She shouldn’t take it so to heart—obviously it meant little to him but to be a test of his skill, something perhaps to pass the time, and yet—for him to have made her wedding band…
‘You made this?’ she asked quietly, taking off her glove, and raising her hand to look at the band upon it, whose intricate ivy design she’d noticed and appreciated from the first. ‘How?’
‘Found someone willing to lend me their workshop for the night,’ Thorn shrugged.
‘Why?’
Thorn turned, mouth open as if to answer, then his eyes darted above her head, and a second later she understood, for the skies darkened and opened all at once.
‘Into the woods!’ he cried over the din of the sudden rain, pointing over his shoulder.
Quickly, they spun their horses around, and sped towards the woods just a few paces from the base of the hill.
The short ride into the relative shelter of the woods felt invigorating, or perhaps merely cleansing of confusion and slight emotional disarray; the rain, heavy and quickly soaking, was warm, and there was no thunder or lightning to contend with.
They slowed as they entered the protection of the ancient wood, where petrichor rose already from the humid and fresh space, populated with all manner of old, wise, and gnarly trees, along with young sprigs, flowers and ferns. Not venturing too far, just far enough for the deluge to become intermittent plops on their heads and shoulders, they glanced at each other, sharing a relieved, breathless laugh before they dismounted, wordlessly tying the horses up as the dim grey half-light suggested they might be there for a while.
Once they had, Hypatia wandered a few steps away to the almost edge of the forest, beech, birch, ash, and oak vying to shelter her as she wiped her face with her sleeve, then crossed her arms, and leaned back against an old oak’s welcoming trunk. Beyond the limits of the wood, a blurred curtain obscured most of the landscape beyond save for pops of colour from the wildflowers at the base of the hill.
She felt more than saw Thorn lean against the trunk beside her, close, but not too close, just enough so that she could feel the heat emanating from him.
‘I’d offer you my coat,’ he said after a moment. ‘However, I fear it is more thoroughly soaked through than yours, and would only worsen your state rather than improve it.’
‘Perhaps I should offer you mine,’ she grinned.
‘I’d wager it is large enough. Where did you find that anyway? Despite your gowns, I cannot imagine even your mother or sister subjecting you to such sartorial choices.’
‘Henry dug it up for me. Cleaned it best he could. Truthfully, I think it’s perhaps the piece of clothing I like most of all in actual fact, so I’ll thank you to keep your denigrations to yourself. Especially since it has kept me drier than yours has.’
‘Fair point,’ he said, before leaning in closer, pivoting almost so he stood perpendicular to her, his shoulder still holding him up against the trunk. Her arms dropped to her sides as his fingers ran along the droopy collar of the oversized and shapeless garment made from, well, she wasn’t even certain, especially now, since all her mind could seem to register was his heat, and his proximity, and his fingers, and the sound of his breath. ‘I shouldn’t have criticised it, for now I see it suits you very well,’ he added, his voice dropping to a more serious, sultry tone, not losing its jest, but rather his inherent lightness and spark shifting in melody.
‘You don’t have to be nice,’ she told him, turning to meet his gaze. ‘I’d rather honesty than false compliments.’
‘I wasn’t affording you one. I mocked it before I knew you liked it best, that it had been your choice. Knowing it was, and you do, makes me evaluate it differently. And I’ll not lie, it makes you look like a farmer’s wife.’
‘Which is what I am.’
‘Yes,’ he smiled, that spark she’d liked from the first in his eyes again, along with a sprinkle of the other thing she couldn’t name, and which was beginning to drive her a bit to distraction by its alien nature. ‘I think it helped when meeting all those tenants today too. You look respectable, but not as though you’re afraid of hard work.’
‘I thought it might.’ Thorn smiled again, his fingers still toying with various parts of her coat, and though she knew the conversation the heavens had seen fit to interrupt was better left in the past, she couldn’t resist the temptation. ‘Why did you make my wedding band?’
‘And my own,’ he said, levity and distraction colouring his voice again.
‘Why, Thorn?’
He stopped, his hand not dropping, but fingers clutching lightly to one of the middle buttons on her coat, as his eyes met hers, sombre now, though still full of a life he couldn’t contain if he tried; not that she would ever mind.
‘I went to buy one,’ he finally told her, and vaguely, she registered her breath was shallowing, in time with his; punctuated by the off-beat drip of raindrops from the water-saturated locks of hair, onto the tops of his cheeks. ‘I stood in a shop, ready to do so, held some in my hands, but I realised… It didn’t matter that we were entering into a business arrangement. The vows I would be taking meant something. I would mean them. I would be pledging my life to yours,and thatmeantsomething. When I call you wife, and you call me husband, that means something to me, it… I wanted…a demonstration of that. That despite it being business, I would still care for you, and protect you, and cherish you, and I wanted you to have something thoughtful. Something entirely yours. Something of mine.’
‘Oh,’ she breathed.
She felt, grounded, yet dizzy, caught in this hazy bubble they’d created, swirling in it, yet never more present and alive.
There was desire in that, she recognised it, felt it, warming her veins, tempting her closer to Thorn, but there was something else too, a profound strike to her heart; of having been touched by this man, her husband’s thoughtfulness, his sense of care, and duty.
A strike such as she’d never felt before, and much like that unknown quantity that sometimes sparked in Thorn’s eyes, which by its alien and foreign quality, both fascinated and frightened.
‘I didn’t speak those vows lightly either, Thorn,’ she told him, realising her mereohwas a bit lacking considering all he’d confessed to her. ‘We never spoke of our beliefs, but I’ll tell you now that though I don’t believe in a grand, higher power, I believe in truth, and honour, and so I meant them too.’
