by Nora Roberts
"Yes." Shannon wanted to believe that. When a man had given all of himself for more than twenty-five years, he deserved nothing less.
She opened the second letter. It began in the same way, ended in the same way as the first. But between there were hints of something more than memories of a brief and forbidden love.
"She knew she was pregnant," Shannon managed.
"When she wrote this, she knew. She'd have been frightened, even desperate. She'd had to be. But she writes so calmly, not letting him know, or even guess."
Maggie took the letter from her when she'd folded it again. "She might have needed time to think about what she would do, what she could do. Her family-from what Rogan's man found-they wouldn't have stood with her."
"No. When she told them, they insisted that she go away, then give me up and avoid the scandal. She wouldn't."
"She wanted you," Brianna said.
"Yes, she wanted me." Shannon opened the last letter. It broke her heart to read this. How could there have been joy? she wondered. No matter how much fear and anxiety she might read between the lines, there was unmistakable joy in them. More, there was a rejection of shame-of what was expected for an unwed woman pregnant with a married man's child.
It was obvious she'd made her choice when she'd written the letter. Her family had threatened her with disinheritance, but it hadn't mattered. She'd risked that, and everything she'd known, for a chance, and the child she carried.
"She told him she wasn't alone." Shannon's voice trembled. "She lied to him. She was alone. She'd had to go north and find work because her family had cut her off from themselves and from her own money. She had nothing."
"She had you," Brianna corrected. "That's what she wanted. That's what she chose."
"But she never asked him to come to her, or to let her come back to him. She never gave him a chance, just told him that she was pregnant and that she loved him and Was going away."
"She did give him a chance." Maggie laid a hand on Shannon's shoulder. "A chance to be a father to the children he already had, and to know he would have another who'd be well loved and cared for. Perhaps she took the decision out of his hands, one that would have split him in two either way he turned. I think she did it for him, and for you, and maybe even for herself."
"She never stopped loving him." Again she folded the letter. "Even loving my father as much as she did, she never stopped. He was on her mind when she died, just as she was in his. They both lost what some people never find."
"We can't say what might have been." Tenderly Brianna tied the ribbon around the letters again. "Or change what was lost or was found. But don't you think, Shannon, we've done our best for them? Being here. Making a family out of their families. Sisters out of their daughters."
"I'd like to think that she knows I'm not angry. And that I'm coming to understand." There was peace in that, Shannon realized. In understanding. "If he'd been alive when I came here, I would have tried to care for him."
"Be sure of it." Maggie gave her shoulder a squeeze.
"I am," Shannon realized. "Right now it's about the only thing I'm sure of."
Fresh weariness dragged at her when she stood. Brianna stood with her and held out the letters. "These are yours. She'd want you to have them."
"Thank you." The paper felt so thin against her hand, so fragile. And so precious. "I'll keep them, but they're ours. I need to think."
"Take your brandy." Brianna picked up the glass and held it out. "And a hot bath. They'll ease mind, body, and spirit."
It was good advice, and she intended to take it. But when she walked into her room, Shannon set the snifter aside. The painting drew her now, so she turned on the lamps before crossing to it.
She studied the man on the white horse, the woman. The glint of copper and a sword. There was the swirl of a cape, the sweep of chestnut hair lifted by the wind.
But there was more, much more. Enough to have her sit carefully on the edge of the bed while her gaze stayed riveted on the canvas. She knew it had come out of her, every brushstroke. Yet it seemed impossible that she could have done such work.
She'd made a vision reality. She'd been meant to do so all along.
On a shuddering breath, she closed her eyes and waited until she was sure, until she could see inside herself as clearly as she had seen the people she'd brought to life with paint and brush.
It was all so easy, she realized. Not complicated at all. It was logic that had complicated it. Now, even with logic, it was simple.
She had calls to make, she thought, then picked up the phone to finish what she'd started when she'd first stepped onto Ireland.
She waited until morning to go to Murphy. The warrior had left the wise woman in the morning, so it was right the circle close at the same time of day.
