“Adair?”
“Aye, love?”
“Just…Adair.” Her world lay in his name, in him. Terrifying, it was, to give all her welfare to another being. But she could not have recalled her love from him now at any cost.
He lifted their joined hands to his lips and kissed the back of hers. She could feel him smile. “Daft lass.”
“I was but thinking, what if your father had never sent his clever third son out from Erin? What if I’d never met ye? What would my life have been then?”
“A whole lot easier, mayhap. Less perilous. Ye would no’ be lying in a half-ruined tower in the midst of the wild.”
“And I would have lived but half a life.” She rolled atop him, gazed into his face by starlight. “And I would never have known—never guessed—what I was missing. Ye are the beginning and the ending o’ me, Adair.”
“And ye, o’ me. Whatever comes.”
“Whatever comes,” she repeated softly.
His arms tightened around her. “Bradana, what d’ye wish to do, come morning?”
What she wanted was to stay here forever with him. Subsistence living. But it could not be.
“What doyewant to do?”
“I ha’ been thinking. The furor back at the settlement must have died down by now. If we return to Kendrick, I will accept the blame for what I ha’ done. Then return to Erin, if I can.”
“Ye want to return to Erin?”
“I will take ye with me,alanna. Away from this mad place. Back to the soft, open hills that I know so well.”
“The land ye love.”
“Not half so much,” he told her forcefully, “as I love ye. Bradana, I will not go without ye. But aye, my heart does yearn to go.”
And must she, then, lose the land she loved in turn? Become an exile for the sake of love. It seemed one of them must make that sacrifice. And had she not just said she would do anything, give anything, to be with him?
“If that is what ye wish, Adair, ’tis what we will do.”
“Aye?”
“Aye. The trick of it…”
The trick of it would be finding a route home, and a safe one at that.
Yet, she thought later when he had fallen asleep, when the sweet sound of his breathing filled her ears, she might have spent all of her life on one side of the silver water that separated Alba from Erin, and he on the other. Their spirits never knowing they needed to span that distance.
She did not think anything could be worse than that. She prayed she was not wrong.
Chapter Thirty
Astretch ofgood weather followed, soft summer days when Alba showed them a kindly face. Bradana struggled visibly to get her bearings. Adair watched her without comment, not wishing to add anything to the weight she carried.
Something had changed between them during that night back in the round tower, had deepened and strengthened. He had less reason to ask her questions. She did not doubt him. They had thrown their lot in one with the other, wherever the path might lead.
Yet they did struggle. The long trail began to tell even on the ponies, who had fared, in grazing, far better than they. Wen had not the vigor he’d formerly enjoyed. Bradana had become a thin shadow of herself, and Adair felt his own strength ebbing.
Yet they made love more frequently, the both of them sensing that from their joining came their best sustenance. And at night, when they were somewhere secure upon the breast of Alba, Bradana played her harp for him.
She began it one clear evening when they’d shared a woefully inadequate meal, reminding him shyly, “D’ye remember when ye asked me to make a song for ye?”
