"Nothing is horrible!" she replied, shocked. "It's just a matter of knowing what's to be done all the time. Winter's the quietest season. You'll have plenty of time to get used to things."

He brushed her cheek with his fingers. "Oh, good, so I'm not inheriting any monsters in wells or anything like that?" he asked. "Just you?"

She blushed and lowered her eyelids. "Well. The Ganconner. House full of my dead relations. Sometimes very strange weather. The little old fellow who sometimes grooms the horses for us." She rolled her eyes. "My father . . . "

"Oh, your father's just growly and I quite like your dead relatives," Marcello assured Niabheara. "Now that I know them. I wonder...do they move about the castle enough to have come to the wedding? Should we tell them?"

She smiled wistfully. "I went into Mabhe's old room and sort of . . . talked to the ceiling for a while? I told her everything. Well." She smiled sheepishly. "I said everything, anyway. It would have been lovely if she heard somehow, and told Seamus. But I don't know if they really understand anything they see. Not like you and I would."

"But it's nice to think they feel something, isn't it?" Marcello asked. "That they're looking after us, even in their gory glory?"

She snorted lightly. "I can speak to them and imagine they're happy for me, which is more than I can say for most of my living relations."

Marcello nodded. "Mabhe would probably roll her eyes that you married a tallfolk, but she would be happy," he assured her. "She'd be proud of the person you've turned out to be."

"I am much more concerned with appeasing our living relatives than our dead ones," she said. "I only want to please your relatives." She looked anxious. "Are they pleased? Are they happy for you, d'you think? I mean, is this what they would want for you?"

"No," Marcello answered. "It's not what they'd want for me." He laughed, quietly. "My father wanted me to go to the university. Alessia...well, she just wanted me to be happy, so I suppose, yes, but I know she wishes I weren't so far away. They're still happy for me," he said. "I think they realized a long time ago that i wouldn't be what anyone else wanted."