Thane swallowed and remained looking away from me. “He wants me to set you up in another town. As my mistress. Either that or I have to marry someone else before my inheritance. Those are my choices. I marry someone else or I set you up outside of town.”
I scoffed. “And he calls himself a holy man.”
“He—But I should not tell you that.”
“Say it.”
He closed his eyes, still faced away from me. “He thought I meant Rowena. And he said he could bless a union with ‘the sweeter of the Miller twins, a nice girl, the daughter of an elder.’ When I explained I meant the other twin, he then gave me that condition.”
I thought that I should have been offended by that, but my sisterwassweet and I did not care what Torm Sheridan thought of me. “Why did he even offer this to you? It seems rather generous for him.”
Thane linked his hands around the back of his neck. “I don’t want to speak on that. Don’t make me repeat that part.”
“Thane—”
“Fine,” he said, exasperated. “He said men have needs that even the church cannot curtail, but those needs have to be kept behind closed doors. He said—He said, ‘Look what happened to me with your mother.’ And then he went on to say that, of course, he loved me and I was his son, but that—Oh, gods, Robbie. He said that women like you cannot be wed to men like me. That you are best kept hidden. He said he understood that I... wanted you.”
“Again,” I protested, “I am not offended. This is how men think, I suppose. It is insulting, to be sure, but expected too.”
“Would you agree to it?”
The pit of my belly roiled, and it was then that I finally felt the insult. I inhaled sharply, the breath like a protrusion, a blade driven in my chest. I regarded him with awe. “Wouldyouagree to it?”
He turned to me, his knees knocking into mine. “Yes. If it meant a life with you and not having to be the aimless bastard son of Sheridan, with nothing but privilege to his name, then yes.”
Heat crept up the back of my throat. A sting in my eyes told me that if I did not rein myself in quickly, I would cry. I waited a beat and then said, “You would take me away from my work, my life here, my family, from Magda. From Nyossa. You would take me away so that your father and your priest’s ideals could be met? That sits well with you? That does not trouble you?”
“Of course, it troubles me!” he protested.
I jerked away from him.
“Of course, it does,” he went on, now heated, frustrated with me. “But we would have a house, a home together. You would never have to worry for anything, and I would have something all my own. Don’t you see? And eventually, I think I could convince him to allow us to marry, and you could come back here. I really think that I could. I have done so much planning, so muchbeggingon our behalf and you won’t even consider it!”
Thane was so composed. He had been trained from a young age by his father and older brother to show little emotion, as if by being born noble he was above feelings. Coupled with his natural desire to make peace and avoid conflict, this made him a sedate young man. He had always quelled arguments when the six of us ran wild in Nyossa.
To see him snap at me like this threw me off kilter. I did not know how to respond, and the anger in me, the torch I had tried to dim since I was a little girl, unfurled and lit me from within. And I scorched him with it.
“How could you even think of doing that to me? Do I even know you?” I cried. I stood from the fallen tree and paced away from him, my throat closing with a sob threatening to pour forth. When I turned around, he had stood as well. I stepped closer to him and pushed him. “Am I a whore to you? Is that it?”
“Never!” he shouted. “How could you think that of me?”
“How could you think to set me up as one then?”
“I am at a crossroads,” he explained. “I cannot be the layabout son of a lord. I have to have something that is mine.”
“Paid for with your father’s coin.”
Those words were whiskey poured over flames. Thane was incensed, insulted, his pride injured.
We said more to each other then, more cutting, irreversible things.
When I had yelled all that I could yell, I ran from him. I stumbled through footpaths I could have easily sleepwalked on I knew them so well. But I was so upset, I had no grace, no deftness.
49
THEN: FATHERS
Inearly fell into the farmhouse, surprising Magda who was dozing over a book on her lap in her rocking chair, a pipe loosely in her mouth. I stood, breathless and blotchy, just inside the door. Based on the stillness of the house, I ascertained that Rowena had not returned.
