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“Do you remember when I fell out of the tree?” she heard herself asking. A day she’d not thought of in years, yet it sprang into vivid life as if only weeks had passed.
He brightened. “Do I? Of all the shatter-brained things to do. You’re lucky I didn’t leave you there for some poacher to stumble over.”
She grimaced. “A gentleman even then. You looked so fierce, staring at me as if I were the worst sort of nuisance.”
Just talking about it brought the memories flooding back. The crazy infatuation prompting her climb into the ancient, gnarled, walnut tree. The beautiful, young man pacing below her, muttering to himself in a language she didn’t understand, though just hearing it made her skin crawl.
“Aunt Fitz didn’t scold me as much as you did,” she said.
Brendan relaxed enough to pull up a stool that looked as if it had recently been broken over someone’s head. “It rained that day too,” he grumbled.
“Buckets. I’d never been so happy to see anyone in my life as when you came striding through the wood like a hero to my rescue.” Her young heart had done flips. She’d been sure he heard it thundering against her ribs when he scooped her into his arms to carry her to the house. She’d lived on that one moment for months.
His brows lifted in amusement. “Hero? Is that what you thought? Talk about off the mark.”
“So it turned out.” She sighed. “But at the time . . .”
She’d thought him magnificent. Proud. Haughty. And far superior to the raw young men she met at the assemblies in Ennis and Dublin. They were callow youths with no thoughts more weighty than the height of their shirt-points and the depth of her pockets. His intelligence and wit glittered. His looks dazzled. She’d fallen hard and fast for Brendan and paid for it dearly.
He’d left her heart in pieces. Abandoned her to ridicule and pity and murderous rumors. She’d learned the hard way how easily pedestals crumbled.
No man would make her feel that heart-galloping, hot and cold, tongue-tied, and quivery again. No man had. She’d accepted Gordon as much for the way he didn’t make her feel as the way he did. Her calm affection for him the sheen of a tranquil lake after Brendan’s violent emotional thunderstorm.
She blinked back tears. Focused on drying her arms and face with her shawl. Quickly changed the subject. “Aidan and Sabrina will be thrilled to have you home. They’d given up hope.”
His face lost the glow of easy conversation. “My brother and I didn’t exactly part on the best of terms. And Sabrina, well, I only hope . . . but it doesn’t matter. The years have changed us all. It won’t ever be as it was. Mayhap that’s a good thing.”
He toyed with the pendant, running his finger up and down its chain, though he never touched the stone.
Hanging her damp shawl by the fire to dry, she asked, “Why is Máelodor looking for the stone? What’s so important he’d kill for it?”
His hand paused upon the chain, his eyes suddenly wary.
“After everything that’s transpired, I deserve an answer, don’t you think?” she asked.
“At least one, but deserving answers and wanting answers are two different things. Do you want to know? Truly?”
Again she had the impression Brendan ached to unburden himself, but feared it too. And perhaps with cause. For as long as they’d known one another she’d shied away from too much knowledge. Too much involvement. It’s one thing to be conscious of the existence of the Other. Far different to embrace it.
She shuddered with sudden cold as if a goose had stepped upon her grave. “No. I don’t want to know. I don’t want anything to do with you or your stone or this man, Máelodor or magic or Other or any of it. But . . .” She paused. “My life has been torn apart because of it all. I have to know. Don’t you think?”
For the first time he seemed at a loss for words, fiddling with the items upon a table. A bent brass candlestick. A chipped bowl.
“Brendan?”
He rubbed a tired hand over his chin. Stood abruptly to pace, hands behind his back. “Bear in mind it may sound slightly mad.”
“You mean I haven’t heard the mad part yet? What’s happened so far passes for normal to you?”
“You’re not making this any easier.”
“Good.”
“Do you want to hear or not?”
“Onward with the insanity.”
He gave her a pained look before continuing. “The stone in the pendant is a key. With it, one can unlock the spells protecting Arth—You’re sure you want to hear this?”
