A Lesson in Thorns (Thornchapel Book 1)

by Sierra Simone

  It’s a strangely intimate scene, and yet I can only look at my mother, laughing and alive. Keeping whatever secrets that would lead her right back to Thornchapel a couple months after this picture was taken. Secrets that would lead her to her death.

  Have hope, Poe .

  Everything is possible .

  I stare at her, my teeth digging so hard into my lower lip that the pain there is almost a counterpoint to the sharp, lonely pain in my chest.

  Almost.

  Closure isn’t too much to hope for, I remind myself. I might not find her, I may never see the grass growing over her grave, but I might learn why . I might learn how .

  I might discover how a Latin word scrawled in her handwriting ended up in my mailbox.

  “ . . . and I’ll take some pictures of you and you’ll see what I mean by posting more of yourself. Poe? Are you listening?”

  I extend the picture to her, and she slides off the table to investigate. She takes it and examines it, her honey-brown eyes soft when she looks up at me. “Where did you find it?”

  “In this book,” I say, looking back down at the Amateur History of Thornchapel . “Stuck in the pages.”

  Delphine steps closer and peers over the glass plate at the book below. “There’s the thorn chapel,” she says quietly. “Golly. I haven’t thought of that place in so long.”

  She’s right, the thorn chapel’s right there and I missed it, absorbed as I was with the picture itself. On the pages below, there’s a colorless sketch of the ruins, looking much the same as I remember it—standing stones and rubble covered in thorns and roses.

  Except there are people in the sketch, several men and women with lanterns. One woman stands in the center, her robes simple and unadorned and her lantern raised higher than the rest. She’s faced by another woman and a man, and behind them is the gentle grassy swell of the old altar.

  Déjà vu has me sucking in a fast breath, like I’ve been struck.

  “Many traditions survived late at Thornchapel,” Delphine reads from over my shoulder, “and the rural folk even until recent memory have carried on their superstitions, celebrating feasts like St. Brigid’s Day in the most rustic and profane ways. Some say these country heresies were even led by the lord of Thornchapel himself . . .”

  She stops reading, gives a long, pouty sigh. “I wish we still got to do fun things like this.”

  “Like what? Cavort around in the dark with lanterns?”

  “Yes! Wouldn’t that make all these dreary, gray weeks seem brighter? Knowing we’d get to do something pretty and playful at the end of them?”

  “It would,” I murmur. My own heart beats a little faster at the idea, but not because I necessarily want to wander around the ruins with lanterns and robes.

  But because I’ve dreamt it.

  I’ve dreamt it so many times that it’s begun to feel real.

  Just a dream thing, Poe.

  “Anyway,” Delphine says, breaking the spell, “I’m simply starving . I’m going to go have a little pre-dinner tipple to take the edge off the hunger. You want to come with me?”

  “Yes, yes, I’ll join you,” I say, but I’m not looking at her. I’m looking back down at the sketch, where the man in the middle is greeting the maiden by the altar. He has something slender around his neck; it looks like a torc, like something an ancient Celtic king would have worn.

  In fact, it looks like the very same thing my mother is holding in the picture, the thing she’s trying to put around Ralph Guest’s neck.

  What were you doing that summer? I ask my mother silently.

  And what went so terribly wrong that you had to come back?

  Chapter 10

  Auden’s mask is back in place.

  Throughout dinner and the drinks after, he’s charming and interesting and such a careless, beautiful boy that I can’t even remember what I’m supposed to feel. Except that I’m not supposed to fall in love with him because he’s engaged, and because it would be stupid, and because he’s been so awful to Saint for no reason I can discern—

  And yet even his carelessness snares me, even his casual literary references and his haughty looks make me blush. I think about glimpsing his anger and his power in the kitchen. I wonder if he’s ever thought about BDSM, if he’s ever wanted to tie someone down just so he could stand over them, if he’s ever wanted to mark someone’s skin just to know if they’d let him.

  I wonder if he and Delphine are kinky.

