Page 60 of A Lesson in Thorns (Thornchapel 1)
I suddenly feel very stupid and obvious.
The others, however, don’t pick up on my mood, except maybe Saint, who’s watching me more closely than I would like. I flush and look away while Delphine chatters out an explanation of how it will all work tomorrow.
“Rebecca says she’s getting the thorns for us, and Auden found some lanterns out in the shed. They look like they’re made for parties more than anything, so they may be fragile, but they’ll work. Oh! And we’ll have all the cakes and ale out by the altar, all ready to go after the bride says her whole bit about cows and wells and stuff, and then we move on to eating.”
The bride. Ah.
I clear my throat. “Actually, that’s what I came out here to talk to you all about.” I extract the book from my pocket.
“It looks like there’s more to being the bride than we initially thought.”
“Of course, it should be out of the question,” I say.
It’s nearly an hour later, and we’re all around the kitchen table now, stripped of damp clothes and cupping mugs of tea between our chilled fingers. Sir James Frazer is dozing on a large cushion by the range, and the book in question is in the middle of the table. Becket and Rebecca look thoughtful, Delphine looks positively aglow with excitement, and Auden and Saint wear matching scowls.
Everything about them should be a contrast—light brown hair to dark, hazel eyes to near black, tailored wool to mud-streaked denim—but when they both frown, they almost look like brothers. It’s those proud cheekbones and carved jaws, I decide, and maybe also the long eyelashes and too-pretty mouths. A mixture of young male power and vulnerable beauty.
I go on with my half-explanation, half-apology. “It’s obviously a very, very old rite, and my guess is that it predates Christianity by a big measure of time. And if we had trouble reconciling ourselves with the Victorian version of our ceremony, then I imagine we’ll struggle even more with this. But as Becket said, this is our Imbolc and we get to shape it however we wish, so we don’t have to do anything with this book. We can put it back on the shelf and forget about it.”
Auden pushes back from the table and stands up, going over to a large window that looks out onto the driveway. “But that’s not what you want to do, is it?” he asks.
I swallow down the denial wanting to worm free from my lips. I refuse to be ashamed of the things I like. For the most part. Unless the shame is part of the fun.
“What I want is immaterial,” I say diplomatically. “It’s up to Delphine. And of course, she won’t—”
“I think we should do it!” Delphine says. Every face in the room except Sir James Frazer’s turns toward her in shock.
“What?” she asks, surprised by our surprise. “Why not? What’s so different about it than playing Spin the Bottle?”
“A lot,” many voices answer at once.
She waves a hand. “We’re not all such prudes as all that, are we? It’s just sex.”
“Kinky, ritualistic, muddy sex,” Saint observes. The light catches on his lip ring as he leans back in his chair and crosses his arms, his eyebrow raised as he looks at us. “If we couldn’t handle a kissing game, how are we going to handle watching two of us fuck?”
“Well, it’ll be Delphine and Auden,” I say in a placatory voice. “So it’s not such a radical—”
I don’t break off because Saint scowls again, but because Delphine corrects me.
“It won’t be me.”
I turn to face her. I’ve been framing this entire discussion around the fact that if we did do this bananaballs thing, it would be the two of us who were already paired off, the two who were already having sex. And I’ve been doing a very good job of pretending it didn’t bother me too. “Delphine, you wanted to be the bride in the beginning, remember? It was one of the first things you wanted from this, and if this makes you feel like you can’t be the bride, then we’re not doing it. End of story.”
“No, not end of story,” Delphine argues back. “I wouldn’t have known that I wanted this until you told us about it, but don’t you think—” her voice drops and pink rises to her cheeks “—don’t you think it sounds like fun?”
Well, I can’t lie about that.
“But it can’t be me,” she says. “This book says she’s supposed to be a virgin, and I’m not.”
Becket, Rebecca, and Auden clearly know something Saint and I don’t, because there’s an explosion of angry protests at this, protests so heated and fast that I can’t make out what any individual person is saying before she flaps her hands at them to get them to shut up.
“I know, I know. But there’s more to it than that. Honestly, I’m not sure how I feel about the whole ‘bride’ thing anyway.”
She says this last part lightly, but after she finishes speaking, her eyes drop briefly to her engagement ring. I can’t help but glance over to Auden, who’s also looking at Delphine’s hand, and there’s so much grief in his face that I hate myself for every moment I ever wished the two of them apart.
He loves her. Whatever else is true about Auden, he loves Delphine Dansey.
My sadness at that comes with a wave of exhaustion so severe that I make myself stand up and pace so I won’t fall asleep at the table.
