“Now, now, my good fellow.” Gabriel’s voice took on the polite, mollifying tone of a geographer who, having inadvertently trespassed on both property and sensitivities, has only the dignity of Her Majesty’s service to help him escape the predicament. This was, of course, the exact way one should manage such a situation. Elodie had been taught the same by her parents, mentors, and professors, and knew how well it worked. So she took half a step forward, smiling nicely.
Then—“Oh my gosh, look!” she gasped, pointing to behind the man. “What on earth is that?!”
The man turned to see what she meant, his broom lowering as he did so. At once, Elodie grabbed it with both hands and twisted.
The man stumbled to his knees, and Elodie caught Gabriel by the shirtsleeve. “Run!” she urged, tugging him.
Gabriel stared at her with an incredulousness that wavered between disapproval and admiration. Elodie tugged him again. “Come on,” she hissed.
“Hooligans!” the man shouted, clambering to his feet.
They ran.
—
After a quarterof a mile’s dash down a muddy slope, they finally stopped. Not only had the furious man been left far behind, scrambling in the grass for the coins Gabriel had thrown him, but they’d come to accept that there could be no outrunning the awkwardness of having woken in each other’s arms again. Breathing hard, they looked across the quiet, misty land to where Dôlylleuad stood, softly wreathed in chimney smoke, beside the river.
“It’s not too far,” Elodie said. “We should be back there in time for breakfast.”
“The mist has a blue tinge,” Gabriel noted, staring at it fixedly so he would not be tempted to watch the way Elodie’s breasts heaved with her breath.
“I think it’s just a trick of the light,” she said. “Everything seems calm.”
They surveyed the view awhile longer until their gazes happened to meet. Memories filled the silence between them: waking to find themselves cuddling, the kisses yesterday, the morning after their wedding night, when they sat cross-legged in Gabriel’s tumbled bed, eating toast and eggs, talking about their favorite maps…
Elodie’s eyes darkened with blatant longing.She must be starving for breakfast,Gabriel thought, and looked away.
“We’ll be there soon,” he said.
“I don’t think we ever will,” she answered wearily. They began walking toward Dôlylleuad.
Blessed silence reigned for all of three minutes before Elodie broke it with the air of a woman unable to restrain herself a moment longer. “What a pretty bird!” she exclaimed.
She pointed toward a feathered creature in a nearby tree, but Gabriel’s instincts warned him that this was merely a prelude to deeper conversation.
“No,” he said.
Elodie halted, turning to him with stormy eyes. “What do you mean, no?”
“I mean no,” he answered tersely. “Ornithology is an exceedingly dull subject, trust me. We will not be discussing it.”
She gave an astonished laugh, and the storm in her eyes flashed with her lightning-fast temper. “You can’t tell me what to discuss.”
“Of course I can.”
Her jaw dropped. Gabriel just stared at her in the way he’d perfected over years of teaching: implacable, inscrutable, unwilling to be convinced that an essay deadline should be extended or a conversation about birds be undertaken. But the heat in Elodie’s gaze burned a hole in his heart. He wished he could just tell her how he really felt. Her every rambling conversation, her every stormy look, made him love her more than he thought possible. And yet, considering she once jumped out of a laboratory window upon seeing him enter, confessing his secret adoration would almost certainly inspire her to run off into the wild, where she’d meet a carnivorous tree or river tsunami, knowing her luck. So he found himself frowning, because he did not know what else to do.
Abruptly, her jaw snapped shut. “Well—I—arrogant—humph.” Thus communicating God only knew what, she stomped off ahead of him, grumbling about mice and men and how she was looking forward to a hot bath, in which she would like to drown a certain spouse.
Grateful that conversation had been avoided, Gabriel followed. It was a placid morning, at least, and they would soon be back in Dôlylleuad, with other people to come between them. Thank goodness for small mercies! Thus thinking, he quickened his pace, all the while gazing hopelessly at the sunlit magic that was his wife.
Chapter Sixteen
What we see of a tree is its own underneath.
Dirt is its sky, and light its dreaming.
Blazing Trails, W.H. Jackson
