It's probably no wonder that after the emotional upheaval of the whole last week and his visit to Abel Barney gets a migraine. He's been suffering from them since he was a small child, not very frequently, thankfully, but he long noticed an uptick of attacks in times of heightened stress or worry. Walking in the woods when he notices the first warning signs helps, but today he was focused on getting back home with Valancy and ignored them – to his detriment, as it turned out. So now he is lying curled on the wolfskin covered sofa, his eyes tightly shut against the brightness of the setting sun and the vicious feeling of an icepick stabbing his temple at regular intervals. He's taken his headache powder before he took his refugee there, but so far it's been woefully ineffective.

He startles slightly when he feels a wet compress being put on his aching eyes and tortured temple, wonderfully soothing and blissfully blocking the light.

"I hope it will help you a little," says Valancy in a soft voice, clearly taking care not to cause him any further pain by speaking too loudly. "Let me know if I can do anything else."

Barney mutters his thanks and sighs with relief which relaxing his eyes under the compress brings. Since he can't think what else could there be for Valancy to do, he fully expects her to retreat somewhere else and keep herself occupied until he's functional again, but to his further surprise he hears her sitting down on the armchair next to the sofa and feels her hand on his hair, hesitant and so very delicate.

"Is that alright?" she asks anxiously. "Or am I making it worse?"

It's strange more than anything else. The last time anybody was taking care of him while he was dealing with one of those headaches he was still a child, before his father sent him to boarding school. But Valancy's touch is so feather soft that it doesn't aggravate his migraine in the slightest and it is nice to feel that he's not alone, even if so very weird.

"It's alright," he mumbles.

Valancy doesn't say anything more. Instead, she sits by him and slowly, ever so softly, keeps petting his hair in a soothing rhythm. At some point, Good Luck jumps on the sofa and curls against his stomach. Barney feels himself gradually relaxing, the stabbing icepick slowly turning into dull thudding instead which is still awfully painful, but at least doesn't make him want to jump into the lake anymore.

"Aren't you bored?" he asks Valancy eventually. He has no idea how much time has passed, but Valancy got up only once, to exchange the compress on his eyes for a fresh one, and while she was doing it he noticed that the sun set some time ago and it was dark outside now.

"No," she answers and he doesn't see her, of course, but still can say she's smiling just from the warmth in her voice. "I have a book."

"Will you read to me?" he asks. "Because I am."

It's true. Now that the pain lessened enough to make thinking possible at all, but not enough to allow him to get up quite yet, he's been left at mercy of his own mind and he's not very happy about it. There are too many emotions and feelings in him which only aggravate him this evening; if he is to have a chance to get rid of that damned headache, upsetting himself all over again with his own gloomy thoughts is totally counterproductive. But avoiding those thoughts leaves him at loose ends, bored, antsy and irritable. He's in desperate need of a distraction.

Then he has a flash of suspicion what Valancy is likely to be reading and adds hastily:

"Unless it's John Foster – I'm nowhere near bored enough for that."

Valancy laughs softly, her hand resting briefly on his head.

"You're lucky," she says dryly. "It's one of yours – Walt Whitman, actually."

Barney visibly relaxes and she laughs again.

"Then would you?" he asks and she starts reading, her low, warm voice and her obvious appreciation of the text adding wholly new charm to the praised beauty of "Leaves of Grass".

xxx

First lesson in swimming is after dark – Valancy still hasn't managed to procure a bathing suit and there are limits to how far even she is willing to go to scandalise public opinion. But the summer night is warm and there is a little cove on their island, mostly hidden by bushes and low hanging boughs of trees, which they are using for washing in the summer anyway. It is deep enough that Barney deems it suitable enough to start teaching her.

"The first thing," he says as he leads her into water and tries very hard not to notice how alluring she looks dressed only in her chemise, especially as it gets wet and clings to her body in the most revealing manner in the moonlight, "is to not be afraid of the water. Do you trust me, Valancy?"

