“Is the floor shaking?”
“I don’t think so.” He opened his eyes, stared at the ceiling. “Maybe. No,” he decided. “I think we are—or more what you could call vibrating. There are bound to be aftershocks after an earthquake, I’m told.”
He reached out blindly to pat her, and his hand landed on her breast. A fine place. “Are you all right then?”
“I’m not all right. I’m amazing and amazed. I feel like I’ve gone flying again. It was the way you looked—like you’d been lit up from the inside, and your hair flying around in the wind you’d made, and the power of it all beating like tribal drums. I couldn’t help it. I’m sorry, but I couldn’t control myself.”
“You’re forgiven. I’m a forgiving sort of man.”
She sighed out a laugh, laid a hand over his. “And now here we are, naked and spent on your floor—and your room’s a disaster of a mess as always.”
He turned his head, glanced around. Not a disaster, exactly, he calculated. True enough there were shoes and boots and clothes and books scattered around. And he’d never seen the point—a severe and sharp bone of contention between him and his sister—on making a bed when you were only going to get back in it again.
To please her, he waved a hand, had the shoes and boots and clothes and books—and whatever else lay on the floor—pile up in a corner. He’d deal with it all—at some point.
But for now he waved his hand again, had rose petals raining down. She laughed, grabbed a handful from the air, then scattered them over his hair.
“You’re a foolish romantic, Connor.”
“There’s not a thing foolish about romance.” He drew her over, pillowed her head on his shoulder. “There, that’s altogether better.”
She couldn’t argue, and yet. “We should go down. They’ll be wondering what we’re up to.”
“Oh, I’ll wager they know perfectly well what we’re up to. So we’ll take a little time.”
A little, she decided. “I’ll need my clothes again—from wherever you sent them.”
“I’ll get them back to you. But not quite yet.”
She let herself be content with her head pillowed on his shoulder, and the air full of rose petals.
14
AS SEPTEMBER TICKED ON TO OCTOBER, BRANNA dragooned Connor and Iona into helping harvest the vegetables from her back garden. She set Iona on picking the fat pea pods, Connor to digging potatoes, while she pulled carrots and turnips.
“It smells so good.” Iona straightened to sniff at the air. “In the spring when we planted, it all smelled fresh and new, and that was wonderful. And now it smells ripe and ready, and that’s a different wonderful.”
Connor sent Iona a baleful stare as he shoveled. “Say that when she has you scrubbing all this, and boiling or blanching or whatever the bloody hell it is.”
“You don’t complain when you eat the meals I make all winter with the vegetables I jar or freeze. In fact . . .”
She moved over, plucked a plump plum tomato from the vine, sniffed it. “I’ve a mind to make my blue cheese and tomato soup tonight.”
Knowing his fondness for it, Branna smiled when Connor gave her the eye. “That’s a canny way to keep me working.”
“I’m a canny sort.”
Harvesting put her in a fine mood. She might pluck and pick through the summer, but the basics of bounty she’d jar up for the coming winter gave her a lovely sense of accomplishment.
And the work, as far as Branna was concerned, only added to it.
“Iona, you could pick a good pair of cucumbers. I’ll be making some beauty creams later, and I’ll need them.”
“I don’t know how you manage to do so much. Keep the house, a garden, cook, make all the stock for your shop—run a business. Plot to destroy evil.”
“Maybe it’s magick.” Enjoying the scent of them, the feel of them in her hand, Branna added more tomatoes to her bucket. “But it’s the truth I love what it is I do, so most times it’s not much like working.”
“Tell that to the man with the shovel,” Connor complained, and was ignored.