'You'll stay where you are, madam, until you're given leave otherwise.'
For the first time, she heard royalty in his tone, the threat and power of it. Because she wanted to tremble, she stood her ground. 'Leave? I'm free to come and go as I please. This is my world.'
As his eyes flashed with fury, the skies shuddered and went storm-dark. 'It's been mine since your kind still huddled in caves. It will be mine long after you're dust. Have a care and remember that.'
'Why am I arguing with you? You're an illusion. A myth.'
'And as real as you.' He gripped her hand, and his flesh was firm and warm. 'I've waited for you, a hundred years times three. If I'm wrong, and must wait for another to begin it, I'll know why. You'll tell me now why you said no when the man asked you to wife.'
'Because that was my choice.'
'Choice.' He let out a half laugh and turned away from her. 'Oh, you mortals and your blessed choices. They're always such a matter to you. Fate will have you in the end anyway.'
'Maybe, but we'll choose our own direction in the meantime.'
'Even if it's the wrong direction.'
She smiled a little as he turned back to her. His handsome face was such a study in honest puzzlement. 'Yes, even if it's wrong. It's our nature, Carrick. We can't change our nature.'
'Do you love him?' When she hesitated, it was his turn to smile. 'Would you bother to lie, colleen, to an illusion and a myth?'
'No, I won't lie. I love him.'
He threw up his hands and groaned. 'But you won't belong to him?'
'I won't be anyone's convenience ever again.' Her voice rose, snapped with a different kind of power. 'The belonging, if it ever happens, will be on both sides, and be complete. I gave myself once to a man who didn't love me, because it seemed the sensible thing to do and because-'
She closed her eyes a moment, realizing she'd never admitted it, never once even to herself. 'Because I was afraid no one ever would. I was afraid I'd always be alone. Nothing seemed more frightening to me than being alone. That's just not true anymore. I'm learning how to be alone, and to like myself, to respect who I am.'
'So the fact that you can be alone means you must be?'
'No.' She threw up her hands this time, whirled around to pace. 'Men,' she muttered. 'Why does everything have to be explained step by step to men? I don't have to be married to be happy. And I'm certainly not going to change the life I've just started, risk marriage again and throw myself into someone else's vision unless I damn well want to. Until I know I come first for a change. Me, Jude Frances Murray.'
Her voice rose as she jabbed a hand at her own heart. And Carrick's eyes went narrow and thoughtful.
'I'm not settling for one inch less than all. Just because I'm in love with Aidan, just because we're lovers, doesn't mean I'm going to swoon from the thrill of being told he's decided he needs a goddamn wife and I'm the one he's picked out. I'll do the picking out this time, thank you very much.'
Flushed and out of breath, she glared at Carrick. And there, she realized, was everything she hadn't put into words before. Hadn't understood was inside her to be put into words. She would never, never again settle for less than everything.
'I thought it was mortals I didn't understand,' Carrick said after a moment. 'But I'm thinking now it's just female mortals I don't understand. So explain this to me, would you, Jude Frances? Why isn't love enough?'
She let out a quiet sigh. 'It is, when it is.'
'Why are you speaking in riddles?'
'Because until you solve it yourself, it doesn't do any good to be told. And when you do solve it, you don't need to be told.'
He muttered something in Gaelic, shook his head. 'Heed this-a single choice can build destinies or destroy them. Choose well.' Then, flicking his wrists, he vanished in a ripple on the air.
Aidan was no less frustrated with women than Carrick at that moment. If someone had told him his ego was badly bruised, he would have laughed at them. If someone had told him that was panic that kept sneaking up to tickle the back of his throat, he would have cursed them as a lying fool. If they'd mentioned that the clutching around his heart was hurt, he'd have snarled them out of the pub.
But it was all those things he felt, and confusion along with them.
He'd been so certain that he understood Jude. Her mind and heart as well as her body. It was lowering to realize he'd missed a step somewhere. It was true enough he'd jumped his fences, so to speak. But he hadn't expected her to be so cool and casual in her response to his proposal.
For Christ's sake, he'd proposed marriage to a woman, to the woman, and she'd smiled and said no thank you as pretty as you please, then gone back to the ceili.
His sweet and shy Jude Frances hadn't stammered and blushed, but had eyed him with cool consideration, then had turned him down flat. It didn't make a bit of sense when any fool could see they belonged together.
Like two links in a long and complicated chain. It was a chain he could envision perfectly, one of sturdy continuity and tradition. Man to woman, generation to generation. She was the one he was meant to be with, so that together they could forge the next links on that long chain.
A different approach altogether was needed, he told himself as he paced his rooms instead of finishing up the day's paperwork. He knew how to woo and win a woman, didn't he? He'd wooed and he'd won plenty before.
Of course that had been for entirely different purposes, he thought and began to worry again. But not so much he admitted to himself-not yet-that he was a babe in the woods in the matter of wooing a woman into a wife.
He heard footsteps on the stairs minutes before Darcy, as was her habit, breezed in without knocking. 'Shawn's down the kitchen and, considering me his errand girl, sent me up to see if you've ordered potatoes and carrots, and if we've any more whitefish coming in from Patty Ryan by week's end as he's plans for it.'
'Patty promised us fresh fish tomorrow, and the rest will be coming by middle week. He hasn't starting cooking tonight's menu already, has he? It's barely half one.'
'No, but he's fussing about, studying some recipe one of the ladies gave him last night at the ceili, and leaving the bulk of the serving to me. Are you coming down to man the bar or are you just going to sit around up here and stare at the walls?'
'I was working,' he said, more than a little put out, for he'd been spending considerable time staring at the walls. 'Anytime you want to take over the paperwork here, sweetheart, you just say the word.'
The tone of his voice had her wondering. Knowing she was leaving Shawn and their afternoon help in the lurch, she flopped down in a chair and tossed her legs over the arm. 'I leave the figuring to you, since you're so wise and clever.'
'Then leave me to it and go down and do your part.'
'I've a ten-minute break coming, and since I find myself here, here I'm taking it.' She smiled at him, much too sweetly to be trusted. 'What are you brooding about, then?'
'I'm not brooding.'
She only lifted a hand and casually examined her nails. He paced to the window, back to the desk and to the window again when the silence did the job. 'You've gotten close to Jude the past couple of months.'
'I have, yes.' Her smile sharpened. 'Not as close as you, in a manner of speaking. Did you have a spat? Is that what's got you pacing about up here and scowling?'
'No, we didn't have a spat. Exactly.' He jammed his hands in his pockets. Oh, it was humiliating, but what choice did he have? 'What does she say about me?'
Darcy didn't snicker out loud, but her head filled with laughter as she batted her eyelashes at her brother. 'That would be telling. I'm no blabbermouth.'
'An extra hour off Saturday next.'
Instantly Darcy sat up, and her eyes were crafty. 'Well, why didn't you say so? What do you want to know?'
'What does she think of me?'
'Oh, she thinks you're handsome and charming, and nothing I can say will turn her mind to the truth of it. You've swept her off her feet with the romance of it. That carrying her up the stairs was a fine move.' She did laugh when she saw his pained expression. 'Don't ask what women talk of together if you don't want to know.'
He managed one careful breath. 'She didn't go on about- the after of it.'
'Oh, every sigh and murmur.' Unable to stop herself, she jumped up, grabbed his face and kissed him. 'Of