"Of course I do," he receives an immediate and assured answer and he needs to swallow slightly before he can continue.

Valancy is always saying things like that – that she loves him, trusts him, that he makes her happy – and he just can't wrap his head around it. He does believe her, there's no doubt in him regarding her honesty, it's not that that bowles him over. It's both that she is saying those things to him – him! – and that she never indicates that she needs him to say them back to her. She seems perfectly content with things he is able to give her: marriage, friendship, companionship, and never asks for more. Not even for his trust; she keeps her word and never pries into his secrets, never even betrays the slightest curiosity. But Barney remembers very well being in love and how desperate he was for Ethel reciprocating his feelings. He remembers how deliriously happy he was when she said she did and how utterly shattered when it all turned out to be a lie. How can Valancy profess all those feelings and yet be at peace with the fact that he doesn't return them and never will?

He doesn't have the answer to that.

"Then lie down in the water," he says softly. "Don't worry, I won't let you drown. I will teach you how to float."

Valancy looks somewhat apprehensive, but proves her stated trust in him by slowly lowering herself into the water. Barney holds his hands under her, waiting for her stiff body to relax.

"Spread your arms and legs a bit," he says. "And allow the water to carry you. Don't worry, I won't take my hands away until you learn to stay afloat on your own."

"Oh," she says suddenly, "the stars look so amazing like this!"

He sees them reflected in her shining dark eyes and has to agree.

"They will be even brighter when the moon wanes," he says, taking his hands away slowly while she is distracted. "What do you say to going stargazing in about a week from now? We could go to the barrens and lie down on the grass there, among clovers and daisies, with nothing to obstruct our view of the sky."

"It sounds heavenly," answers Valancy and then notices that his hands are no longer supporting her. There is a brief moment of panic and Barney immediately reaches for her again, but she calms down and smiles widely before he needs to rescue her. "I'm floating! By myself!"

"Yes you are," agrees Barney with a wide smile of his own. "Told you it won't take you long to learn."

xxx

It is his first proper supply run to Deerwood with Valancy that makes Barney question enabling his notorious reputation in the area for the very first time.

He is long used to the wide berth most people give him and all kinds of gossip trailing him like a cloud of dust. After five years, it got too boring and repetitive to be truly enjoyable, but it has its uses; the biggest one of course being the fact that he is usually left well alone. But he didn't have to concern himself with how his reputation could affect anyone else since those few times he ran into Cissy all those years ago, before her own scandal brought shame on her head anyway.

And now he can see how getting married to him is affecting Valancy.

As they walk through Deerwood's main street, he is conscious that curious eyes are looking at them from every window and he can see that Valancy is too. Most of the people Valancy meets look at her seriously and pass her with a cool nod, if they deign to greet her at all that is. Nobody stops to speak to her and some ladies go so far as to cross to the other side of the road to avoid her.

He looks at Valancy's unperturbed face and as glad as he is that she doesn't appear hurt by that blatant mistreatment, he still boils with the injustice of it. What has she done but shown compassion to a dying friend and married a man she loves? And yet she's an outcast now, because he is as well, even though he also hasn't done anything except keep to himself and disregard public opinion and customs – he's hurt nobody nor broken any laws – and while he's always found it funny that it was enough to make him the most sinister figure in the neighbourhood, he doesn't find his notoriety extended now to his wife at all amusing. He barely restrains himself from glaring at them all.

Valancy looks at him sideways with a wry smile.

"It's quite freeing being an outlaw, isn't it?" she says dryly. "No small talk on deadly boring topics – no necessity to fake enthusiasm for news and people I don't care a whit about – no invitations for events I dread to attend – we can just come, do our business and go home completely unmolested. I like it!"

He looks at her intently, trying to judge whether she's being brave or truthful. Her professed sentiments agree very much with his own, but he never experienced being cast out from a society which he'd been previously an accepted member of. He always was something of a pariah, wherever he went, and he doesn't like the idea of Valancy ever feeling like one. She doesn't deserve it.

