A Lesson in Thorns (Thornchapel #1)(20)

A pause. Not long. Just long enough for me to know that he considered his words. “I could ask you the same,” he responds in a gentle tone.

I think of the convivificat up in my room, tucked safely into a dresser drawer. I think of my dreams, filled with Thornchapel and all the people I knew here. I think of Auden’s hazel eyes full of scorn and frolic, and of St. Sebastian’s lip ring glinting against his soft mouth.

“Lots of reasons,” I finally say, not sure how much I can tell Becket without sounding delusional or obsessed.

“I’ll go first then,” he says. “I came back for this place. For Thornchapel.”

He says it without any shame or self-deprecation, like of course he’s not delusional to want Thornchapel, and it makes me feel less delusional too.

“Same for me,” I whisper.

“Even though I left it, it never left me. I never stopped feeling like I should be here . . . that for some reason, I belonged at Thornchapel and I could never really belong anywhere else. We have, well—” Now Becket does look embarrassed and he clears his throat. “We have a family friend who’s a cardinal. He helped, ah, arrange for me to find a situation in England, close to here.”

“You nepotist!” I poke him in the arm.

He gives me a look. “Well, I’m not exactly proud of it,” he confesses. “I wrestled with my conscience daily before I came, wondering if I was forcing a way open when I was supposed to wait and serve some other parish first, but then I came here and it just felt right. It felt like a knot in my chest had finally been loosened. I could breathe for the first time in so long.”

“I know exactly what you mean,” I murmur, looking past him to the window. The trees scratch against the blue-pink sky outside. “I used to dream about it. For years I’ve dreamed about it.”

Becket doesn’t say anything, experienced confessor that he is, and so I find myself explaining about the note in my mother’s handwriting, about how I want so much to know what she was doing here and why. How I still harbor a secret little hope that I’ll find her one day, that she’s been on some sun-drenched dig in the Levant for twelve years and simply forgot to call. I tell Becket about the dreams too, although I do leave out how thoroughly those dreams starred Auden and St. Sebastian. I leave out being a sex monster and how much it hurts to burn with desires I also haven’t let myself satisfy.

“Do I sound bananas?” I ask after I’m done talking. “Do I sound obsessed?”

“No more than the rest of us are,” he assures me. “When it comes to Thornchapel, none of us are immune.”

“Auden might be,” I muse, thinking of his words in my room yesterday.

Burn it and salt the earth where it stood.

Becket shakes his head. “No. Auden most of all.”

I want to ask him more about this, but a chime comes from Becket’s pocket and he pulls out his phone and taps the screen. “Ah, I’ve got to get back. We have a First Communion parent meeting tonight. Much more dull than spending the evening with you, but alas, duty calls.”

I stand up with him. “Do you want to leave Sir James here?”

“Oh, no. The only reason those kids come to church is hoping he’ll be there.”

Sir James wags his tail in agreement, which continues all the way through the walk to Becket’s car.

“Oh!” I say just as Becket’s about to climb inside. “Do you know where I can find St. Sebastian? I thought he was working on the house, but he wasn’t around today and I think . . . well, I think Auden drove him off.”

Becket sighs. “Yeah. I suspected that might happen.”

“Do they fight often?”

“No, thank God.” Becket’s fervent tone tells me he’s actually thanking God for this. “Yesterday must have been the first time they’ve seen each other in years.”

Years? What the hell had happened between them?

“Saint works at the public library in Thorncombe,” Becket goes on. “Most weekdays.”

“St. Sebastian is a librarian?” I ask, shocked.

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.