Page 99 of Harvest of Sighs (Thornchapel 3)
I can hear his satisfaction all the way from London. “That’s more like it. Text me when you’re safely home again.”
I agree that I will, and we hang up. For a moment, I stand in front of the farmhouse, feeling so in love I can’t stand it. Getting to start the day with Saint, some delicious torment from Auden . . .
I feel like Dartmoor itself right now. Sweeping and open, in heady bloom.
In the full fulgor of happy summer.
I’m smiling to myself when I duck through the doorway and nearly trip over a priest sitting on the floor.
“Jesus!” I mutter, catching myself before I actually tumble over onto the dirt-covered flags. “Becket, what the hell?”
Becket doesn’t answer me.
After so many times coming here alone, of being here with no one else, seeing another person inside the broken farmhouse is unsettling. Not because it belongs to me as a Kernstow descendant, necessarily, but because it
’s the kind of place that doesn’t belong to anybody at all. Like the moors themselves, or like the empty tombs up on the ridge.
The early evening sun is still bright and hot and eager, sending thick shafts of golden light into the mossy ground floor of the farmhouse. Becket sits just out of reach of the sunshine, his legs crossed and his hands in his lap. In front of him is the old hearth of the house, carved with the antlered god.
His eyes stay on the etching even after I nearly fall on top of him, even after I say his name.
“Becket?” I kneel next to him. “Is everything okay?”
He still doesn’t answer. His eyes are so blue they barely look real. Like fires from another world.
I look at the god chiseled into the hearth, wondering if I’m missing something, if it’s changed somehow since the last time I’ve been here, but it hasn’t changed. It’s still the horned god, still carved in simple, abstract lines, his stick-figure legs crossed as Becket’s are and antlers twining out from the vaguely humanoid shape of his head. Swirling spirals rest on each outstretched hand, mirror images of each other—one spiraling clockwise and the other counterclockwise. The outer curves of the spirals disappear into the god’s arms, connecting them to him in the most elemental way.
One spiral represents life. The other represents death.
“Becket,” I say, turning back to him. His face doesn’t change, his eyes don’t leave the carving. The pulse at the base of his neck beats fast and hard, though, and I can see the heaving of his chest and the sweat misting along his hairline. He’s in an athletic T-shirt and shorts, his running shoes on, and he must have run here from the rectory—over five miles away.
Worry fills me. I touch his knee. “Becket? Hey. Becket, it’s me.”
His lips part, but his eyes don’t slide away from the god. Those eyes are so blue, so very blue, and goosebumps erupt all over my arms and legs.
I put a hand to his shoulder, whispering his name, then I move it to his heart. He doesn’t react, doesn’t seem to see me, and so I lean in and put my lips to his.
Our mouths brush together, parted and breathy, and for a moment, I think it hasn’t worked, that I haven’t broken him free of whatever trance he’s in . . . but then I feel his firm lips move the slightest bit under mine. His tongue flicks cautiously against the crease in my lower lip.
I seize the movement, kissing him back hard enough that he groans and slides his fingers through my hair. He takes command of the kiss in that expert way of his, and the kiss goes from hesitant to seductive in mere instants.
I melt into him, an eternal whore for confidence and control. It’s not quite Auden’s mastery, or even Saint’s burning desperation, but it’s still wonderful, it still lights me up. I straddle his lap and rock my hips against him—all of the need stoked by my phone call with Auden surging to the surface—and Becket answers me, his hands finding my tits, my throat, my backside.
“Proserpina,” he murmurs, pulling back to blink at me. His eyes are a normal blue now—a human blue—and they’re focused and clear. They see me. “Why are you here?”
“Why are you here?” I counter as I reach up to stroke his hair. It’s normally styled in a well-behaved coiffe, but his run and the summer heat has turned it into an untidy mass of gold. It’s just long enough that I can rub it between my fingertips. “And what were you doing? You seemed . . . distant.”
“I must have gotten lost in prayer,” he says. A rueful smile pulls at the corner of his mouth. “Hazard of the job. Like getting lost in a book for you, I’m sure.”
I smile back at him, but uneasiness twines through my thoughts. I don’t think I’ve ever—even in my most absorbed moments—been so lost that I didn’t notice someone tripping over me and calling my name. So lost that my eyes became bright and strange.
“Let’s go outside,” I suggest, getting to my feet and helping him up. He unfolds into six feet of trim, handsome priest, and he smiles down at me once he’s standing.
“I missed you,” he says, cradling my hand in both of his.
“It’s only been a few days,” I respond, trying to tease and also walking at the same time, so that we move away from the hearth and into the sun.
I glance back at the carving of the god and fight off the urge to shiver. The urge to physically shake off the memory of Becket’s stilled body and near-violet eyes.
