even more bitter than before.
But he doesn’t say it. Instead, he closes his mouth and then regards me with half-lidded eyes, more of that watchful hunger he seems to have around me so often.
After a long moment like this, he finally speaks, and when he does, he speaks softly. “I have to care what they think, Poe. I don’t have friends here and I barely have family. I don’t have a real home, I don’t have anything I can call mine. All I have is this small, scratched-out life, and if I want to keep scratching it out, I can’t be any more of a pariah than I already am. I want you more than words can say, but I also want to survive here when you’re gone, and for that to happen, the most we can be is friends.”
The words drop through the air like swords. Terrible and final.
He leans his forehead against mine, his eyes closing. “Can you understand now?”
Defeated, I nod.
What is my lust compared with his future? What are kisses when he needs neighbors?
&n
bsp; “Yes, Saint,” I whisper as he lifts his head away from mine. “I see now.”
He stares down at me, and for a moment, I imagine I see something else in his face—guilt, maybe? A certain evasiveness?—but then it’s gone, and he leans in to give me a cautious, chaste kiss on the cheek.
“I hope we can be friends,” he says in a quiet voice. “I hope there’s at least that.”
I don’t like the way the words feel leaving my lips, but I say them anyway. “We’ll be friends, Saint, and that will be enough.”
He lets out a breath, as if he doesn’t like hearing the words any more than I like saying them, but before either of us can say anything else to disrupt our new balance, Becket comes into the room with Saint’s coat in his arms.
“I think the party's over,” Becket says, walking toward us and extending the coat, which Saint takes with a nod. “Auden spent about ten minutes glaring at the fire and then stalked upstairs, and then Rebecca decided she’d had enough too. It’s just Delphine in there now.”
“I’ll go help her clean up,” I say. “Goodbye, Saint. Becket.”
Saint doesn’t look at me as he reaches for the door. “Good night, Proserpina.”
Becket gives me an apologetic sort of kiss on the cheek, as if wanting to make up for Saint’s curtness, and then he follows Saint into the cold, leaving me alone in the hall.
