Page 68 of A Lesson in Thorns (Thornchapel 1)
The darkness outside feels like a living thing, seeping inside the windows and settling in the tucks and corners of the house. It’s awake, aware—but it’s not sinister, and there’s nothing baleful in its observant gloom as I push through it to get to the tower. It’s more like the night has decided to keep watch with me, as if it wants to wrap itself around my shoulders like my blanket and follow me around. Except when I finally emerge into the tower, I see that the Thornchapel night is already keeping watch with someone else.
There’s a man standing at one of the windows. A tall man, with shoulders so wide they stretch across the gothic window casings and blot out the moon-glow view outside. I don’t need to see the tumbles of hair or the long-fingered architect’s hands to know who it is.
I don’t need to hear his low, rich voice to know it’s Auden.
He speaks anyway, reaching for his glass of whisky as he does. “I keep meaning to have lights wired up here. The flashlights lose their charm after a while.”
I turn off my charmless flashlight and come up next to him. He wordlessly hands me his glass. He has something closed tight in the fist of his other hand.
“I couldn’t sleep,” I say, after taking a drink.
“Nervous about tomorrow night?”
I take another sip and then hand the glass back. Our fingers touch briefly as he takes it from me, and I fight off the automatic shiver that comes with his touch. “I don’t know.”
He seems amused by this. “You don’t know?”
“Well, nervous implies an element of fear, right? And I’m not afraid.”
He glances over at me. The darkness makes it near impossible to read his expression. “No, you wouldn’t be, would you? You’re not afraid of anything.”
“Categorically untrue.”
“Okay then, Proserpina Markham. What are you afraid of?”
I cross my arms and brace my elbows on the windowsill, looking out on the gray-green paleness of the lawn, the distant reaches of the moors beyond the ribbon-thin glint of river. “I’m afraid of never finding out what happened to my mother,” I say after a minute. “I’m afraid that one day I’ll do what she did, and abandon someone who doesn’t deserve it.”
He doesn’t try to talk me out of my fears, he doesn’t try to reassure me. Instead he slides the glass on the sill so that it’s next to my elbow, and then I gratefully take another drink.
“What else are you afraid of?” he asks, leaning down, mimicking my posture, and catching my gaze. Even in the dark, his stare is direct—convincing and commanding all at once.
I couldn’t lie to him right now even if I wanted to.
“I’m afraid of you,” I whisper. “I’m afraid of how I feel.”
He takes in a sharp breath, but his eyes don’t leave my face. They search and search and search, as if he can see right through me, right to the heart of me. Still one hand is closed tight, not a fist, but close, like someone who’s caught a small insect and is keeping it trapped.
“Are you truly afraid of me?” he asks after a minute, straightening up to his full height.
I have to straighten up myself and tilt my head back to meet his stare. “Yes.”
He takes a step forward, his slippered feet nudging against my own slippers, his legs pushing against the blanket. “Afraid that I’m going to hurt you?”
I nod.
Another step closer, and now his legs are flush with mine, his body warm and hard against me. He trails his open hand down the dark sweep of my hair, and then slowly wraps the length of it around his fist. I whimper at the discomfort in my scalp, at the pulse of heat between my legs.
“What else?” he murmurs.
“I’m afraid I’ll like it.”
The admission only hangs in the air for a second before I’m being pulled down, inexorably down, until I’m kneeling in a pool of soft blanket. He’s still holding me by the hair.
I shouldn’t let him do this, I shouldn’t be at his feet and damp between the legs when I can still recall the tickling brush of Delphine’s mouth over my own.
He’s not yours.
“I’ll confess something, since you confessed to me,” Auden says.
