“Oh, yes,moa halea.You will be myliana.Of that, there is not the slightest doubt.”
Gabriella pulled her hand back. “If you’re serious about courting me, you need to stop that. There is more to marriage than sexual attraction.”
It pleased Dilys to no end that both her hand and her voice shook as she pulled away. It pleased him even more that she acknowledged the attraction between them. The mention of marriage was, of course, just a ploy, a bait to manipulate him into surrendering one of his most powerful weapons in their war of wills. But he liked that she’d mentioned it all the same. The more often she spoke of marriage, the more used to the idea she would become.
“Indeed there is,” he agreed, settling back into his chair to give the illusion of a small retreat. “I believe it is customary for couples to use their courtship to get to know one another better. Let’s start with you. I already know that most people think you are honest, even though you lie whenever it suits your needs.” She rolled her eyes, which made him laugh. “I know that you love beautiful flowers but only those with an equally beautiful fragrance, and that you are very generous—except when it comes to sharing Zephyr Hallowill’s chocolates. Those you hoard, even from your sisters.”
She gaped at him. “Who told you tha—” Her lips pursed in an exasperated scowl. “Autumn.”
He grinned. “She and I have become good friends these last few weeks.”
“Too good, it would seem,” Summer groused.
“Her first loyalty is to you. She just happens to agree that I would make an excellent husband for you.” Before consenting to help him with his pursuit of Summer, Autumn had vowed to roast him like a sausage on a stick if he ever mistreated her sister in any way. She hadn’t been joking. “My cousins and I thoroughly enjoy her company. I get the feeling it’s rare for her to have male friends, especially attractive, unmarried males in their prime.”
“Your modesty continues to leave me speechless.”
He laughed. “I was actually referring to Ari and Ryll, but thank you. ”
The servants delivered the second course, a salad of baby greens topped with sliced pears, candied nuts and apricots, and crumbled goat cheese. He waited for the servants to depart and Summer to pick up her fork before saying, “Tell me about your mother. What do you remember about her?”
Gabriella shrugged. “Not much. I was very young when she died.”
“You were seven, I believe?”
She poked at her salad. “Yes.”
Old enough to remember more than vague impressions. She had memories. She just wasn’t sharing them. “I understand she was very kind and gentle, a calming influence on your father.”
“She was.”
“I’ve heard you are very like her.”
“So people say.”
He reached for his wine, took a sip, and regarded her over the rim of the crystal flute, until the silence made her stop shoving her salad around on her plate and look up at him. Gently and without recrimination, he said, “A conversation works best when both parties actually participate, Gabriella.” Setting his glass aside, he reached across the table to take her hand. “Or should we dispense with getting to know one another and just go back to exploring our mutual sexual attraction?”
She yanked her hand back. “Yes, my mother was kind and gentle. She was probably the kindest, gentlest, most loving person I’ve ever known. She had a way of smiling that was like the sun shining in your heart. And when she laughed... not even the most miserable person in the world could have clung to bitter feelings after hearing her laugh. I remember the day she died like it was yesterday.” She rubbed a hand over her heart, as if it ached. “I miss her. Every day. There’s a hole in my heart where she used to be, and nothing has ever filled it. I don’t think anything ever will.”
“She sounds wonderful.”
“She was. And except for my looks, I’m really nothing like her at all.”
“Oh, I doubt that.”
She looked up at him, her blue eyes so bright against the black frame of her thick lashes and the Summerlander darkness of her skin. But for all their brightness, those eyes held many shadows, too. “No. I’m really not. Trust me on this one.”
He wanted to wrap her in his arms and kiss away her pain until all those shadows disappeared. “There has never been a creature in all Mystral with a bigger heart or a greater capacity to love than the Sirens. The intensity of their emotions was a reflection of their power, the source of it, in fact. What they loved, they loved deeply, wholly, without restraint. No one could love like that without grieving the same way. Your feelings for your mother are a perfect example, though to be honest, it’s a small miracle that you survived the grief of her death without manifesting your power in some violent way. Especially given your youth at the time. Your father couldn’t have anchored you. He would have been too wrapped up in his own grief. And your brother and sisters were too young to be of much assistance.”
“Then perhaps you’re mistaken about me being a Siren.”
He hid a smile. She was so quick to deny anything that unsettled her. So determined to cling to her masks. “Ono, moa kiri.There’s no mistake. Just another mystery. From what I’ve been taught, most Sirens don’t gain full control over their gifts until adulthood, but perhaps you somehow learned control much earlier.” He took a bite of his salad and waited for her to follow suit, before asking, “Do you recall any other traumatic loss you may have suffered before your mother’s death? Some occasion where your gifts may have manifested in such a way that the shock of it frightened you into repressing your power?”
If he hadn’t been watching for her reaction he might have missed the way her fork paused in midair, trembling slightly as her hand shook at the memory.
“Not that I recall,” she said. And there was that tone in her voice he had come to recognize. The little vibration that told him she was lying. Again.
He backed off. He’d confirmed that there had been an incident. One traumatic enough that Gabriella felt the need to lie about it even now, twenty years later.