Besides, although he doesn't want to phrase it like that, even in the privacy of his mind, he harbours a secret dread that she could come yet to regret her hasty marriage to him one day. He doesn't think he could stand it if it ever happened, and that fear makes him hate the Deerwood sanctimonious, judgmental society even more than he already did.

"It is," he agrees out loud, "but it comes with a price too. You don't mind being judged and disliked? Not belonging anymore?"

Valancy resolutely shakes her head.

"No," she answers seriously. "Barney, you forget that I was never liked in the first place. If I was noticed at all – which I often weren't – I was tolerated, pitied, condescended to or laughed at. It wasn't belonging, because I was never treated as an equal member of the community – I was always a failure, consigned to the shadows, banned in spirit if not the fact. So now, when I am truly banned, I don't miss that old respectable life – I never belonged or been happy there anyway," she smiles at him as her hand slips defiantly into his, their fingers interlocking. "I've been happier with you in the past two weeks than I've ever been in my whole life. I feel like I belong with someone – that I belong with you – for the very first time. It's exhilarating!"

Barney squeezes her hand back, his very feet somehow feeling lighter on the sidewalk.

"Then let's grab our groceries and run back to our outlaw exile," he says with a devilish grin. "I don't know about you, but I had my share of society for at least another two weeks."

Valancy grins conspiratorially back and they march into Stirling and Frost General Store together, hand in hand, their heads held high.

xxx

On the way back, they stop in front of Valancy's mother's house on Elm Street so Valancy can get her cushions.

"I suppose I am not exactly invited, am I?" asks Barney dryly and Valancy frowns.

"You may come in anyway," she says with determination. "I won't let mother throw my husband out."

Barney raises his hand in an appeasing gesture.

"As entertaining as it would have been to watch, I'll be perfectly content to wait with Lady Jane," he says with a grin. "Go get your cushions. I hope they are worth seeing your mother."

Valancy gives him a last searching, suspicious look to ascertain his honesty, but relents and goes in alone.

He looks at the ugly, prim, respectable street where she lived and the Stirling house, which is the ugliest on it—more like a red brick box than anything else. It is too high for its breadth, and made still higher by a bulbous glass cupola on top. About it is the desolate, barren peace of an old house whose life is lived. Barney can't escape the thought how their childhood homes could not be more different and yet are in some ways similar; however poor and shabby Valancy's house is, it is just as off putting as the marble filled mansion he grew up in. No wonder they both fell in love with their Blue Castle on sight.

Valancy doesn't spend long there now; in mere minutes she is back, carrying three brightly coloured, cheerful cushions.

"Cousin Georgiana invited me for tea," she announces when she jumps back into Lady Jane. "Apparently I am not dead to her. She's always been a dear little creature."

xxx

Barney's hair has grown long enough to keep falling constantly into his eyes while he's working, so after one particularly annoying writing session he wettens his head and stands in front of the living room's mirror with a sharp pair of scissors, cutting the long tawny strands with the ease brought by years of practice. He's half through the haircut when he notices Valancy observing him curiously.

"You're good at this," she notes with light surprise.

He shrugs and smiles at her through the mirror.

"I haven't bothered with a barber for years," he answers. "Taught myself how to do it instead by trial and error. Some of the first attempts were rather hilarious, but that was the Yukon, so nobody cared. Some of the folks there could have been mistaken for bears."

Valancy laughs at his jape and probably at whatever atrocity on his head she's imagining him with, but then frowns thoughtfully.

"Would you cut mine?"

He startles, nearly nicking himself in the ear.

"Trim it, you mean?" he clarifies, but Valancy shakes her head.

"Not just trim. Cut it short – shingle. It has always been hopelessly thin and annoying, despite all my efforts to the contrary. I want to cut it all off."

Barney stares at her for a moment, but then agrees with a shrug. It's her hair, after all.

"Get the hair wet," he says. "It will make it easier. I will do yours as soon as I'm done with mine."

