Quatrain

Table of Contents

 

 

 

 

MYSTIC AND RIDER
THE THIRTEENTH HOUSE
DARK MOON DEFENDER
READER AND RAELYNX
FORTUNE AND FATE

 

 

ARCHANGEL
JOVAH’S ANGEL
THE ALLELUIA FILES
ANGELICA
ANGEL-SEEKER

 

 

WRAPT IN CRYSTAL
THE SHAPE-CHANGER’S WIFE
HEART OF GOLD
SUMMERS AT CASTLE AUBURN
JENNA STARBORN
QUATRAIN

 

 

 

THE SAFE-KEEPER’S SECRET
THE TRUTH-TELLER’S TALE
THE DREAM-MAKER’S MAGIC
GENERAL WINSTON’S DAUGHTER
GATEWAY

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Copyright © 2009 by Sharon Shinn.

 

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

 

eISBN : 978-1-101-14860-0

I. Title.
PS3569.H499Q38 2009
813’.54—dc22 2009022435

 

 

F
inally the rain stopped. We had gone three full weeks without seeing the sun, and, in fact, the past two months had been damp and dreary almost without interruption. The oldest hands on the farm had wearied the rest of us with endless stories about past summers in which rain had flooded the land, or drought had seared it. But within the last few days even they had seemed so sick of storms that they had given up talking about the weather.

There was great rejoicing all through the compound when the clouds parted and a sickly, apologetic sun made its first appearance. The children went running through the sodden gardens, kicking up sticky sprays of mud. The men hurried out to check the crops and see if there was anything to salvage. In the kitchen, the women talked together as they churned the butter and kneaded the bread, beginning the long preparations for dinner with more animation than they had shown in weeks. It would have to be a particularly sumptuous meal, everyone agreed, not only to celebrate the return of the sun but also to honor the guests who had arrived that morning specifically to chase away the rain.

Angels. Three of them, all from Windy Point, the angel hold a good three days’ ride away. Thaddeus had left the compound nearly a week ago to beg for a weather intercession, but I had not really expected to see any angels materialize in answer to his pleas. I’m not sure why—everyone knows that one of the things angels do best is fly high above Samaria and lift their gorgeous voices to Jovah, praying for sun or storm or medicines or grain. Everyone knows that the god listens to them. Everyone knows that angels exist to mediate between mortals and the divine.

I suppose it was just that I had hoped I would never in my life see an angel again.

“The Archangel is so
handsome
!” Neri was saying to Ruth as they sat together at the table, chopping vegetables. “I never would have expected that, because he’s so old, but he smiled at me and I almost fainted.”

Standing at the stove stirring a pot of gravy, I smiled to myself. Raphael would hate knowing that a twenty-year-old girl thought him an old man. He was in his mid-fifties and still a spectacularly beautiful creature—tall and muscled, with flowing gold hair, tawny eyes, and those magnificent gilded wings. In the nearly eighteen years that he had been Archangel of Samaria, he had not lost an ounce of his charisma, either. He still had a smile that could melt your bones or charm you into his bed, where so many women had spent so much time.

If Neri showed him the least hint that she found him attractive, she could sleep with him tonight and perhaps be the lucky mother of an angel baby nine months from now.

I hoped she would not be so stupid.

“Oh, yes, Raphael is simply gorgeous,” Ruth replied. “But I thought the other one seemed more—approachable. What was his name?”

“Saul?” Neri replied. “I thought he seemed a little intense, actually. Although I
like
that in a man sometimes.”

“No, no, not Saul. The other one.”

“Oh, Hiram! Yes, he had a very nice face. Did he talk to you?”

“No, but I’m sure I saw him look my way this morning when I was serving breakfast.”

“I wonder how long they will stay after dinner,” Neri said. “I wonder if they will spend the night. I wonder
where
they will spend the night.”

“Neri!” Ruth hissed, then the two of them dissolved into giggles.

I was fairly certain that Thaddeus and Eve expected the angels to be their overnight guests. Rooms had been prepared for them, at any rate, and it would only make sense for the angels to stay. Neighbors from all the nearby farms had been invited to join the fifty or so souls who lived on Thaddeus’s property, and the planned celebration would no doubt go on long into the night. I supposed it must be a four- or five-hour flight to Windy Point from here—rather a distance to cover if the angelic visitors got a late start or consumed too much wine.

Or found other inducements to stay.

“What do you think? Shall I wear my red dress?” Neri was asking. “Or is it too fine for a simple summer dinner?”

“Oh, it’s too fine! What about your green dress, the one with the flowers? I think I’ll wear the blue dress that matches my eyes.”

“I’ll lend you my sapphire earrings.”

I didn’t waste any time wondering what I might wear to the banquet, since I didn’t plan to attend. Thaddeus was quite egalitarian in his approach to management. He expected every employee to call him by his first name, sit with him at the table, and work wholeheartedly to keep the farm profitable. While the family—Thaddeus, Eve, and their three children—sometimes dined in a more elegant state when they were entertaining company, for the most part Thaddeus didn’t recognize much division between classes. And he surely knew that every man, woman, and child in the compound was dying to get a closer look at these most fabulous and exotic visitors.

But I had seen angels before. All my curiosity had been satisfied long ago.

I had even seen two of these particular angels, though it had been nearly two decades, and it seemed unlikely that Saul would recognize me after all this time. I had gained a little weight and I wore my dark hair in a much shorter style—and anyway, I had never done anything particularly memorable when Saul was around.

Raphael, of course, would know me the instant he saw my face.

Neri and Ruth continued their chattering, joined from time to time by other girls who passed through the kitchens, their arms full of cheese or bread or freshly picked vegetables. Some of the older women joined in the speculation about what might please the angels, and a few of them touched their hands to their hair or their hips as if contemplating what
they
might do to draw the attention of the visitors.

But no one asked me which angel I found more attractive. No one asked me what I planned to wear to dinner. The other workers liked me well enough, but they didn’t consider me a frivolous woman.

In fact, these days I was about as far from frivolous as it was possible to be.

During all the talk and all the work, I kept half my attention on the door, waiting for the sound of wagon wheels. My niece, Sheba, had been sent to the nearest ranch to barter for a pig that we could serve with the evening meal. Not a very glamorous commission, and the other girls her age had begged to stay home, where they might manage to throw themselves into an angel’s path. But Sheba had laughed, and flipped back her thick dark hair, and told Thaddeus she didn’t mind picking out pigs and sharing a cart with livestock. I supposed that one of the reasons she was so willing to go was that David was driving the wagon, and David was madly in love with her. Sheba was too much of a flirt to let David know how much she liked him—her primary purpose in life appeared to be to keep the young man in a state of hopeful agony—but she certainly wouldn’t mind spending a few hours basking in his worshipful adoration as they traveled through a countryside made newly agreeable by the cessation of rain.