His father glanced at him. “I know you two have important work to do, but…”
“Everything to do with House Phel is important,” Nic emphasized. “We’ll come to do this tomorrow and demonstrate how we work together to use magic to add to the manual methods.” Giving Gabriel a bland look, she invited him to argue.
“See you tomorrow, Dad,” Gabriel said, shouldering his shovel and turning his feet toward the manse, new glass windows glittering in the distance as the setting sun hit them. The house looked pretty. Lived in, even.
“I’d offer you a lift,” Nic said, “but I already bathed and changed for dinner.”
“That’s all right.” He walked alongside Salve, remembering how Nic had walked beside Vale all the way back to Port Anatole when he’d ridden, too injured to do otherwise. She kept Salve to a slow pace, riding easily, regally even, her seat graceful and her strong profile gilded, dressed like a lady and looking nothing like the bedraggled and collared woman he’d rescued. “It’s my turn to walk,” he added, and she returned the wry smile.
“At least it isn’t pouring rain this time,” she replied, clearly remembering that same miserable journey. “Though a good downpour would help to sluice some of that mud off of you before you track it into the house to bathe and dress for dinner.”
“There’s a bucket outside I can use to deal with the worst of it. Why does this dressing for dinner sound like something more than usual?” Funny that, as if they’d established a usual.
“You’re presiding over a formal dinner, Lord Phel,” she replied loftily, “which will be attended by your newly contracted Refoel wizard and those hopeful for placement in various capacities, whom you have yet to meet and approve.”
He sighed at the prospect. “I needed to get away from the crowds for a bit,” he admitted.
The look she gave him was softened with affection—or maybe that was the twilight and his wishful thinking. “I understand,” she said softly. “Today was a lot. All of this is.”
“True.” He gazed at House Phel, the graceful tiers he’d never truly expected to see intact again, the windows blazing with light now, echoing the orange streaking through the high clouds, contrasting with the violet sky behind. “Fire elementals?” he asked. “The Elal shipment must’ve arrived.”
She shook her head, a troubled frown shadowing her face. “Many, many lanterns. We’ve received no word from Elal at all.”
Well, shit. “I’m sorry, Nic,” he offered quietly. “Perhaps your father wasn’t home or—”
Cutting off his words with a sharp and bitter laugh, she shook her head. “Gabriel, my only love, you do not need to coddle me with rosy optimism. I’m practical, remember? And I know Papa better than anyone, perhaps even better than Maman does, because he taught me how to think like a wizard and the head of a High House. He hasn’t replied because he considers my missive unworthy of it. His message is very clear.”
“It was a missive from me,” Gabriel pointed out. “Likely it’s me he regards as unworthy of a reply.”
“No,” she replied softly, gazing into the distance. “He knows my handwriting, and he’ll recognize my mind behind the words. If you had written the letter, he’d have answered you. This is a slap in my face, a reminder of my station.” She sighed. “I gravely miscalculated. You’ll have to write the next letter.”
Wishing he could touch her, he put a hand on the heel of her boot instead, well below where he might muddy her hem, squeezing lightly so she wrenched her gaze from whatever unhappy vision occupied it and glanced down at him with a sad smile. “Forget him,” Gabriel said, shaking her foot a little. “We’re not writing to him again.”
“We need that dowry. And I want my clothes, and my grapes.”
“Is it worth it?” he asked, wanting to make her see that it wasn’t. “Surely other places grow grapes. In Wartson, maybe.”
“I can’t see putting Wartson Summer Red on a label,” she retorted without bite.
“Phel Summer Red doesn’t sound much better, to be honest.”
“I was thinking Gabriel’s Blend myself,” she mused. “Such a pretty name.”
“Veronica’s Red,” he suggested. “With a hint of roses, just like you.”
“Such a romantic.” She rolled her eyes, but he thought she wasn’t displeased. “Still, I don’t want Wartson grapes, though I suppose I could make do. I want what’smine. I should be able to make my own summer red wine, whether Papa approves of my choices or not.”
He suspected the wine, and the grapes to make it, had become emblematic in her mind of all that her beloved papa had promised, explicitly and implicitly, raising her as his favored child. Nic had lost so much of his regard that the grapes were but a small piece of what she wanted from her father. And the megalomaniacal Lord Elal wouldn’t give her even that.
“That’s a pretty dress,” Gabriel observed, making his own mental list of everything he’d give Nic that her parsimonious family wouldn’t. “That’s part of why I thought your trousseau had arrived. It’s new?”
“Newish. Wizard Wolfgang’s Ophiel friend arrived, and I begged her to convert one of the heavier riding habits to something lighter. You don’t mind, do you?”
“Of course not.” Though he’d loved her in that burgundy velvet. “The wine-colored one or…?”
“The brown one,” she reassured him. “And if you approve the Ophiel wizard—Dahlia—then she can make me a new trousseau without taking apart anything else.”
“Do I have to approve all the wizards and familiars personally?” he asked. “You know more about them than I do and—”