  I wonder it so hard that I strain my ears that night to see if I can hear them make love.

  I can’t.

  But I get myself off just thinking about it, and then I roll over onto my back wishing I could slap myself in the face.

  I’m jealous of Delphine and yet turned on by Delphine. My skin is haunted by the ghost of Saint’s lip ring . . . and I haven’t even felt it yet. I wonder if Rebecca is willing to take me on as a sub, and I wonder if Becket ever breaks his vows. I can’t stop thinking of the expression on Auden’s face when he was hoisted over Saint and me on the gravel, I can’t stop thinking about those hazel eyes and how they would look burning over me in the heat of power and play.

  Even for a sex monster, it’s just too much, but I’m helpless against the churning of desire. I can control myself , I can keep my actions sane and respectful, but inside—inside I am seething and roiling with a hunger so acute I think it might kill me.

  And the worst thing is I don’t even want to stop feeling this way. I like it too fucking much.

  * * *

  “Put all of that away at once,” Delphine declares to me as she glides into the library the next evening. She’s waving in poor Abby, who’s rolling a tray laden with pies and miniature quiches, and rolls and ham, and bowls of salads and slaws that look like they took a long time to make. I suddenly feel very embarrassed at the effort that’s been expended on my account, and I close down my scanner station so I can help Abby set up a buffet of sorts on one of the long tables. Delphine helps too, to her credit, and between us, we have the work done quickly.

  “I told Bex and Audey to get down here pronto,” Delphine says, pulling out her phone and starting to experiment with camera angles. “They’re plotting some new garden thing, I think. And Becky should be here any minute.”

  “I found another book about people cavorting with lanterns today,” I tell her, walking over to get myself a drink.

  I have Delphine’s full attention now. “In the thorn chapel?”

  “In the thorn chapel,” I confirm, trotting back to my workstation to grab the book. “I kept it out for you.”

  “Kept what out?” an elegant voice says, and I turn to see Auden leaning in the doorway, hands in his pockets. His eyes glitter over me, and I have to remember how to breathe.

  “It’s just a book,” I whisper.

  “Oh, Audey, it’s so much fun!” Delphine says, practically bouncing over to her fiancé. She gives him a quick kiss on his cheek, and then beams at me as he slides a hand around her back. “Poe found some old books with pictures of parties in the thorn chapel.”

  I hate myself for how much the sight of his hand on her back bothers me.

  “Well, I don’t think they were parties as such,” I say as I approach them. I hold out the book, open to the page I’d bookmarked for Delphine. “They sounded like rituals.”

  Auden’s eyebrow quirks the tiniest bit. “Rituals?”

  I meet his gaze and try not to shiver as something vivid and uncomfortable arcs between us. I think I’ve dreamed this too, this moment, this part where I hold a book open for him to read, and the déjà vu is dizzying.

  “Yes, rituals,” I say after clearing my throat. “See?” I gesture down at the open pages, one of which is a lithograph of the chapel ruins, showing it overflowing with roses and empty of people.

  Auden and Delphine bend over the book, with Delphine reading aloud from the page next to the picture. “The thorn chapel was required for the seasonal ceremonies then common to the valle
y,” she begins. “The first was Imbolc, when the folk would bless the village’s well, and afterwards, would go by torchlight to the forest sanctuary where its lord awaited them. The next ceremony was Beltane—what is called May Day in other, more civilized, parts of the world—then there was Lammas Feast, and the unholy frolic of death on All Hallows’ Eve. There are unspeakable rumors of many heathen acts done at these country revels; thankfully these crude and unschooled rituals have been burned away by the light of modernity, and Thornchapel is now regarded in its valley as an upright and Godly place.”

  We all let out a breath as soon as Delphine finishes.

  “Does it say what they did on Imbolc?” Auden asks.

  “No,” I say. “But I think the ‘lord’ it mentions must be the lord of Thornchapel—or at least that’s what the other book implies. And torches or lanterns seem to be required. But what happens when they get to the ruins—none of these books say.” Then I quickly describe the rest of what Delphine and I learned from yesterday’s book.

