Chapter Nine
As they slowly ambled to the top of a gentle rolling hill, in the midst of one of many pastures that had long since been grazed, becoming more of a wildflower extravaganza, a haven for bees, crickets, and all manner of other creatures, Hypatia felt lighter than she had in perhaps her entire life, including childhood.
Their day thus far had been long, arduous, full of talking, negotiating, and disappointing discoveries.
It was far from over—it was barely past two in the afternoon—and the next few days would be just as demanding; Hell, looking at how things stood now, it looked as if the next few years would be.
And yet, as she and Thorn came to a stop in unconcerted unison, she didn’t feel the weight of that demand, of that future, upon her shoulders as she’d felt every second of every day before now.
Perhaps that made her callous; perhaps that just made her finally free. Either way, she was grateful for it.
She was grateful for the good people they’d met, not easy, not forgiving, but good people, who seemed to be willing to join this strange sort of team she and Thorn were trying to form; and she was grateful for Thorn.
For his easiness, his support, and his apparent appreciation of her taking charge. Of her, full stop, in fact.
She was grateful for this sunshine, for this breeze, and for this view.
‘It’s beautiful,’ Thorn remarked, his eyes wandering over the rolling hills, pastures, fields, woods, houses, farms, and spires spread out before them as far as the eye could see. ‘Essex has its charms, but I’ll admit, I like these Downs.’
‘They feel…welcoming.’
‘Agreed,’ Thorn smiled crookedly, glancing over at her. ‘Did you always live in the city?’
‘All my life. First Birmingham, then London. We’d sometimes go out to the country for this party or business thing of my father’s, but never long.
And I was not always given the opportunity to enjoy it.
I’ve never seen the sea though,’ she added, before Thorn could comment as she felt he might on her lack of pastoral pleasures.
‘So in that I am jealous of your upbringing beside it.’
‘I thought I’d miss it more. But it’s so strange, with every passing minute, I feel more at ease, at home here than I did there. I wonder if some part of me never got attached. If it knew I would leave someday.’
‘Destiny?’
‘Something like that.’
‘Do you miss your work?’ she asked after a moment. ‘Did you enjoy it?’
‘I did,’ Thorn smiled, nostalgia and memory filling his eyes as they studied the fast-moving, thickening clouds ahead.
‘What kind of blacksmith were you? If that is even a question.’
‘It is,’ he chuckled softly. ‘Though I don’t know if there’s a proper word for what I did, which was a bit of everything, really.
Gates, fixtures, doors… The odd decorative fantasy, and piece of jewellery—though that was more for my own amusement and to work my skills.
I could never claim to be a proper silver or goldsmith. ’
‘I should like to see your work someday.’
‘You can now, just take off your glove,’ he said breezily, but Hypatia frowned, stunned as she understood his meaning.
She shouldn’t take it so to heart—obviously it meant little to him but to be a test of his skill, something perhaps to pass the time, and yet—for him to have made her wedding band…
‘You made this?’ she asked quietly, taking off her glove, and raising her hand to look at the band upon it, whose intricate ivy design she’d noticed and appreciated from the first. ‘How?’
‘Found someone willing to lend me their workshop for the night,’ Thorn shrugged.
‘Why?’
Thorn turned, mouth open as if to answer, then his eyes darted above her head, and a second later she understood, for the skies darkened and opened all at once.
‘Into the woods!’ he cried over the din of the sudden rain, pointing over his shoulder.
Quickly, they spun their horses around, and sped towards the woods just a few paces from the base of the hill.
The short ride into the relative shelter of the woods felt invigorating, or perhaps merely cleansing of confusion and slight emotional disarray; the rain, heavy and quickly soaking, was warm, and there was no thunder or lightning to contend with.
They slowed as they entered the protection of the ancient wood, where petrichor rose already from the humid and fresh space, populated with all manner of old, wise, and gnarly trees, along with young sprigs, flowers and ferns.
Not venturing too far, just far enough for the deluge to become intermittent plops on their heads and shoulders, they glanced at each other, sharing a relieved, breathless laugh before they dismounted, wordlessly tying the horses up as the dim grey half-light suggested they might be there for a while.
