“You’ve plenty dished on your own plate,” Branna said to Iona. “You don’t seem to mind spending each day shoveling away horse dung, hauling bales of hay and straw, riding about the woods nattering to tourists who likely ask most of the same questions daily. Add all the studying and practice you’ve
done on the craft since last winter when you could barely spark a candlewick.”
“I love it all, too. I have a home and a place, a purpose. I have family and a man who loves me.” Lifting her face to the sky, Iona breathed deep. “And I have magick. I only had hints of that, only had Nan as real family before I came here.”
She shifted to the cucumbers, selected two. “And I’d love to be able to plant a little garden. If I learned how to can things, then I’d feel I’d done my part when Boyle ends up doing most of the cooking.”
“There’s room enough for one at Boyle’s. Do you plan on staying there once you’re married?”
“Oh, it’s fine for now. More than fine for the two of us, and close to everything and everyone we want to be close to. But . . . we want to start a family, and sooner rather than later.”
Branna adjusted the straw hat she wore more for the tradition of it than as a block from the sun that peeked in and out of puffy white clouds on a day that spoke more of summer than fall.
“Then you’ll want a house, and not just rooms over Fin’s garage.”
“We’re thinking about it, but neither of us wants to give up being close to all of you, or the stables, so we’re just thinking about it.” Bending back to her work, Iona picked a bright yellow squash. “There’s the wedding to plan first, and I haven’t even decided on my dress or the flowers.”
“But you have what you want in mind for both.”
“I have a sort of vision of the dress I want. I think— Connor, fair warning, as this will bore you brainless.”
“The potatoes have already done that.” He plucked them out of shoveled dirt for the bucket.
“Anyway, I want the long white dress, but I think more a vintage style than anything sleek and modern. No train or veil, more simple but still beautiful. Like something your grandmother might have worn—but a bit updated. Nan would give me hers, but it’s ivory and I want white, and she’s taller—and, well, it’s not really it, as much as I’d love to wear a family dress.”
She picked a cherry tomato, popped it warm into her mouth. “God, that’s good. Anyway, I’ve been looking online, to get the idea, and after Samhain, I’m hoping you and I and Meara can go on a real hunt.”
“I’d love it. And the flowers?”
“I’ve gone around and around on that, too, then I realized . . . I want your flowers.”
“Mine?”
“I mean the look of your flowers, your gardens.”
Straightening again, Iona waved a hand toward the happy mix of zinnias, foxglove, begonias, nasturtiums. “Not specific types or colors. All of them. All that color and joy, just the way you manage to plant them so they look unstudied and happy, and stunning all at once.”
“Then you want Lola.”
“Lola?”
“She’s a florist, has a place just this side of Galway City. She’s a customer of mine. I send her vats of hand cream as doing up flowers is murder on the hands. And she’ll often order candles by the gross to go with her arrangements for a wedding. She’s an artist with blooms, I promise you. I’ll give you her number if you want it.”
“I do. She sounds perfect.”
Iona glanced toward Connor. He crouched on the ground studying a potato as if it had the answer to all the questions printed on its skin.
“I warned you I’d bore you brainless.”
“No, it’s not that. It got me thinking about family, about gardens and flowers. And the bluebell Teagan asked me to plant at her mother’s grave. I haven’t done it.”
“It’s too much of a risk to go to Sorcha’s cabin now,” Branna reminded him.
“I know it. And still, it’s all she asked. She helped heal Meara, and all she asked was that I plant the flowers.”
Setting down her bucket, Branna crossed over to him, crouched down so they were face-to-face. “And we will. We’ll plant the bluebell—a hectare of them if that’s what you want. We’ll honor her mother, who’s ours as well. But none of us are to go near Sorcha’s grave until after Samhain. You’ll promise me that.”
“I wouldn’t risk myself, and by doing that risk all. But it weighs on me, Branna. She was just a girl. And with the look of you, Iona. And I’m looking at you,” he said to Branna, “just like I looked at Sorcha’s Brannaugh, and I could see how she’d be in another ten years, and see how you were at her age. There was too much sorrow and duty in her eyes, as too often there’s too much in yours.”