It doesn't take long until she is sitting in front of him on a chair, her hair loose, wet and brushed and Barney looks at it assessingly, biting his lower lip in concentration. At last, he cuts it square off at the back of Valancy's neck, bringing it down in a short black fringe over her forehead. The result is astonishingly flattering. It gives a meaning and a purpose to her little, three-cornered face that it never has possessed before and the new haircut, unusual as it is, fits her to a T.

Judging by her smile when she admires herself in the mirror she is well satisfied with his handiwork too.

"Mother will do her best to faint when she sees me," she says with evident satisfaction. "But for the first time in my life I like what I see in the mirror."

xxx

When Barney leaves the Bluebeard's Chamber this afternoon, he finds Valancy dressed in a brown dress he last saw her wearing while she was still working for Abel and it's obvious that she doesn't like what she sees in the mirror now. In fact, she is glaring fiercely at it.

"I hate this dress," she says passionately as soon as she notices him. "But I washed my green one and it's still drying, so I had no choice. I'm going to go to town tomorrow and buy myself more pretty dresses. They have to have something neither brown nor gingham."

Barney automatically reaches into his pocket.

"How much do you need?" he asks, the pricing of female clothing being a total mystery to him.

Valancy immediately turns away from the mirror and stares at him in alarm.

"Oh, I don't need any of your money!" she exclaims hastily. "I have some of my own – my father left me two hundred dollars before he died – I can perfectly afford any dresses I'm ever going to need."

He's heart clenches at the reminder that she's not going to need new clothes for long, but he pushes this realisation away. He considers instead the fact that her whole inheritance, one she obviously sees as substantial, amounts to a sum he once upon a time wouldn't have thought twice about spending in a course of one evening – and that she doesn't want any money from him to spend on her own needs, despite being married to him.

"You're my wife," he reminds her gently. "It's my duty to provide you with the things you need."

She looks at him uncertainly and then shakes her head.

"You weren't exactly asking for a wife to spend your money," she says evenly. "As long as I have my own, there's no need for you to."

He shrugs, not willing to quarrel with her on the matter, but silently resolving to monitor her purchases and buy her whatever she wants as soon as she runs through her money stash. Whether he asked for a wife or not, she is his wife now and he treats his marriage vows seriously.

Besides, even without touching the cursed money his dad gave him, he has considerably more than two hundred dollars of his own now. His books continue to sell well and it's not like he's been spending so much of it after buying his island with the royalties for the first one.

"We can go to Port tomorrow," he offers instead. "You should have a bigger choice of clothing stores there."

She runs to him and hugs him in thanks, which is utterly unnecessary and yet very welcome.

"Thank you," she says, planting a light kiss on his cheek. "I truly hate this dress."

He looks at her critically.

"It's not the prettiest dress I've ever seen," he agrees gravely. "But it doesn't make you ugly."

Valancy scowls again in his arms.

"Just frumpy, old-fashioned and too much like the old maid Valancy Stirling," she says scathingly. "Mrs Valancy Snaith has better taste in clothes."

xxx

She tells him more about her clothing woes while they are going across Mistawis in their dispro boat. She is dressed in her green crepe dress again and strokes the material slightly as she speaks.

"I was never allowed to pick my own dresses, never," she says wistfully. "And the ones Mother picked for me – or one of my aunts, if they wanted to be generous – they were all so dark and cheap and ugly. I haven't owned one pretty thing, not even one. I've always dreamt of a pink dress – or green – or blue – and instead I only wore brown and black and brown-blue stripes, with high collar and long sleeves and an unflattering cut. But they were modest and cheap and practical, so I wasn't allowed to complain about it."

Barney lets her unburden herself as he steers the boat and broods silently over the casual cruelty of Valancy's family. Surely, even if money was short, something could have been done to allow her at least some prettier clothes? He knows Valancy is good at sewing; she could probably make or alter her own clothes if given the permission to do so – however ridiculous it is that she needed permission as an adult woman to do even the smallest of things.