Once they had, Hypatia wandered a few steps away to the almost edge of the forest, beech, birch, ash, and oak vying to shelter her as she wiped her face with her sleeve, then crossed her arms, and leaned back against an old oak’s welcoming trunk.
Beyond the limits of the wood, a blurred curtain obscured most of the landscape beyond save for pops of colour from the wildflowers at the base of the hill.
She felt more than saw Thorn lean against the trunk beside her, close, but not too close, just enough so that she could feel the heat emanating from him.
‘I’d offer you my coat,’ he said after a moment. ‘However, I fear it is more thoroughly soaked through than yours, and would only worsen your state rather than improve it.’
‘Perhaps I should offer you mine,’ she grinned.
‘I’d wager it is large enough. Where did you find that anyway? Despite your gowns, I cannot imagine even your mother or sister subjecting you to such sartorial choices.’
‘Henry dug it up for me. Cleaned it best he could. Truthfully, I think it’s perhaps the piece of clothing I like most of all in actual fact, so I’ll thank you to keep your denigrations to yourself. Especially since it has kept me drier than yours has.’
‘Fair point,’ he said, before leaning in closer, pivoting almost so he stood perpendicular to her, his shoulder still holding him up against the trunk.
Her arms dropped to her sides as his fingers ran along the droopy collar of the oversized and shapeless garment made from, well, she wasn’t even certain, especially now, since all her mind could seem to register was his heat, and his proximity, and his fingers, and the sound of his breath.
‘I shouldn’t have criticised it, for now I see it suits you very well,’ he added, his voice dropping to a more serious, sultry tone, not losing its jest, but rather his inherent lightness and spark shifting in melody.
‘You don’t have to be nice,’ she told him, turning to meet his gaze. ‘I’d rather honesty than false compliments.’
‘I wasn’t affording you one. I mocked it before I knew you liked it best, that it had been your choice. Knowing it was, and you do, makes me evaluate it differently. And I’ll not lie, it makes you look like a farmer’s wife.’
‘Which is what I am.’
‘Yes,’ he smiled, that spark she’d liked from the first in his eyes again, along with a sprinkle of the other thing she couldn’t name, and which was beginning to drive her a bit to distraction by its alien nature.
‘I think it helped when meeting all those tenants today too. You look respectable, but not as though you’re afraid of hard work. ’
‘I thought it might.’ Thorn smiled again, his fingers still toying with various parts of her coat, and though she knew the conversation the heavens had seen fit to interrupt was better left in the past, she couldn’t resist the temptation. ‘Why did you make my wedding band?’
‘And my own,’ he said, levity and distraction colouring his voice again.
‘Why, Thorn?’
He stopped, his hand not dropping, but fingers clutching lightly to one of the middle buttons on her coat, as his eyes met hers, sombre now, though still full of a life he couldn’t contain if he tried; not that she would ever mind.
‘I went to buy one,’ he finally told her, and vaguely, she registered her breath was shallowing, in time with his; punctuated by the off-beat drip of raindrops from the water-saturated locks of hair, onto the tops of his cheeks.
‘I stood in a shop, ready to do so, held some in my hands, but I realised… It didn’t matter that we were entering into a business arrangement.
The vows I would be taking meant something.
I would mean them. I would be pledging my life to yours, and that meant something.
When I call you wife, and you call me husband, that means something to me, it…
I wanted…a demonstration of that. That despite it being business, I would still care for you, and protect you, and cherish you, and I wanted you to have something thoughtful.
Something entirely yours. Something of mine. ’
‘Oh,’ she breathed.
She felt, grounded, yet dizzy, caught in this hazy bubble they’d created, swirling in it, yet never more present and alive.
There was desire in that, she recognised it, felt it, warming her veins, tempting her closer to Thorn, but there was something else too, a profound strike to her heart; of having been touched by this man, her husband’s thoughtfulness, his sense of care, and duty.
A strike such as she’d never felt before, and much like that unknown quantity that sometimes sparked in Thorn’s eyes, which by its alien and foreign quality, both fascinated and frightened.
‘I didn’t speak those vows lightly either, Thorn,’ she told him, realising her mere oh was a bit lacking considering all he’d confessed to her.
‘We never spoke of our beliefs, but I’ll tell you now that though I don’t believe in a grand, higher power, I believe in truth, and honour, and so I meant them too. ’