Angelica (46 page)

“Forgive me. There is a small girl who depends on my attentions, and it looks as if she needs me,” she said, smiling in a winning way. “If I don't see you again this evening, I will be happy to meet with you in the morning. We'll have a great deal to talk about then.”

And as quickly as that, talking quietly with Sela as she left, Susannah was gone.

“Well,” Adriel said a little blankly. “She is not at all what I expected. Though to tell the truth—I have no idea what I expected.”

“She has a daughter? Is that what she said?” Neri demanded. “I did not think Jovah paired up Archangels with spouses who already had other children. Adriel, have you ever heard of that before?”

“It's not her daughter,” Gaaron said briefly. He did not bother to add that Susannah could have easily had a daughter, could have had any number of children, had had a whole life and set of lovers and a satisfactory existence before he had swooped down on her campsite to change everything. He was sure Sela had come over at some invisible signal from Susannah, to rescue her from an unendurable conversation, and he frankly was just as glad to see her go. “It is a Jansai girl who has become her responsibility.”

“A Jansai girl!” Neri exclaimed. “Gaaron, what strange people you seem to have gathered together. What exactly has been going on at this hold?”

So he talked to them a while longer of the events that had transpired, not going into much detail about Miriam's troubles but giving them a brief outline so that they could draw their own conclusions. After that, talk segued easily into gossip about the angels at the other holds, and Gaaron actually began to enjoy the conversation. They talked fairly late into the evening, till the dining room was completely empty and even the workers in the kitchen had finished cleaning up the evening meal.

“You must be tired,” Gaaron said at last. “I'm sure Esther has had your usual rooms made up while we've been talking. I'll see you both in the morning.”

“No, we'll be making bridal plans with Susannah,” Neri corrected. “But I'm sure we'll be free by lunchtime.”

“Maybe we'll go down to Velora,” Adriel said.

Gaaron nodded in a courtly way. “As the day unfolds,” he said. He walked them to the bedchambers always reserved for their use, tarried long enough to make sure Esther had
really put the rooms in order, and then headed back to his own suite.

Where he found Susannah before him, pacing up and down, and looking absolutely furious.

“This can't be good,” he said, and closed the door.

She turned on him, her dark eyes snapping, her smooth cheeks flushed with more color than he had ever seen. “I am so angry, but I will start with an apology if you like, because none of this was your fault,” she burst out. “I am usually better behaved, and I know I must do everything to be civil to your friends, but Yovah love me if I can sit there meekly and hear them say insulting things about the Edori—”

He smiled faintly. “Don't bother apologizing to
me
,” he said. “I thought you handled it all magnificently. I wasn't even sure you were angry, though once or twice I had an inkling, and Adriel suspected something was wrong.”

“ ‘Have you always been an Edori?' ” Susannah said, mimicking Neri's voice. “ ‘Oh, it must be so nice for you to live here away from the savages!' How can they say such things to me? Don't they realize that we are all Yovah's people, every one of us, and that he loves us all equally? And even if he did not,” she added, “we would still be good enough for her and her angel friends.”

Gaaron could not help but laugh. This was a side of Susannah he had not seen before. “You must realize that the Edori seem exotic to us,” he said. “I did not know what to expect the first time I came to land beside an Edori campfire. That they were friendly to me, and welcomed me with great graciousness, was due more to the Edori nature than any attempts I made, and I found that a humbling experience.”

“Yes, well, Adriel and Neri could stand a humbling experience or two,” Susannah fumed.

It was so unlike her that Gaaron laughed again. “No doubt. Neri especially. Perhaps you can be very rude to them tomorrow, and that will teach them a lesson.”

“No! I can't!” she exclaimed in dismay. “I am quite incapable of it! Sometimes I can manage a nasty comment or two, but I always phrase it in such a delicate way that no one ever knows they have been insulted!”

Now he laughed even harder. “Well, perhaps that is not
such a bad trait to have,” he said in a placating way. “Your generosity of spirit wins you many friends. It is not so terrible to have Neri and Adriel thinking you like them. They can be powerful allies.”

“Yes, but Gaaron, aren't
you
angry?” she demanded. “For the affront was to you as much as to me. Assuming you were too doltish to pick your own bride, or at any rate a bride that was worthy of you—”

“I was a little displeased when they showed up,” he conceded. “Although I view their motives a little differently. I think they were proving to me that I was mishandling my own courtship, that
I
had done
you
a dishonor by appearing to think you were unworthy of meeting them. And if that is the perception that really does exist, then I am the one who needs to apologize to you. For that is not what I intended, and that is not how I feel.”

That little speech had a remarkable effect on her, seeming to calm her completely. She stopped in her pacing, and stood a little apart from him, turned half away, half toward him. Her face was furrowed in a frown. “But Gaaron, you have always treated me with the utmost courtesy,” she said. “And—well, I must confess—I have been glad that you haven't brought a parade of people through here to come stare at me and decide if I was worthy to be your bride. I have wanted to get a little used to everybody here before I started to show myself off to strangers.”

“Yes, and we have had so many troubles here, there has not seemed to be a good time to sit down and plan a party,” he agreed. “But they are right, you know. Sooner or later you must meet everyone—and sooner or later there
is
the wedding to plan.”

Now she was silent for a moment. “Yes,” she said at last. “I have given no thought at all to the wedding. But I suppose we must marry.”

He felt a sudden intense clench of sadness at her words, at her tone. “Although I have thought lately,” he said, in a gentle tone of voice, “that you were less and less pleased at the idea of marrying me.”

