Page 60 of Harvest of Sighs (Thornchapel 3)
But I don’t speak, because I don’t know if he knows that I remember. I don’t know if he remembers that I was there at all. But I do say, “How did you know my mother? If you don’t mind me asking?”
Freddie looks down at his drink. And then he looks up at me. He seems to be searching my face for something, some answer to a question I can’t even begin to guess at. “I grew up with Ralph and Ingram Hess, you see. School chums and all that. When he decided—I don’t know how much you know about what Ralph wanted to do at Thornchapel—but when he decided to start, I was there. Ingram Hess too. And your mother.”
Poe is next to me, Delphine and Daisy are next to her, they are teasing and laughing and they might as well be a million miles away. “Mr. Dansey . . .”
His voice is pained. “Freddie. Please. Please don’t—” He stops, like he’s not sure what he wants to say next. “I—I knew your mother well, St. Sebastian. I don’t want there to be distance between us.”
I can guess what he means when he says he knew my mother well, and now I wish I had my own drink, Jesus Christ.
“The festivals,” I say, some morbid part of me needing to know. “You celebrated the feasts in the woods.”
He nods slowly. “Yes.”
“With my mother.”
I wonder what he is thinking of now. Of the past? And if so, which one? The one with my mother? Or the more recent past, with Poe’s parents? Is he thinking of the present? Of his own daughter in the thorn chapel, chasing after the same things that made their generation so broken, so sour, so dead?
“You understand then,” he says, his words slower than his nod. “You understand what the feasts were.”
“Yes.”
At that, his eyes do flick over to Delphine, and I see him wrestle with something. Protectiveness, probably, because I see the concern in his forehead and around his mouth as he looks back at me. “I’m not sure how much is my place to say, St. Sebastian. I’m not sure how much your mother told you.”
“Nothing,” I say, surprised at how tired I sound. “She told me nothing. But I learned—later—she was the May Queen that year. The year she became pregnant with me.”
Again, Freddie is searching my eyes, my face, hunting for something. How much I actually know.
“And I know Ralph is my real father,” I say, giving him the answer he’s looking for. I’m not sure why I tell him this—we’ve only just met and it’s one of the worst things that’s ever happened to me, which is honestly a pretty high bar, and it’s also intensely private. Private en
ough that speaking it out loud gives me a near-illicit thrill, like I’ve just touched a painting in a museum. Like I’ve just lit up a joint. I say it again, almost buzzed off the sheer impropriety of it. “I’m Ralph Guest’s son.”
Freddie chews on his lip, and this time his eyes go to his wife, who is still chatting animatedly with Poe. “I know Ralph wouldn’t have wanted—”
But whatever he’s about to say, whether comforting or damning, I don’t know, because we’re joined then by Becket, Rebecca, and Auden.
Auden shakes Freddie’s hand and kisses Daisy’s cheek—clearly the broken engagement hadn’t fractured the warm sentiment between Auden and his ex-fiancée’s parents. Becket does the same, reminding me that Freddie had grown up with his father, and then Rebecca is clucked over by Daisy as if Daisy already considers her a daughter-in-law. Rebecca tolerates it well, although I catch her exchanging more than one wry glance with Auden, as if Auden had already warned her what it was like to be a new member of the Dansey family.
But it is Auden my eyes go to, and it’s Auden I hear, Auden who is at the center of everything just by existing. He laughs and takes sips of gin, and he’s all easy charm like he doesn’t need to bruise and scratch when he’s behind closed doors, like he doesn’t hold my throat in his grip, even when he’s miles and miles away.
He meets my stare, his teeth digging into his lower lip, and I know what he’s thinking, I know he’s remembering biting my lower lip, I know he’s thinking of my piercing and what it means, what it’s meant from the beginning. I know that he wants to bite me right now, and I can’t tell him I don’t want it. I can’t even tell him I didn’t come here exactly for that purpose, because I don’t know why I came at all.
And it’s so hard to remember all my good intentions, my lectures to myself about my mother, about sin, when I’m looking at his cruel, beautiful mouth.
“Excuse me,” I say abruptly to everyone. “I need to—” The words and their accompanying gesture is pointless because I’m already walking away, I’m already striding with long, hurried strides to the other side of the fountain, to the escape promised by an open doorway on the far end of the courtyard. Some kind of art exhibition, I think. I’ll go in there and catch my breath and figure out how to leave, because there’s no way I can stay. There’s no fucking way. Not when just looking at Auden’s mouth makes me want to weep.
And it might have worked, this impromptu escape of mine, it might have worked with any other man besides Auden Guest. Because he may well be a prince of galas and understatedly expensive wristwatches, but the hunt is still in his blood.
I’ve only made it nine or ten steps before I become aware of his following me, of his footsteps arrogant and predatory behind mine.
I speed up, walking faster, my hands in my pockets as I duck through patricians and politicians, darting through clumps and clouds of people as quickly as I can without being rude. I think of Beltane, of the woods, of running through the woods of Thornchapel as Auden chased me and the sunlight shafted golden and hazy through the trees. We’re walking instead of running, maybe, and the forest is a forest of people and not whispering trees, but there’s no mistaking that it’s the same thing. I’m being stalked through this party just like he stalked me then. And if he catches me . . .
I don’t know what I want to happen when I finally mount the shallow steps and enter the building. I know what I should want, I know what my mother would hope that I wanted. I know what is right and moral to want.
But if I want that—if I want what’s right and what’s moral—then why am I still here? Why am I playing the part of prey, why am I thinking of antlers and bluebells when I’m wearing a tuxedo and wending my way through installations of wheat and barley woven into the shapes of houses, people, animals?
The exhibit is deserted, emptied of everyone except the grain people frozen in their poses—watering gardens, walking next to cattle, bundling sheaves of wheat. The gala goers must all be outside, enjoying the mild evening and free booze, and I presume the exhibit is closed to the public during the event. My footsteps echo through the big, wood-floored rooms.
I hear the echo of another’s footsteps behind me. Far enough away that I have time.
