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My wedding night.
Until exactly one p.m. that afternoon, I’d been sure I would sleep with my new wife on the night of our wedding. I’d become resigned to my duty, my fate, as least for now. But the second I saw Vivian peeking through the door in the abbey, there’d become no question in my mind. I couldn’t do it to either of them. I couldn’t consummate my marriage, because it felt more than ever like the sham it was.
Vivian had come back.
I hadn’t heard a word the Bishop had said. My ears rang instead with the blood racing around my veins, powered by adrenalin. She was there. Vivian was there. She hadn’t given up on us after all.
Minty had barely finished her whispered words before I was off like a lightning bolt, taking the steps three at a time to the crypt. When I heard Vivian’s voice, my heart thumped. For once I was thankful for all the times Sinclair had sent us down to the crypt to pay our respects to the Thorns of old. It meant I knew where I was going, even in the velvety thick darkness. I heard her breathing. It was like a beacon in the fog. I followed the sound to the cavernous room.
I held my own breath and pushed against the door, feeling around for the light switch. Her breaths became heavier and my chest expanded with anticipation. In the space of a second, the click of the switch echoed loudly, the fluorescent light blinded me and the sound of my name caressed my right ear. I turned and blinked and looked into her eyes. They were lidded and lusty, in a way I’d seen them many times before. Part of me wanted to fist her hair and kiss her breathless, but another, quieter, and I suspect less-Thorn-like part held me back. Something wasn’t right.
Her eyes rounded, and confusion clouded them almost purple. Blood ran from her cheeks and I followed the drop of her gaze to the thinning head of hair at the apex of her thighs. It undulated indulgently, forcing another cry from Vivian’s lips, but it was confused and repulsed and devastated. It turned to a scream in milliseconds, her throat instantly hoarse. It took me a beat or two to realise what the hell was going on. She was pushing her fists against the head and kicking the heels of her boots against a back. A back I instantly recognised.
And that was when the room turned red.
My heart hammered from the still-fresh memory as I took the steps to the front door.
“Where have you been?”
A short, spindly figure slipped into view, raining strong, acrid perfume down on me like a thunder cloud. The accompanying sound of Mother’s – Iris’s – voice made me bristle. I refrained from dragging my gaze up and down her in complete and utter disgust, instead feeling a brazen boldness replace any sense of duty I ever had.
I shrugged lightly. “I took Ossian home. He was hammered.”
She pouted, multiplying the lines around her pursed lips. “But Rupert, it’s your wedding.”
“Exactly,” I said with a frown. “It’s my wedding. He can make a drunken fool of himself wherever he likes, but not at my wedding.”
She huffed tightly. It wasn’t the reply she wanted to hear but she couldn’t argue with my reasoning.
“Why couldn’t Hector have taken him?”
My brother stepped out from behind me. “I did.”
Iris’s eyes widened sharply then resumed their usual suspicious arc.
“Why did you both need to go?” she snapped.
Hector shrugged. “I’m Rupert’s best man. I’m not leaving him to go anywhere on his own today.”
I absently wondered who, in fact, had chosen my name. Rupert. Was it this woman standing before me whom it turned out I didn’t know at all? Or was it my birth mother? If it wasn’t my birth mother’s choice, what name would she have chosen? Did it even matter?
“Well, you were both missed, so I don’t care what happens between now and the end of the night, you are both staying here. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Mother,” Hector replied and I detected a note of sarcasm that would have sailed over her head. I simply shrugged. I didn’t want to let on that something was fundamentally wrong with this picture, and that Hector and I both knew it, but I found it much harder than I expected to play along with the lie.
She was hot on our heels as we walked back to the ballroom. Elspeth’s eyes found mine the second we entered and I felt a mixture of guilt and relief as she dashed into my arms. In the last few months, we’d become teammates, partners in a crime neither of us were on board with but knew was a means to an end. She knew I had to go through with this marriage, to seal my legacy as vice-president of the Consortium; I knew she could only please her father by marrying his best friend’s second son. We’d made the best of it and we’d become, dare I admit it, close. But her words as she’d helped me get Vivian off the island rang in my ears. When she’s gone, it’s me. Only me.
If she knew Vivian had come back, regardless of why, she’d be livid. She’d given up her life for this union. And worse still, if she knew the man she married wasn’t a Thorn after all, she’d feel cheated. Maybe even destroyed. There were no other true Thorns to marry. What value would she now have to her family?
I held her lightly and looked into her eyes for the obligatory first dance and forced a genuine smile as we cut the cake. The rest of the evening passed by beneath a cloud of deception. Not one conversation was authentic. Even as Bertie Barrington talked of the luxuries he’d laid out for our honeymoon, the only thought I could summon was, You know. You know who I really am.
Lucky for me, that conversation was cut short. Thin fingers curled around my bicep and pulled me out of the small group.
“Where’s Ossian?”
I cocked my head. “Didn’t Mother tell you? Hector and I took him home. He was drunk.”
Sinclair turned his head, side-eyeing me with suspicion. It didn’t last long. He yanked me downwards so his lips could reach my ear. “We have a problem, son.”