It never crossed her mind that he wouldn't be where she looked for him. And he was standing in the stone circle, the broach in his hand and the mist shimmering like the breath of ghosts above the grass.
His head came up when he heard her. She saw the surprise, the longing, before he pulled the shutter down -a talent she hadn't known he possessed.
"I thought you might come here." His voice wasn't cool; that he couldn't manage. "I was going to leave this for you. But since you're here now, I'll give it to you, then ask if you'll listen to what I have to say."
She took the broach, was no longer stunned or anxious when it seemed to vibrate in her palm. "I brought you something." She held out the canvas, wrapped in heavy paper, but he made no move to take it. "You asked if I'd paint something for you. Something that reminded me of you, and I have."
"As a going-away gift?" He took the canvas, but strode two paces away to tilt it, unopened, against a stone. "It won't do, Shannon."
"You might look at it."
"They'll be time for that when I've said what's on my mind."
"You're angry, Murphy. I'd like to-"
"Damn right I'm angry. At both of us. Bloody fools. Just be quiet," he ordered, "and let me say this in my own way. You were right about some things, and I was wrong about some. But I wasn't wrong that we love each other, and are meant. I've thought on it most of the past two nights, and I see I've asked you for more than I've a right to. There's another way that I didn't consider, that I turned a blind eye to because it was easier than looking straight at it."
"I'm been thinking, too." She reached out, but he stepped back sharply.
"Will you wait a damn minute and let me finish? I'm going with you."
"What?"
"I'm going with you to New York. If you need more time for courting-or whatever the bloody hell you chose to call it, I'll give it. But you'll marry me in the end, and make no mistake. I won't compromise that."
"Compromise?" Staggered, she dragged a hand through her hair. "This is a compromise?"
"You can't stay, so I'll go."
"But the farm-"
"The devil take the fucking farm. Do you think it means more to me than you? I'm good with my hands. I can get work wherever."
"It's not a matter of a job."
"It's important to me that I not live off my wife." He shot the words at her, daring her to argue. "You can call me sexist and a fool or whatever you choose, but it doesn't change the matter. I don't care whether you've a mountain of money or none at all, or if you choose to spend it on a big house or fancy cars, miser it away or toss it off on one roll of dice. What's an issue to me is not that I support you, but that I support myself."
She closed her mouth for a minute and tried to calm. "I can hardly call you a fool for making a perfectly sane statement, but I can call you one for even thinking about giving up the farm."
"Selling it. I'm not an idiot. None of my family are interested in farming, so I'll speak with Mr. McNee, and Feeney and some of the others. It's good land." His gaze swept past her and for a moment held pain as it traveled over the hills. "It's good land," he repeated. "And they'd value it."
"Oh, that's fine." Her voice
rose on fresh passion. "Toss away your heritage, your home. Why don't you offer to cut out your heart while you're at it?"
"I can't live without you," he said simply. "And I won't. It's dirt and stone."
"Don't ever let me hear you say that." She fired up, flashed over. "It's everything to you. Oh, you know how to make me feel small and selfish. I won't have it." She turned, fisting her hands as she strode from stone to stone. Then she leaned heavily against one as it struck, and struck hard that this was it. From the beginning it had been spiraling toward this.
She steadied herself and turned back so that she could see his face. Odd, she thought, that she was suddenly so calm, so sure.
"You'd give it up for me, the thing that makes you what you are." She shook her head before he could answer. "This is funny, really funny. I searched my soul last night, and the night before. Part of it I ripped out to do that painting. And when I finally took a good long look, I knew I wasn't going anywhere."
She saw the light come into his eyes before he carefully controlled it again. "You're saying you'd stay, do without what you want. Is that supposed to comfort me, knowing you're here but unhappy?"
"I'm giving up a lot. Really making a sacrifice." With a half laugh she combed her fingers through her hair. "I finally figured that out, too. I'm leaving New York. You can't smell the grass there, or see horses grazing. You can't watch the light strike over the fields in a way that makes your throat hurt. I'm trading the sound of traffic for the sound of mockingbirds and larks. It's going to be real tough to live with that."
