“You did?”
“Yes. And my father said he would wait until both my twentieth day of birth and my wedding had happened. And then he would readily give me the coin and his blessing. He seems rather pleased with me.”
An unease came over me as I kissed his cheeks and his smiling mouth. There was a marriage proposal in this telling. And I was far from ready for it. Perhaps what scared me the most was not just that I did not want marriage to anyone, even a boy I thought of as the love of my young life, but also Thane’s apparent exaltation at his father’s approval.
He may have had his doubts about the church and a dislike for Starling, but Torm was still his father, and a son wants after his father’s favor.
Thane was three seasons older than I was. After I turned nineteen, he spent the following moons reminding me he would soon turn twenty. I would change the subject, teasing him about how grown up he was now.
48
THEN: PROPOSAL
On the eve of his twentieth, we had agreed to meet in the woods. I had decided that bedding him would be, in theory, perhaps a crude present but truly a gift. And it was a gift I wanted to give him. It was not necessarily the presenting of my maidenhead, something the church claimed was for a wedding night, but that I trusted him with my body.
I sat on a fallen tree in one of our regular meeting spots. I had washed my hair that morning, applying the oil from walnuts and lavender as I combed it out. I had braided it and undone the braid after several hours so that my hair was in tamer waves. I bathed late in the afternoon, claiming I was hot. And then, also claiming that I needed fresh air, I left the house for one of my evening walks.
Rowena had declared that she wanted to check on a new mother and would leave on our old mare but not be gone for very long. Magda had looked at the both of us and rolled her eyes.
“If you have lovers, all I ask is that you take your woman’s tonic. You don’t have to lie to my face,” she said, smoke leaking out of her mouth.
When Thane came to me that night, he was excited but hesitant.
“I have good and bad news,” he said, sitting next to me.
We kissed for a bit and then I said, “Tell me the bad news first.”
“I need to tell you the good first to explain the bad,” he countered. “And what I say may offend you, and for that I deeply apologize.”
I nodded. “I assume you repeat some horseshit said by Starling.”
Thane paused and then said, “Of a sort, yes. They are my father’s words, but they are certainly due to Starling’s influence.”
“Speak,” I said lightly, unsure if I should worry just yet.
“The good news is that he has already purchased the wood and organized the work of building the six wagons. He says it is an early present for my day of birth. This piece of news, before I get to the bad news, is in the middle, I suppose. He will not make me marry just yet. Despite Starling’s disagreeing with this.”
I felt a relief in me at this.
“And he won’t make me marry, because—” Thane cut himself off and sighed heavily. “I am sorry, Robbie. I hate saying this to you.”
“Say it,” I said, my ease at not being asked to marry him replaced with concern.
“He does not require me to marry because he does not approve of who I want to wed. And he would rather see me set up on this enterprise than not. So, you see, we do not have his blessing.”
I laughed. “Your father has disapproved of me since my first boxing. And then when Starling came to Sheridan, he truly saw me as a heretic. I am not insulted by his dislike for me.”
Thane shook his head. “I don’t think you understand.”
“What don’t I understand?”
“I cannot marry you if I want his seed coin. He will withhold it.”
“That doesn’t matter. You don’t have to marry me, Thane.” I decided I liked this idea. I was unsure what our life would look like, but Thane would have his business that he seemed to want so badly and I would not have the obligations of wifehood.
He looked away from me. “Robbie, he will only agree to givingme the seed coin and not requiring me to marry someone else on one condition.”
“And?”
