45. Then Love
THEN: LOVE
Ihad seen less and less of Thane as I spent a full four seasons and then another four under Magda’s roof.
Before I knew it, two winters had passed without us really speaking to each other.
I of course saw him on tenth days and in the town here and there, but those encounters could not replace all of our stolen, sunlit kisses and secrets in Nyossa.
He would look at me and give me a sad smile.
I would give him one and then lie in bed next to Rowena at night fretting over whether or not he had finally charmed Ilsit now that she and Rowena could no longer see each other.
I worried that he had met some other girl, perhaps from Carver, a fiefdom nearly the same size as Sheridan but whose crops never yielded what ours did.
I had heard the lord had daughters close in age to Bertram and Thane and that two of them might make wives some day for each of Torm’s sons.
This vexed me to no end. I tormented myself wondering if those kisses had meant as much to him as they did to me.
But my woe over Thane was ended one evening when I was alone at Magda’s farm.
It was often that someone’s brother or husband came riding hurriedly to the farm, begging for a midwife.
Magda and Rowena had left on Magda’s Apple Dumpling and our old mare.
I had begged off, saying I would be of no help.
I was humming to myself, bent over in one of the vegetable patches, snapping off sugar peas and dropping them into my skirt held up by my left hand.
In between my hums, I was listening to the medley of the flat-faced white owls at their early evening hooting as they watched from the trees to assess whether the cat’s presence meant mice would be near.
Dewdrop was winding around my exposed ankles, howling at me to pick her up so she could do as she always did and go limp in my arms and be petted.
“Shut your whiskered mouth, my gods,” I groaned as I practically tripped over her and sent an apron full of pea pods flying.
“I do shave now, but I wasn’t even talking, Robbie.”
The peas did go flying as I whipped my head upward and straightened at seeing Thane sitting on the old fence that ran along Magda’s property.
Dewdrop whined at my hasty movement and flinched away from me. Then she waddled over to Thane and sat in front of the section of fence he used as a seat. She threw herself on the ground and began to scream again for attention.
“She wants you to rub her belly,” I said stupidly.
Gracefully, he slid from his perch and did just that, squatting down and introducing himself while she writhed and purred.
“What a flirt,” I said, again feeling incredibly silly.
I could not stop staring at him. Even with his knees bent, I could see he was taller, broader.
I could see that, yes, he did have a shadow on the lower half of his face where he must need to shave now.
The boy was almost entirely gone. He was mostly man now.
When he stood from his ministrations to Dewdrop’s belly, he returned my gaze and took in my own new womanhood, the rounder hips, the prouder tilt of my head, the ways in which my face was now both more open and more closed.
“Good evening to you, Robbie Miller,” he said a little shyly.
“Evening to you, Thane Sheridan.”
We both spoke at once, he shameless and I with arrogance.
“I’ve missed you—”
“You must have missed me then—”
We halted and then began to laugh.
“You are always so bold,” he said with affection, crossing his arms as if he needed the occupation, needed something to do with his hands. Then he sprang into action and stepped close to me, overwhelming me with the man-ness of him, and shocked me by kneeling at my feet.
I had the sudden daydream that he was going to ask me to marry him, and for the first time I could remember, I imagined being a bride, imagined that day, imagined a dress, a ring, a bed. My face went red hot as I realized he was simply gathering my dropped sugar peas.
Dewdrop was mewling, walking around his limbs, sticking her tail in his face, crying out for more of this stranger’s attentions.
Thane turned to me on his knees, a handful of peas lifted to me.
“What?” I asked, not catching his meaning.
“Lift your—” He stopped himself, and his face went pink too. “Lift your apron, I mean,” he finished.
“Oh,” I mouthed and did so.
There was a silence, broken only by Dewdrop, as he continued to collect the dropped peas and I stood there, both hands holding out the edges of my apron.
We said nothing for a time. When he was done, he stood and brushed the dirt of the garden from the knees of his leather breeches, which clung to his legs—no longer scrawny from boyhood.
My gods. Every bit of him was tempting. Even his knees.
Thane fully straightened and smiled at me. “I’ve missed you so much, Robbie.”
He was always honest, I remembered. He had, in our stolen hide-and-seek afternoons, said straight out, “I would like to kiss you,” or “I can’t stop thinking about you.
” As a boy, at an age when his pride should have been much more delicate, he had been fearless in his affections.
And two winters later, he was even more plain in his speech.
But wouldn’t any young man be so bold, with a face such as his?
I wanted to fling my arms around his neck, his work with the peas be damned, and kiss that mouth that had become even more beautiful to me.
But my pride kept me rooted to the spot.
I looked down and tied off the edges of the apron, looping them in the sash so as to secure the peas and free my hands.
I let his words go unanswered at first, but when I collected myself a little more, when I had gotten my wits about me, I said, “It has been a long time.”
I spoke without judgment, but in my statement was the question: why tonight? What had kept him from visiting before now?
“Starling lives at the keep, you know,” Thane said, crossing his arms again. “He’s not like Tibolt, keeping rooms at the church.”
I nodded. I did not know what he was saying, but I would let him explain.
Something in his dropping the priest’s title of “father” made me hopeful, made me think that maybe, while still a child raised like me, he had not become like most boys our age—assessing us girls and wondering which would make the prettiest wife, or looking at us as somehow less.
Those who had once been playmates were now future masters.
“I love my brother,” Thane was saying. “Bertram is perhaps the person I love most after my father. But he can be strict, and I made the mistake—I told him about you. About my feelings.”
I remained silent.
“He told the priest. Starling has always had it out for you, Robbie. And then add on your apprenticeship. Well—I’ve been much monitored. This is the first night I could get away really.” He frowned at me.
“In two winters?” I challenged.
Thane nodded. “I do not joke. I’ve proved obedient, and so now I’m not watched as much. Also, the times I did manage to ride here, your mentor scared me away.”
“She did?”
“Yes! And she’s terrifying.”
I laughed. “She is. What did she say to you?”
His face softened, and he stepped closer to me.
“That it did not matter which twin I wanted to steal kisses from, I had better make myself scarce. And I said—” He stopped, hesitation on his face.
Then he said, “I said I wanted to kiss the girl with the darker hair and wondered if she would pass that on to that girl. The old woman told me to go screw myself.”
I laughed, a catch in my throat as Thane brought his face closer to mine.
“Do you remember kissing me in Nyossa?”
I must have nodded.
“I swear to you, Robbie. I remember every single kiss.”
My jealous imaginings rose in my mind and I asked, “Have you kissed anyone since?”
Thane stilled and then said, “To me, I think your lips are the only lips that exist in the known world.”
“Are you a poet now?” I croaked. This boy would make me cry soon. I was hanging on by threads, my eyes falling closed when he took his hands in mine and brought them to his lips.
“Can I please kiss you again?” he asked.
Before his mouth met mine, he kissed away the tear that had slid from one of my eyes and halfway down my cheek.
Thane stole away every night he could and waited at the same part of the fence line that bordered where the sugar peas grew.
As long as we worked hard during the day, our evenings were our own.
Magda did not care if we stayed up late talking or reading, or if we went into the woods to watch the fireflies and moths glow in the dark.
Rowena was fortunately a heavy sleeper, and I would go for a walk along the property line hoping for a glimpse of Thane, his big black horse tied somewhere nearby.
Some nights we missed each other. Some nights he could not get away.
But other nights we spent together in their entirety, our exhaustion the following day not something we cared to think on.