48. Then Proposal
THEN: PROPOSAL
On the eve of his twentieth, we had agreed to meet in the woods.
I had decided that bedding him would be, in theory, perhaps a crude present but truly a gift.
And it was a gift I wanted to give him. It was not necessarily the presenting of my maidenhead, something the church claimed was for a wedding night, but that I trusted him with my body.
I sat on a fallen tree in one of our regular meeting spots.
I had washed my hair that morning, applying the oil from walnuts and lavender as I combed it out.
I had braided it and undone the braid after several hours so that my hair was in tamer waves.
I bathed late in the afternoon, claiming I was hot.
And then, also claiming that I needed fresh air, I left the house for one of my evening walks.
Rowena had declared that she wanted to check on a new mother and would leave on our old mare but not be gone for very long. Magda had looked at the both of us and rolled her eyes.
“If you have lovers, all I ask is that you take your woman’s tonic. You don’t have to lie to my face,” she said, smoke leaking out of her mouth.
When Thane came to me that night, he was excited but hesitant.
“I have good and bad news,” he said, sitting next to me.
We kissed for a bit and then I said, “Tell me the bad news first.”
“I need to tell you the good first to explain the bad,” he countered. “And what I say may offend you, and for that I deeply apologize.”
I nodded. “I assume you repeat some horseshit said by Starling.”
Thane paused and then said, “Of a sort, yes. They are my father’s words, but they are certainly due to Starling’s influence.”
“Speak,” I said lightly, unsure if I should worry just yet.
“The good news is that he has already purchased the wood and organized the work of building the six wagons. He says it is an early present for my day of birth. This piece of news, before I get to the bad news, is in the middle, I suppose. He will not make me marry just yet. Despite Starling’s disagreeing with this. ”
I felt a relief in me at this.
“And he won’t make me marry, because—” Thane cut himself off and sighed heavily. “I am sorry, Robbie. I hate saying this to you.”
“Say it,” I said, my ease at not being asked to marry him replaced with concern.
“He does not require me to marry because he does not approve of who I want to wed. And he would rather see me set up on this enterprise than not. So, you see, we do not have his blessing.”
I laughed. “Your father has disapproved of me since my first boxing. And then when Starling came to Sheridan, he truly saw me as a heretic. I am not insulted by his dislike for me.”
Thane shook his head. “I don’t think you understand.”
“What don’t I understand?”
“I cannot marry you if I want his seed coin. He will withhold it.”
“That doesn’t matter. You don’t have to marry me, Thane.” I decided I liked this idea. I was unsure what our life would look like, but Thane would have his business that he seemed to want so badly and I would not have the obligations of wifehood.
He looked away from me. “Robbie, he will only agree to giving me the seed coin and not requiring me to marry someone else on one condition.”
“And?”
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 sister was sweet 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. “Would you agree 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 much begging on 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.