  Auden makes an unimpressed noise. I peer up at him.

  “It seems a bit gossipy to me,” he says. “All these books have are rumors and hearsay and the usual kind of illustration Victorians go mad for, with the gowns and flowers and things. Nothing of substance.”

  I think of the picture I found in the book last night, of the torc my mother had laughingly held out to Auden’s father. The same torc in the first book’s illustration. “So you don’t recall any talk of things happening in the thorn chapel? It wasn’t something your family did?”

  Auden shakes the hair out of his eyes to study the lithograph more closely. “No,” he replies. “I saw the ruins before I’d ever even heard about them—with you all that summer. And I assume they went out to the chapel on Lammas night, if they went through the maze, but I don’t know that for sure.”

  “It’s too bad,” sighs Delphine. “I thought it would be fun for us to have our own little Imbolc.”

  Auden blinks at her as if she’s suggested we all join a cult. “Why ?”

  She shrugs. “I don’t know. It just seems like a lark, a little bit of an adventure. We used to have them in school and now we don’t do any fun, uncivilized things anymore. We’re such adults and it’s very boring .”

  I trail a finger over one of the chapel’s walls in the illustration. “There would be a certain symmetry to it,” I remark.

  “Would there?” Auden asks, looking at me like I’m just as delusional as Delphine.

  When I close my eyes, dreams crowd against my eyelids. I see Auden and the thorn chapel, I see a door behind the altar that’s not supposed to be there.

  I blink the memory of my dreams away and try to sound rational. “This is your time with this house, isn’t it? You are the lord of Thornchapel now. Why not bring back an old tradition, just the once? Why not do something your father never did, claim a part of Thornchapel’s history for yourself?”

  Auden’s mouth pulls over to one side as he stares down at the image of the chapel. “It is a thought,” he says softly.

  Our moment is cut short by Rebecca, who comes in wearing a sapphire-blue jumpsuit hugging her narrow body like a dream. She has her braids down and hanging almost to her waist, and there’s a long gold pendant dangling between her breasts. She looks every inch a glamorous architect from London, even down to the we have a problem, let’s find a solution expression on her face.

  “I know that look, Quartey,” Auden says. “Everything okay?”

  “Everything is fine ,” Rebecca emphasizes. “Becket is coming in now, and he brought someone with him, and everything is fine .”

  Auden frowns. “He’s bringing someone with him? But who—”

  His question is answered before he can even finish asking it, as Becket appears in the doorway of the library . . . trailed by an uncertain Saint.

  Silence fills the room; the fire pops once, loudly.

  “Um. Hi,” Saint says. Everyone stares.

  I’m the first to break the scene, and I stride over and give him a big, old American hug. “I’m glad you’re here,” I say as I pull back, and Saint looks a little grateful. Becket smiles at me, also looking grateful.

  “I was driving past Saint’s house on the way here,” Becket explains as he walks over to the drinks bar, “and it just seemed like such a waste not to have us all back together again.”

  I don’t need to remind him that the last time Saint was here—yesterday—it ended with Saint fleeing out the side door like a fugitive. Becket clearly remembers this, and it’s in the look he gives Auden before he starts pouring a glass of wine. A calm, blue-eyed gaze that says behave .

  I still have an arm around Saint’s waist, and Auden’s eyes light on it as he says, “I think I’ll have a drink too.” And he abruptly turns and walks away to the drinks bar.

  “That went better than I thought,” Saint mutters to me, and I laugh. He looks surprised, as if he weren’t trying to be funny, but my laugh seems to make him happier. He studies my face for a minute; his own mouth eases around the edges a little.

  I want to run the tip of my tongue over his lip ring so badly that I’m worried I might do it, everything else be damned. Just once, just to feel if it’s cool, if it’s warm, if his lip gives under the pressure of my kiss.

  “Why did you come here if you thought it would go badly?” I say, trying to tear my eyes away from his mouth.

