Page 91 of Shadow Spell

AS SEPTEMBER TICKED ON TO OCTOBER, BRANNAdragooned Connor and Iona into helping harvest the vegetables from her back garden. She set Iona on picking the fat pea pods, Connor to digging potatoes, while she pulled carrots and turnips.

“It smells so good.” Iona straightened to sniff at the air. “In the spring when we planted, it all smelled fresh and new, and that was wonderful. And now it smells ripe and ready, and that’s a different wonderful.”

Connor sent Iona a baleful stare as he shoveled. “Say that when she has you scrubbing all this, and boiling or blanching or whatever the bloody hell it is.”

“You don’t complain when you eat the meals I make all winter with the vegetables I jar or freeze. In fact...”

She moved over, plucked a plump plum tomato from the vine, sniffed it. “I’ve a mind to make my blue cheese and tomato soup tonight.”

Knowing his fondness for it, Branna smiled when Connor gave her the eye. “That’s a canny way to keep me working.”

“I’m a canny sort.”

Harvesting put her in a fine mood. She might pluck and pick through the summer, but the basics of bounty she’d jar up for the coming winter gave her a lovely sense of accomplishment.

And the work, as far as Branna was concerned, only added to it.

“Iona, you could pick a good pair of cucumbers. I’ll be making some beauty creams later, and I’ll need them.”

“I don’t know how you manage to do so much. Keep the house, a garden, cook, make all the stock for your shop—run a business. Plot to destroy evil.”

“Maybe it’s magick.” Enjoying the scent of them, the feel of them in her hand, Branna added more tomatoes to her bucket. “But it’s the truth I love what it is I do, so most times it’s not much like working.”

“Tell that to the man with the shovel,” Connor complained, and was ignored.

“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.”

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