The peas did go flying as I whipped my head upward and straightened at seeing Thane sitting on the old fence that ran along Magda’s property.
Dewdrop whined at my hasty movement and flinched away from me. Then she waddled over to Thane and sat in front of the section of fence he used as a seat. She threw herself on the ground and began to scream again for attention.
“She wants you to rub her belly,” I said stupidly.
Gracefully, he slid from his perch and did just that, squatting down and introducing himself while she writhed and purred.
“What a flirt,” I said, again feeling incredibly silly. I could not stop staring at him. Even with his knees bent, I could see he was taller, broader. I could see that, yes, he did have a shadow on the lower half of his face where he must need to shave now. The boy was almost entirely gone. He was mostly man now.
When he stood from his ministrations to Dewdrop’s belly, he returned my gaze and took in my own new womanhood, the rounder hips, the prouder tilt of my head, the ways in which my face was now both more open and more closed.
“Good evening to you, Robbie Miller,” he said a little shyly.
“Evening to you, Thane Sheridan.”
We both spoke at once, he shameless and I with arrogance.
“I’ve missed you?—”
“You must have missed me then?—”
We halted and then began to laugh.
“You are always so bold,” he said with affection, crossing his arms as if he needed the occupation, needed something to do with his hands. Then he sprang into action and stepped close to me, overwhelming me with the man-ness of him, and shocked me by kneeling at my feet.
I had the sudden daydream that he was going to ask me to marry him, and for the first time I could remember, I imagined being a bride, imagined that day, imagined a dress, a ring, a bed. My face went red hot as I realized he was simply gathering my dropped sugar peas.
Dewdrop was mewling, walking around his limbs, sticking her tail in his face, crying out for more of this stranger’s attentions.
Thane turned to me on his knees, a handful of peas lifted to me.
“What?” I asked, not catching his meaning.
“Lift your—” He stopped himself, and his face went pink too. “Lift your apron, I mean,” he finished.
“Oh,” I mouthed and did so.
There was a silence, broken only by Dewdrop, as he continued to collect the dropped peas and I stood there, both hands holding out the edges of my apron. We said nothing for a time. When he was done, he stood and brushed the dirt of the garden from the knees of his leather breeches, which clung to his legs—no longer scrawny from boyhood.
My gods. Every bit of him was tempting. Even his knees.
Thane fully straightened and smiled at me. “I’ve missed you so much, Robbie.”
He was always honest, I remembered. He had, in our stolen hide-and-seek afternoons, said straight out, “I would like to kiss you,” or “I can’t stop thinking about you.” As a boy, at an age when his pride should have been much more delicate, he had been fearless in hisaffections. And two winters later, he was even more plain in his speech.
But wouldn’t any young man be so bold, with a face such as his?
I wanted to fling my arms around his neck, his work with the peas be damned, and kiss that mouth that had become even more beautiful to me. But my pride kept me rooted to the spot. I looked down and tied off the edges of the apron, looping them in the sash so as to secure the peas and free my hands. I let his words go unanswered at first, but when I collected myself a little more, when I had gotten my wits about me, I said, “It has been a long time.”
I spoke without judgment, but in my statement was the question: why tonight? What had kept him from visiting before now?
“Starling lives at the keep, you know,” Thane said, crossing his arms again. “He’s not like Tibolt, keeping rooms at the church.”
I nodded. I did not know what he was saying, but I would let him explain. Something in his dropping the priest’s title of “father” made me hopeful, made me think that maybe, while still a child raised like me, he had not become like most boys our age—assessing us girls and wondering which would make the prettiest wife, or looking at us as somehow less. Those who had once been playmates were now future masters.
“I love my brother,” Thane was saying. “Bertram is perhaps the person I love most after my father. But he can be strict, and I made the mistake—I told him about you. About my feelings.”
I remained silent.
