A Lesson in Thorns (Thornchapel #1)(43)

Saint winces at that word. “Poe.”

I study his face, and suddenly I get the creeping feeling that there’s more, that there’s something else. “What aren’t you telling me?” I ask. “What aren’t you saying?”

Saint takes so long to answer that it’s almost its own answer. I rest my head back against the cold door with a sudden wave of exhaustion.

The sleet that had blown in earlier is now melting around my tights-covered feet into a frigid pool of wet.

“It’s complicated,” he tells me. “And I am reasonably certain you wouldn’t believe me even if I did tell you, because I don’t even believe it myself. Not really.”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” I ask.

He pushes his palms into his eyes. “Nothing,” he mumbles through his hands. “It doesn’t mean anything.”

“This is bullshit,” I say, any nice and understanding words turning sour in my mouth. “You won’t kiss me because of a reason you won’t tell me and that you don’t even believe yourself? You know, all you had to say was ‘Poe, I don’t want to kiss you.’ You don’t have to make fools out of us both to make sure we don’t do it again.”

His hands drop away from his face, his eyes blazing with an inky heat. “Jesus fucking Christ, Poe! What about that kiss would make you think I wouldn’t want to do it again?”

“I don’t know!” I shout back, fully aware that I’ve abandoned all my good intentions not to be the feral sub girl, but I can’t help it. None of this makes sense, none of it, and I may not deserve much, but I at least deserve the truth. Or even a better fucking lie. “I don’t know what to think at all!”

His lips press together in a bloodless, angry line, and he slams his hand against the door by my head. Just like he did earlier when we were kissing, except this time when he ducks his head low, it’s not to touch mouths but to utter low, acid words.

“You want to know so fucking badly? Fine. The entire village of Thorncombe thinks that you should marry Auden. Auden’s father wanted you to marry Auden. Everybody in this goddamn place thinks you should marry Auden, except Delphine.”

And Auden himself.

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.