When they arrive at the shore close to Port Lawrence, Valancy is clearly ready to leave the memories of the past behind in her excitement to go shopping.

"Do you want to accompany me and help me choose or do you prefer to be surprised?" she asks eagerly, practically jumping on the spot, and Barney can't resist smiling at her enthusiasm and joy.

"You go and pick whatever you want," he says. "It's beyond time for you to make your own choices. I will check the bookstore in the meantime and wait for you there."

He has his own mission in mind, after all.

She finds him close to an hour later, carrying carefully wrapped parcels and smiling triumphantly.

"I bought two new dresses, a skirt, two blouses, a sweater and a bathing suit," she reports excitedly. "But I'm not showing you any yet – you must wait until I wear them for you."

She looks around a bookstore.

"Have you found something you wanted?" she asks.

"I did," answers Barney with a smirk. "But since it's already in my bag, you will have to wait to see it too."

They go back to their boat, Valancy practically skipping, and swiftly cross the lake. As soon as Valancy busies herself with putting her purchases away, Barney surreptitiously sneaks into the Bluebeard's Chamber and quickly puts several books into his backpack. He's back on the verandah right in time for Valancy to emerge in one of her new dresses.

Barney's jaw falls open when he sees her.

It is a little smoke-blue chiffon — smoke-blue with touches of silver about it. It shimmers lightly when she twirls in front of him, like moonlight over the lake. In the twilight, with the slight mist rising over the lake all round them, she seems like a spirit of the lake itself.

"Do you like it?" she asks, looking at him with that slanted, coy look which she must know by now is always driving him crazy. "How do I look?"

"Like moonlight," he says, swallowing against sudden dryness in his throat. "Moonlight and blue twilight—that is what you look like in that dress. I like it. It belongs to you. You aren't exactly pretty, but you have some adorable beauty-spots. Your eyes. And that little kissable dent just between your collar bones," he pulls her closer and kisses her just there, to show her which one he means, the low cut of the dress making it possible. "You have the wrist and ankle of an aristocrat," he adds, placing a gentle kiss on each of her wrists in turn. "That little head of yours is beautifully shaped. And when you look backward over your shoulder you're maddening—especially in twilight or moonlight. An elf maiden. A wood sprite. You belong to the woods, Moonlight—you should never be out of them. In spite of your ancestry, there is something wild and remote and untamed about you. And you have such a nice, sweet, throaty, summery voice. Such a nice voice for love-making."

"Shure an' ye've kissed the Blarney Stone," scoffs Valancy, but the way she wraps her arms around him and kisses him passionately makes him smugly sure she's not as unaffected by his compliments as she would like him to think.

Which is good, because he meant every word of them.

It takes him several minutes to remember his own intended gift.

"I have something for you," he says, leaving her arms with effort and reaching for his abandoned backpack. As Valancy is curiously watching, he takes out a complete set of John Foster's books – his own, but she doesn't need to know that. The last thing he wanted to do after countless revisions was to reread them again, so they all look pristine and new. "So you won't have to hog the library copies for weeks at the time."

Valancy's eyes widen as her mouth drops open in shock and delight.

"But you've always said you don't like his books!" she exclaims incredulously, her hands reaching eagerly for the small stack and hugging it reverently to her chest.

Barney shrugs and puts his hands into his pockets to hide his discomfiture and a bit of bizarre jealousy of his alter ego and the avid admiration Valancy holds for him.

"I don't," he says, "but I know you do."

He is aptly rewarded when Valancy puts down her precious books on the verandah's table and jumps back into his arms.

"Oh, Barney!" she says in a thick voice, her eyes tearing up. "This is the loveliest – the most generous – most wonderful gift anybody has ever given me!"

"It was nothing," he tries to say, but he can't, because she is too busy kissing him and he is too busy kissing her back.

