“Well, it’s turned out fine.” She felt better now, less wobbly, not so much on the verge of tears. “What’s gone before is gone.”
“It will be when he’s dead,” Gabriel replied with grim purpose.
“Excuse me?” Completely taken aback, she’d nearly stammered in her shock.
“I resolved back then to find out the names of all three of those suitors who brutalized you—and to kill them.”
“But… but youcan’tkill the House Sammael heir.” Curse it, now she was stammering.
“Watch me.” Gabriel’s eyes glittered with black hatred. The dark side of the moon. “They will not abuse my wife and live.”
“I wasn’t your wife then,” she pointed out, flailing for an argument to stop him.
He considered that. Came to a decision. “I don’t care.”
“Gabriel, I never even said it was him.” She nearly stomped her foot at her inability to sway him.
“You didn’t have to.” He touched her cheek, achingly tender in contrast to the roiling shadows under the silver magic. “He made you cry, then and just now. You’re a fierce, proud woman, Lady Veronica Phel. Anyone who hurts you enough to draw tears deserves to die.”
She was still gaping at him when he lowered his mouth to hers, kissing her with devastating thoroughness, stirring the fire he’d kindled in the library into leaping flame again. Aching with unfulfilled desire, she melted against him, needing him inside and around her, more and more and more.
“Not here,” he muttered against her lips, breaking the kiss to nip the tender spot under her jaw that made her shudder with need. “Anyone could come upon us.”
“And nobody wants to have sex next to a swamp,” she agreed with a wrinkled nose.
He shook his head. “A bog. But your point is taken.” Lifting her easily, he settled her in the saddle again and mounted Vale, both horses reluctant to give up the serendipitous grazing opportunity. Moving at a faster clip, they headed back to the manse, perched unevenly on a slight rise in the near distance, between the winding river and the lake.
Slight hills rose gradually on the river’s opposite bank. Grayish brown with little foliage, they weren’t planted with crops or orchards.
“Gabriel?” She stirred him from the thoughts that had his expression as flinty as those hillsides. He was no doubt plotting how to extract the other two names from her, information she had no intention of giving him. House Phel had enough enemies without Gabriel adding to the roster simply to redress imagined wrongs against her. “Is that the Dubglass River, going past the house, the one that goes to Port Carica?”
He frowned at it as if he’d never seen it before. Yes, his mind had definitely been elsewhere. “Yes, why?”
“Just thinking. And those hills there—why aren’t they planted?”
“The soil isn’t right. Sand and clay, probably deposited there before the river shifted into its current course. They’re actually a problem.” He shifted his frown to the unoffending hills. “In heavy rains, the clay gets slick, and we get mud slides, which clog the river. We have to dig it out or the river water floods the marshes there and there.” He pointed to the more distant wings of the manse, which were mainly gables showing through the water and grasses, like upturned boats. “Family lore has it that there were several attempts to build the manse on the hillsides originally, as they’re the highest point around, but that the structure had to be relocated to the bedrock below, as it kept sliding down the hill with sufficient rain.”
He smiled wryly at her. “I’ve always taken heart from those tales of my ancestors’ folly. They put my own failures into perspective.” His gaze lingered on the sunken wings of the house. “Sometimes I think I should’ve razed the house and built it elsewhere.”
She’d had the same thought. “Why didn’t you?”
“Folly runs in my blood along with the water and moon magic?” He breathed a laugh, shaking his head. “Pride, I suppose. I wanted to prove that the Convocation hadn’t truly destroyed my house, that we would rise again from the ashes of destruction.”
“Rather, the swamps of them,” Nic corrected with a smile.
“That does it.” He reined up. “You’ve been tutoring me in all things to do with magic and the Convocation, including the nature of gremlins.Youare going to learn the correct terms for wetlands.”
She clapped her hands to her cheeks and widened her eyes in a semblance of astonishment. “Can it be that I’ll be allowed such sacred knowledge? I’m agog to find out!”
“You think you’re funny,” he growled, but his lips twitched. “Observe, young pupil.” He waved a hand at the sunken wings of the manse. “Do you see any trees or other woody plants in yon wetland?”
Nic pursed her lips and scanned the reedy ponds that merged with the river in places. “The only woody bits I see appear to have once been rooflines.”
“Sadly accurate. Also, they are not plants or trees. Thus, this is a marsh.”
“That’s the definition?”
“Yes. A swamp has trees and the like. Now, turn your scholarly eye upon that low area on the far side of the river.”