She stuffed her hands in her pockets and began to pace in a way that warned him not to touch her. "My friends-acquaintances mostly, will think of me with amusement now and again and shake their heads. Perhaps some of them will come to visit and see just what I've given up the fast lane for. I'm trading that for family, for people I've felt closer to than almost anyone I've known. That's a bad deal all right."
She stopped, looking out between the stones as the warming sun burned off the mist. "Then there's my career, that all-important ladder to climb. Five years more,
and I guarantee I would have had that metaphorical key to the executive washroom. No question, Shannon Bodine's got the drive, she's got the talent, she's got the ambition, and she doesn't blink at sixty-hour weeks. I've put in plenty of those weeks, Murphy, and it occurs to me that not one of them ever gave me the joy or the simple satisfaction I've felt since the first time I picked up a paintbrush here in Ireland. So I guess it's going to be real tough for me to turn in my Armani jacket for a smock."
She turned back. "That leaves one last thing by my calculation. I'm back in New York, boosting myself up the next rung on that ladder, and I'm alone while the man who loves me is three thousand miles away." She lifted her hands. "There doesn't seem to be any contest. I'm giving up nothing, because there's nothing there. That's the bright flash I had last night. There's nothing there I want, or need, or love. It's all right here, right here with you.
"But you had to jump right in, didn't you?" she tossed out when he would have stepped forward. "Now I'll never be able to throw in your face during an argument what I've done for you. Because I'm not doing anything, and I know it. And you would have done everything."
He wasn't sure he could speak, and when he did it was only one unsteady sentence. "You're staying with me."
She circled over to where he'd balanced the painting. With impatient rips, she tore the protective paper aside. "Look at this and tell me what you see."
A man and a woman on a white horse, their faces as familiar to him as his own, in a land washed with light. The stone circle in the background with two of the cross stones that had fallen still in place. The copper brooch clipped to a swirling cape.
But what he saw most was that while the man held the horse from bolting with one hand, his other held the woman close. And she him.
"They're together."
"I didn't mean to paint them that way. He was supposed to be riding away, as he did, leaving her when she begged him to stay. When she pleaded and cast aside every iota of pride and wept."
Shannon took a careful breath and finished telling him what she had seen in her mind, and her heart, when she'd painted.
"He left her because he was a soldier, and his life was battles. I imagine wars demand to be tended, just as the land does. He wanted to marry her, but he wouldn't stay, and she needed him to stay more than she needed marriage, though she knew she was carrying his child."
Murphy's gaze shot up, arrested on her face. "His child."
"She never told him. It may have made the difference, but she never told him. She wanted him to stay for her, to put his sword aside because he loved her more than what he was. When he wouldn't, they fought, here. Right here. And said things to each other to wound because each was wounded. He gave her back the broach in anger, not in memory as the legend suggests, and rode away from her. Always believing she'd wait. She cursed him as he left him, and shouted out that he'd never have peace, anymore than she, he'd never have it until he loved her enough to give up everything else."
Shannon pressed the broach into his palm, kept hers over it. "She saw, in the fire when he fell in battle, when he bled and died. And she delivered his child alone. She's been waiting, endlessly, for him to love her enough."
"I've wondered for a long time, tried to see it, and never could."
"Knowing the answers spoils the magic." She set the canvas aside so it would no longer be between them. "They're together now. I want to stay, Murphy. Not her choice, not my mother's. Mine. I want to make a life here with you. I swear I love you enough."
He took her hand, brought it fiercely to his lips. "Will you let me court you, Shannon?"
"No." It came out on a broken laugh. "But I'll let you marry me, Murphy."
"I can settle for that." He pulled her against him, buried his face in her hair. "You're the one, Shannon. You're the only one for me."
"I know." Closing her eyes, she rested her head on his heart. It beat there, strong and steady, as he was. Love, she thought, closed every circle. "Let's go home, Murphy," she murmured. "I'll cook you breakfast."