In the back of his mind, he has a passing thought that he likes giving Valancy gifts.

xxx

They fall into their bed soon after, still kissing madly in-between breathless laughter, and he does his best to give Valancy a gift of a different kind. As he worships her body, making sure to kiss every beauty spot of hers he mentioned and many others he didn't, he can't escape the thought that while she isn't exactly pretty, no, she is maddeningly attractive, alluring, bewitching. He tells her that, between kisses and caresses and trembles in delight when he feels her shiver and tense in response, her little hands pulling tightly at his hair in rapture. Oh yes, there is no doubt about it, his wife is simply otherworldly. As he loses himself to his own passion, he is struck by a thought that she really must be some changeling, a witch or a wood sprite coming to seduce him and steal him away for a hundred years – it seems impossible that she truly came from a long line of boring, predictable, utterly prosaic Stirlings – and just as he loses his ability to reason completely, he has a lightning realisation that if it was true, he would not have minded being her captive for a hundred years in the slightest.

"Moonlight," he whispers to her. "That's what you are. Moonlight personified."

My Moonlight, his mind suggests, but he stops himself from voicing it.

When he falls asleep with her in his arms, sated and pleasantly exhausted, he thinks idly that a mere hundred years would not be enough. A thousand sounds much better.

xxx

He doesn't even notice when he slips into calling her Moonlight, but soon it becomes his regular nickname for her. Not that Valancy seems to mind, thankfully. It's just so fitting, especially when he sees her in that smoke-blue dress, but somehow not less when she's in her pale-green bathing suit, all lithe and graceful as she jumps into the lake or lies on the rocks in the warm sunlight – or in her sweater of the same shade, walking with him through the woods.

"I like your name," he tells her once. "It's musical and unusual, unexpected delight in a sea of mundane and ordinary – like you. But often I look at you and think that Moonlight suits you exactly as well."

He sees Valancy's eyes shining in response to his compliments and he's quietly glad that he was able to find the right words to bring that look on her face. He knows that she believes herself to be ugly and insignificant – that she's been told exactly that, repeatedly, through her whole life – and he treats it as his personal mission to convince her that this is not true. She might not be traditionally beautiful but she is special, magnetic, extraordinary. He's more and more convinced that there is no one quite like her in the entire world.

xxx

It takes a few weeks for Abel to accept Barney's invitation for some fishing, but when he finally does near the end of August, Barney is extremely relieved to see his friend looking better. Abel is drunk, of course – he would have been shocked if it was otherwise – but this is his normal early stage of intoxication when he's talkative and sociable. He's thinner than he was and the merry twinkle is missing from his blue eyes, which are heavily bruised, hinting at poor sleep and tiredness, but all in all, he seems to be back in the land of the living.

"It's damn sad without my girl," he says heavily. "Damn sad. She was with me for twenty six years, always except for her work at this thrice cursed hotel, and it's so damn empty in the house without her that I can hardly bear to stay there. But life goes on and so must we, and a fellow can't be sad the whole damn time or he'd've keeled over from it."

Barney nods silently. He misses Cissy dearly as well – he doesn't think he's ever going to stop missing her or wishing things were different – but the pain and grief are coming in waves more than flooding him constantly – and having Valancy around is helping so much, both as someone who understands and grieves herself and as a very powerful distraction.

Abel of course picks up on that.

"And how is your new wife treating you? Regretting getting hitched yet?"

"Me or her?" askes Barney with a twitch of his eyebrow and Abel roars with laughter.

"Oh, one just needs to look at her to see that she's gone silly on you. Happy like a lark and no wonder, when she exchanged those damn Stirlings for a decent fellow like you. But you're happy with the bargain too?"

Barney smiles.

"I am," he answers sincerely. "Valancy is a brick."

To his surprise, he finds himself telling Abel so much more about her – how much fun she is, and how lovely, and how he doesn't mind her company at all – the very opposite, actually – how the cats adore her by now, even Banjo in his own curmudgeonly way – and how nice it is to just sit in silence with her – or to talk with her for hours – until suddenly Abel interrupts him, waving at him expansively and laughing again.