Her eyes came swiftly to his face. “Why? What have I done? I am sorry if I—I know I have been very involved
with Kaski, perhaps there are other crucial matters that I have overlooked—”

He held up a hand and she fell silent. “No. As always, you have been a model for civility and kindness. It is just that I—I have worried about you a little bit. I cannot forget that you were coerced here, to some extent. And you have seemed—” He paused, feeling trapped in dangerous phrases, unable to find words that seemed truthful without being hurtful. “For a while, it seemed as though you and I were friends of a sort,” he said in a rush. “And lately that does not seem to be true. And I don't know what I have done, or what has happened, to change you. Or perhaps I am the one who has changed without intending to. I live in great fear of you becoming unhappy, you see. For I know it will be my fault if you do.”

Now her face seemed alive with color; she put her hands up over her cheeks as if to hide her blush from his eyes. “Oh, Gaaron,” she said, her voice muffled by her hands. “Not everything that happens in this whole world is your fault and your responsibility to correct.”

He smiled faintly at that. “Indeed? That is the first I have heard of it.”

She dropped her hands and turned to face him head-on, wearing a look of resolution. “The truth is—the truth is I have been afraid that you have been regretting being forced to take me as your bride,” she said. “The truth is, I have thought that if we postponed the wedding long enough, you would come to realize that you would rather marry elsewhere—and you would be able to convince Yovah that a different wife was in your best interests. I have tried to keep out of your way somewhat, so that you could think things through and consider who you would marry.”

He was smiling again, and he knew the expression on his face was quizzical. “But who else would I want to marry?” he asked. “I scarcely have time to see you, let alone go out to study the charms of other women.”

“Well—Keren,” she said.

“Keren!”

“She is quite young and beautiful, and she is so joyous that everybody loves her,” Susannah said defensively. “And
you seem to enjoy her company, and I always thought she would make a better angel's bride than I would—”

Now he laughed out loud. “I have had more than my share of beautiful and self-centered girls,” he said. “The god spare me the agony of a lifetime married to one. Give me a reasonable and levelheaded woman any day over someone as volatile as Keren or my sister.”

An expression so swift that he could not be sure of it flitted across her face; he had the sense he had displeased her again. “Yes,” she said rather flatly. “I am reasonable and levelheaded.”

He took a step nearer. “And kind, and intelligent, and possessed of a lovely smile,” he added. “Mahalah tells me I am inept at complimenting women. You should consider that a fault of mine, and not a reflection of any defects of your own.”

Now the lovely smile came, swiftly, and then was hidden away again. “An ability to flatter women would come low on the list of virtues I would look for in a man,” she said. “It is very well by firelight, but it does nothing to fill the dinner pot.”

“
Excuse
me?”

She laughed out loud, her hands back to her hot cheeks. “Oh—an Edori saying—it just popped right out of my mouth!” she exclaimed. “It means—well—”

“I can tell very well what it means,” he said, amused. “I will take it as a compliment in turn that you consider I have some useful skills.”

“Oh, I admire you greatly,” she said. “I am like everyone else.”

“Then we are agreed?” he said, his voice a little stern. “We will be friends again, and we will go forward with this wedding, and we will not each secretly be thinking the other one is unwilling?”

She held out her hand and he took it. “We are agreed,” she said. “But tell me now. Should I put myself completely in the hands of Adriel and Neri? Or are there arrangements you would like to make? None of this is familiar territory to me, so I have no ideas about how to plan a ceremony.”

“You can turn your life over to them or not, but they will
go ahead and plan it anyway, so you may as well give them free rein,” he said. “I think you can trust their taste, at any rate.”

Her face was solemn but her eyes were laughing. “Ah, but I have already gotten advice from your sister and her friends about what I should wear at the wedding,” she said. “Surely Adriel and Neri could have no objections to their suggestions?”

He gave a little groan, and then he laughed. “Yes, that is exactly the tack to take if you want to bedevil Adriel and Neri,” he said. “Neri in particular admires Miriam, as you might imagine. She will take the news especially well.”

She laughed. “Yes, I know just how to go about it,” she said. “I'm sure I shall enjoy myself immensely in the morning.”

He smiled down at her and brought her hand up to his heart, giving it a small squeeze. He thought perhaps he should give her a hug, or drop a kiss upon her dark hair, but they had reestablished a fragile friendship and he did not want to jeopardize the truce. “Plan a very nice wedding,” he said. “Tell me all about it tomorrow.”

But the next day, they were not talking about weddings. They were talking about deaths.

Gaaron did not see Susannah again until the noon meal. He was already seated at his customary table, Enoch beside him and Esther perched on an empty chair, complaining about the quality of the baker's bread, when Susannah, Adriel, and Neri came in together. Susannah looked prim and innocent, while the two angels looked ruffled and confused, so he supposed the morning had gone more or less the way Susannah intended. But the three women had barely made it to the table before there was a commotion across the room, and Nicholas swept in.

He looked exhausted and somehow thinner, as if he had expended a year's worth of energy in one quick physical action, and cold clung to his skin and feathers. “Gaaron,” he said breathlessly as he charged across the room. Gaaron came to his feet, braced for disaster.

“What it is? Can you stand? Should you sit?”

Nicholas shook his head and gasped for air. “A farm settlement. Almost at the Gaza border. It's been burned to the ground.”

A cry of surprise and dismay went up from the people sitting near enough to hear. “What?” Adriel said sharply.

Nicholas looked over at her, not even registering surprise at her presence. “Farming community. Big one—maybe fifty people lived there. All gone. Leveled. The ashes were cold, so I don't know when it happened. I flew over it two days ago and all was well.”