Blood Magick (The Cousins O'Dwyer Trilogy #3)(2)

She moved to the pretty cottage Eoghan with his clever hands and strong back had built. Inside, she stirred the fire, settled her daughter, started the tea.

Stroking Kathel, she doused him with the tonic she’d conjured to keep him healthy and clear-eyed. Her guide, her heart, she thought, she could stretch his life a few years more. And would know when the time came to let him go.

But not yet, no, not yet.

She set out honey cakes, some jam, and had the tea ready when Eoghan and Brin came in, hand in hand.

“Well now, this is fine.”

He scrubbed Brin’s head, leaned down to kiss Brannaugh, lingered over it as he always did.

“You’re home early,” she began, then her mother’s eye caught her son reaching for a cake. “Wash those hands first, my boy, then you’ll sit like a gentleman for your tea.”

“They’re not dirty, Ma.” He held them out.

Brannaugh just lifted her eyebrows at the grubby little hands. “Wash. The both of you.”

“There’s no arguing with women,” Eoghan told Brin. “It’s a lesson you’ll learn. I finished the shed for the widow O’Brian. It’s God’s truth her boy is useless as teats on a billy goat, and wandered off to his own devices. The job went quicker without him.”

He spoke of his work as he helped his son dry his hands, spoke of work to come as he swung his daughter up, set her to squealing with delight.

“You’re the joy in this house,” she murmured. “You’re the light of it.”

He gave her a quiet look, set the baby down again. “You’re the heart of it. Sit down, off your feet awhile. Have your tea.”

He waited. Oh, she knew him for the most patient of men. Or the most stubborn, for one was often the same as the other, at least wrapped inside the like of her Eoghan.

So when the chores were finished, and supper done, when the children tucked up for the night, he took her hand.

“Will you walk out with me, lovely Brannaugh? For it’s a fine night.”

How often, she wondered, had he said those words to her when he wooed her—when she tried flicking him away like a gnat in the air?

Now, she simply got her shawl—a favorite Teagan had made her—wrapped it around her shoulders. She glanced at Kathel lying by the fire.

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—”