A Lesson in Thorns (Thornchapel #1)(49)

“—St. Brigid’s Day, yeah,” Saint says. “She was a goddess before the Church turned her into a saint, you know. So Imbolc and St. Brigid’s Day are basically two sides of the same coin. Pagan and Catholic, old and new.”

“New?” I ask, dipping my eyes to the dusty book in my hands.

“Fine. ‘Less old.’ There’s really a whole book about this?”

“Even better,” I reply, holding it up with my finger still on the page I was reading. “It’s about Imbolc in Thorncombe specifically. Imbolc and the other seasonal festivals; the residents here had their own particular ways of celebrating them, I guess.”

“It’s not very long,” Saint observes, and he’s right, it’s actually a very slender volume, compiled by a local clergyman from a nearby parish with admirable directness and efficiency.

“Yes, but get this—he wrote this in the 1860s. After a certain someone gave him use of her library . . .”

Saint raises his eyebrows. “Estamond?”

“Yes!” I say, getting excited all over again. “Apparently he’d petitioned Randolph Guest before, but Randolph couldn’t ever be bothered to answer his letters. But after Estamond became lady of the house, she allowed him use of the library and grounds to put together his history. Which is interesting, because it’s a bit scathing for all that. I get the sense that he probably would have disapproved of Estamond’s behavior, given how much he fusses about the ‘heathen practices’ and ‘licentious, immoral antics’ in Thorncombe.”

Saint extends a hand, and I reluctantly pass him the book, after noting my page number, of course. He flips through it, casually at first, but with more and more interest as he goes on.

“You’ll notice,” I say, getting to my knees on the seat of the chair so I can lean over the book too, “that for someone who’s very insistent that all of this is evil and pagan, the clergyman sure does spend a lot of time detailing and describing said pagan acts.”

“He was probably fascinated despite himself,” Saint says as he turns a page and reads some more. “And then that fascination made him ashamed. People like that aren’t motivated out of holiness, but guilt.”

“You think our clergyman felt guilty?”

Saint checks the cover of the book before going back to the page he was reading. “Old Paris Dartham of Blackhope Parish? Oh yes. He wouldn’t rail so much about it and then spend paragraphs imagining every single detail.”

Saint’s handing the book back to me when I hear footsteps and look up in time to see Auden stopping in the doorway of the library. He’s staring at Saint. And me.

And I realize how intimate the scene looks: me up on my knees like an eager schoolgirl, my head bent close to Saint’s as we murmur back and forth.

“St. Sebastian,” Auden says.

That’s all he says. That seems like all he can say, judging from the shock on his face.

A muscle jumps in Saint’s jaw as he straightens up. “Auden.”

“I’d ask what you’re doing here, but I see you’re visiting Poe,” Auden finally manages. “And I’m clearly interrupting. Forgive me, I’ll come back later.” He moves to leave and I scramble out of the chair to stop him.

“Auden, wait.”

He stops, shifts ever so slightly. He won’t look at us, and I’m suddenly unsure which one of us it is he can’t stand to see. I recall the torment in his face when he looked down at us pinned to the ground underneath him that first day, and I almost want to see it again. Convince myself that it was real, that I didn’t conjure it up in some dark, airless dream.

“What did you want?” I ask softly. “When you came in here?”

“I wanted to—” he breaks off and runs his fingers through his hair in that way he does when he’s upset. “It wasn’t important.”

I don’t know what to say to that, or if I should say anything at all, or if I can say anything, because my heart has started beating very, very fast. God, I hope Saint can’t tell. This is awful, being strung between the two of them like this, and it’s even worse because one man is in love with someone else and the other man won’t have me.

I’d be better off longing for the priest.

Saint scuffs a foot against the floor. I know he’s about to go, I know he’s about to dodge away, and I hate it, I hate that we can’t be like we were as children—together. Despite our fights and scrapes and petty competitions, together was the default, it was the understood mechanism of how we were. We could fight and complain all we wanted, but at the beginning of each new day, we came together once again.

There are lots of good reasons why adults don’t do that. Pain and boundaries and new lives, but God—just for us, just for this thorny little family of ours, I wish we could be more like the children we were.

“Auden, Abby says dinner will be ready in half an hour, and Becket’s just called, he’s almost here and he says the roads are bad already so he might have to stay the night . . .” Rebecca comes around the corner and stops at our silent tableau. She assesses Auden, and then assesses Saint and me. “So Saint’s joining us for dinner then?”

“No!” Saint and Auden blurt at the same time—and then glower at each other for having the audacity to say the same word aloud.