  “I wanted to see you,” he says. “I shouldn’t, because—well, I just shouldn’t.”

  He said something like this the other night, like he thinks Auden will fire me if I’m too friendly with him. Which is unfair to Auden, because he may be a spoiled princeling, but I don’t think he’s vindictive. Or at least if he is, he saves all his vindictiveness for Saint.

  I’m about to say just that when Saint reaches up and brushes the hair away from my face, his fingertips ghosting warmth across my skin. His dark eyes follow his own movements, the path of his fingers along my temple, the places where the silk of my hair sifts through his fingers. A slow-rolling shiver moves down my spine, settles low in my belly.

  “When Becket gave me the choice to either see you or not see you, I realized it wasn’t a choice at all,” he says, his eyes still on his fingers in my hair. He meets my gaze. “I had to see you again,” he finishes simply. “I had to.”

  “And Auden?” I ask, and when I ask it, I mean what about Auden , I mean is it okay that you have to see him in order to see me?

  But that’s not what Saint hears, I think, because he closes his eyes for the briefest of seconds, and when he opens them again, they’re full of deep, frozen pain. “I lost the right to have any choices about Auden a very long time ago,” he says.

  My lips are parted. I have a thousand things I want to say, a thousand questions I want to ask, but nothing will come, nothing makes it out.

  Saint misinterprets my silence for something judgmental. “Don’t worry,” he says, dropping his hand away from my face and looking across the room at the fireplace, where the lord of Thornchapel himself leans against the mantel and scowls into the fire. “Auden’s been punishing me for it ever since.”

  * * *

  Dinner is predictably awkward, but the more we eat, the more we drink, and the more we drink, the looser the noose around the room becomes. The conversation slides from the usual dinner chatter to something freer and more intense. Becket and Rebecca begin debating the purpose of labyrinths and mazes and whether they have any secular use, and Delphine waves us around the room like we’re mannequins so she can take pictures of us or the food or the fire or whatever strikes her fancy.

  Before Abby leaves for the evening she brings in a tray of delicious little tarts and hot coffee and tea, and clears away the old food. The fire continues to burn, and outside the massive library windows, the wind whips through trees and a cold rain begins spattering at the glass.

  I go over to one of the long tables to refill my drink, but I’m arrested by the sight, by the black t
rees and the black rain. By the contrast of the winter night with our fire and food and loud debates about architecture.

  “You need something stronger than coffee now,” Rebecca says from behind me, and when I turn, she hands me a glass of something amber-colored. I take a deep gulp and then sputter helplessly.

  “A nice Speyside,” she says as I cough. “It’ll warm you up faster than anything else.”

  I take a second, more cautious sip. “Thanks.”

  Both of us angle toward the rest of the room, watching Saint and Auden doing their very best not to watch each other. Watching Delphine animatedly tell a story while an amused Becket teases her.

  “I don’t know what Becket was thinking,” Rebecca says, quietly so that only I can hear. “Bringing that boy here. He hurt Auden so badly, so fucking badly, and I was the one who found him. I was the one who had to—”

  She breaks off, clearing her throat. “Well, I haven’t forgotten what happened, even if I did promise Auden I wouldn’t do anything about it.”

  I glance over at her, her profile lovely against the rainy glass behind her, her high cheekbones and delicate jawline burnished with the fire’s light. She looks every inch the Domme right now as she gazes over at the others. Serene and perceptive.

  If anyone would tell me the story, it would be her.

  “What happened between them?” I ask.

  She turns that Domme’s gaze on me, and like any good submissive, I instinctively lower my eyes, then raise them back up when I catch myself. That earns a small laugh out of her at least.

  “You need to find someone kinky here, and fast,” she says. “I think you’re hard up for it.”

  She has no idea.

  “I’m in agony to be in agony,” I admit. And then I narrow my eyes. “You didn’t answer my question.”

  She twists her mouth. “It’s not my story to tell.”

  I think about this a moment. “Does it make a difference that I really, really want to know?”