Watch the babes for me, she told him, and let Eoghan draw her out into the cool, damp night.
> “Rain’s coming,” she said. “Before morning.”
“Then we’re lucky, aren’t we, to have the night.” He laid a hand over her belly. “All’s well?”
“It is. He’s a busy little man, always on the move. Much like his father.”
“We’re well set, Brannaugh. We could pay for a bit of help.”
She slanted him a look. “Do you have complaints about the state of the house, the children, the food on the table?”
“I don’t have a one, not for a single thing. I watched my mother work herself to bones.” As he spoke he rubbed the small of her back, as if he knew of the small, nagging ache there. “I wouldn’t have it of you, aghra.”
“I’m well, I promise you.”
“Why are you sad?”
“I’m not.” A lie, she realized, and she never lied to him. “A little. Carrying babies makes a woman a bit daft from time to time, as you should know. Didn’t I weep buckets when carrying Brin when you brought in the cradle you’d made? Wept as if the world was ending.”
“From joy. This isn’t joy.”
“There is joy. Only today I stood here, looking at our children, feeling the next move in me, thinking of you, and of the life we have. Such joy, Eoghan. How many times did I say no to you when you asked me to be yours?”
“Once was too many.”
She laughed, though the tears rose up in her throat. “But you would ask again, and again. You wooed me with song and story, with wildflowers. Still, I told you I would be no man’s wife.”
“None but mine.”
“None but yours.”
She breathed in the night, the scent of the gardens, the forest, the hills. She breathed in what had become home, knowing she would leave it for the home of childhood, and for destiny.
“You knew what I was, what I am. And still, you wanted me—not the power, but me.”
Knowing that meant all the world to her, and knowing it had opened the heart she’d determined to keep locked.
“And when I could no longer stop myself from loving you, I told you all there is, all of it, refusing you again. But you asked again. Do you remember what you said to me?”
“I’ll say it to you again.” He turned to her, took her hands as he had on the day years before. “You’re mine, and I am yours. All that you are, I’ll take. All that I am, I’ll give. I’ll be with you, Brannaugh, Dark Witch of Mayo, through fire and flood, through joy and grief, through battle and through peace. Look in my heart, for you have that power. Look in me, and know love.”
“And I did. And I do. Eoghan.” She pressed against him, burrowed into him. “There is such joy.”
But she wept.
He stroked, soothed, then eased her away to see her face in the pale moonlight. “We must go back. Go back to Mayo.”
“Soon. Soon. I’m sorry—”
“No.” He touched his lips to hers, stilled her words. “You will not say so to me. Did you not hear my words?”
“How could I know? Even when you spoke them, when I felt them capture my heart, how could I know I would feel like this? I would wish with all I am to stay, just stay. To be here with you, to leave all the rest behind and away. And I can’t. I can’t give us that. Eoghan, our children.”
“Nothing will touch them.” Again he laid a hand on her belly. “Nothing and no one. I swear it.”
“You must swear it, for when the time comes I must leave them and face Cabhan with my brother and sister.”
“And with me.” He gripped her shoulders as fire and fierceness lit his eyes. “Whatever you face, I face.”