"Enough, enough," he says in between laughter. "You gushed enough for me to have my answer. I should've known better than to ask a fellow so obviously in love with his wife how he likes being married."

Abel's words haunt Barney all the way home and he takes a circuitous, long path to give himself time to think.

Of course, Abel is mistaken, which is no wonder since he doesn't have half of the facts, including the most pertinent ones. Since Barney has no intention to enlighten his friends regarding the true terms of his marriage to Valancy, he must satisfy himself with stomping more loudly than he usually does while on the trek through the woods, and some rather ferocious scowling. But seriously, Abel's erroneous assumptions do annoy him so! He's not in love with Valancy – what he feels for her is so far from what he felt when he had been in love that it doesn't even belong to the same category. He cares for her – he cares for her very much – she is so very dear to him – but he cared for Cissy like that for years too. He would have done anything for Cissy, he even asked her to marry him if she wanted; is it so very surprising that he agreed to do the same for Valancy? Granted, he never saw Cissy in a sexual way – she always was a little sister to him more than anything else – but attraction alone doesn't mean anything. He was attracted to other women without being in love with them, many times. He even slept with a few over the years. That was just a mix of biological impulse with a normal yearning for human connection and it's nothing more than that with Valancy. A friendship, even the most intense one and coupled with a healthy dose of attraction, is not love.

He ponders it, trying to put the tumultuous feelings he remembers all too well into actual words. Love, as he experienced it, was passion, obsession, misery and euphoria. It was jealousy and possessiveness. It was living for one friendly glance, one smile, one gesture showing that he was noticed. He was never as happy again as the day when Ethel accepted his proposal and told him she loved him too. He was never as devastated as when he learned that it had all been a lie. Those feelings, taking such total control over him, so overwhelming and overcompassing, were unforgettable, even if he long ceased to see their former object in any kind of positive light.

This was nothing at all like what he feels for Valancy now.

Valancy's presence is like a sip of refreshing, cool water on a hot day. It's pure joy of sunshine reflected on a jolly little stream running merrily through the birch woods. She brings calm, companionship and laughter into his life and he enjoys it immensely – but this is not love. This is just a relief from his perpetual loneliness. So nice and happy and enjoyable – best thing which happened to him in years, possibly ever – but this is not love and thank God it isn't.

He's had enough of love for a lifetime.

xxx

He doesn't think of love when he's leading Valancy through the woods around Mistawis, far enough that even he is not sure where they are going to end up and what they can discover along the way. He's not concerned though, not in the slightest – in truth, he's nearly exuberant.

"We don't know where we're going, but isn't it fun to go?" he says to Valancy with a grin which only grows wider when she grins in response, her own eyes shining with the excitement of adventure.

The night overtakes them, too far from their Blue Castle to get back. But Barney makes a fragrant bed of bracken and fir boughs under a ceiling of old spruces with moss hanging from them and they lie down on it together while beyond them moonlight and the murmur of pines blend together so that one can hardly tell which is light and which is sound.

"It's so magical to spend a night like that," says Valancy in her warm, musical whisper. "I'm certain I will have magical dreams tonight. It feels like we're offered a glimpse into the spirit world or a wonderland. I wouldn't be surprised if we caught a pook or a naiad peering at us through the leaves and wondering what those two silly human creatures are doing intruding in their realm."

"We'll have to assure them that we mean no trouble in such a case," answers Barney seriously, his arms folded under his head. "Otherwise they may confuse our paths until we spend a century wandering those woods with no idea how much time has passed outside of them."

"Would that be so very bad?" asks Valancy, sitting up and looking around her in awe. "I could think of a hundred worse punishments than spending a century in a place so beautiful."

He grins, taking one arm from under his head to reach her cheek and caress it lightly with his finger.

"I could too," he agrees. "But remember, the creatures of the spirit world are cunning and vengeful. They would make every other mortal forget we ever existed."

"All the better," shrugs Valancy with a smile, leaning into his caress. "Don't tell me you would find it bad if they did."

He laughs, caught. A beam of moonlight falls through the boughs on her face and he again thinks that Valancy might never be beautiful, but she is of the type that looks its best in the woods—elfin—mocking—alluring.

"You're right of course, I wouldn't. I hardly remember any other mortals anyway when I'm with you here – although when I look at you in this light, I have my doubts whether you're not a creature of the spirit world yourself. Are you sure, Moonlight, that you aren't just posing as a human to capture me for your own purposes? Fae are known to steal humans for their amusement from time to time."

The way she looks at him with those slanted, dark eyes of hers is uncanny enough to half-believe his own whimsy.

"Who knows, on a night like this," she whispers, bending over him until she's close enough to kiss him. His blood starts to sing in response before her lips even touch his. "I might be all kinds of things. Aren't you afraid?"

"Not in the slightest," he whispers back, both of his arms reaching to pull her closer as if out of their own volition. "I'm enjoying your company much too well to care."

As he kisses her back, he has a passing thought that no, what he feels for her is nothing like love – but in some ways, it's so much better.

xxx

Most of the time Barney hardly remembers that Benjamin Stirling is one of Valancy's numerous uncles. The man has been firmly on his black list for the last three years, ever since he refused to serve Cissy after the scandal of Gem's birth and this is the context he mostly thinks of him, if he thinks at all. Besides, the first two times he and Valancy went to his store together, they were pointedly ignored by the owner which suited them just fine.

Which makes what happens during their third visit all the more unexpected.

Valancy is ordering a long list of groceries she wants for the sumptuous, delicious dinners she can magick into being, so Barney busies himself with inspecting bags of coffee beans, wondering if he wants to try out a new brand. Suddenly he is approached by a short, wheezy man with prominent pouches under his eyes. Benjamin Stirling himself, who without preamble tells Barney he is a scoundrel who should be hanged for luring an unfortunate, weak-minded girl away from her home and friends.

Well, Barney has dealt most of his life with bullies much more scary than Benjamin Stirling could ever hope to be.

His one straight eyebrow goes up.

"I have made her happy," he says coolly, "and she was miserable with her friends. So that's that."

As the man stares at him, gaping in clear incomprehension, Barney can only wonder for a hundredth time how such an extraordinary creature like his Moonlight came from such a family – and for a hundredth time admires her resilience in surviving twenty nine years in their miserable company with her spirit intact.

"You—you pup!" Uncle Benjamin manages finally and Barney barely surpasses a laugh.

"Why be so unoriginal?" queries Barney amiably. "Anybody could call me a pup. Why not think of something worthy of the Stirlings? Besides, I'm not a pup. I'm really quite a middle-aged dog. Thirty-five, if you're interested in knowing."

Uncle Benjamin turns his back on him and Barney allows himself a satisfied smirk. He then looks at Valancy, still going over her order with one of the clerks, seemingly oblivious to his confrontation with her uncle, and is struck once again by the power of the realisation that he just told Benjamin Stirling the truth: he has made Valancy happy.

He, Barney Snaith, has managed to make a woman – a woman who loves him – happy. Nobody looking at Valancy can have any doubts about it, with her ever present smiles and laughter filled eyes, her movements graceful and energetic as if she was ready to start dancing with her very next step. She's been only his wife for several exhilarating summer weeks and she looks like a wholly different creature than the one he saw briefly passing him back in May, drab little thing with hunched shoulders and desperate eyes. It's mind boggling that people can see this transformation in her and yet judge both him and her, wishing her to come back to the existence she was forced to live before. But their blindness only strengthens his conviction that he's done the right thing in agreeing to marry Valancy. He's made her happy.

As if summoned by his thoughts, Valancy turns her shapely black head towards him and gestures for him to come to the counter.

"Barney, come and help me carry the lot!" she calls brightly. "We have more packages than a mail carrier."

"Of course, dear," answers Barney, virtuously stopping himself from winking at Benjamin Stirling fuming in the corner, and goes to help his wife carry their groceries to the car.