“We’ll have more next round. I’m going to work with Branna.” Lightly, he laid a hand on Fin’s arm. “You should come with me.”
“Not today. She won’t want me round today when she’s thinking it’ll just be the two of you together.”
“Branna won’t let her feelings get in the way of what must be done.”
“That’s God’s truth,” Fin agreed, and swung himself into the saddle. He let Aine dance a bit. “We have to live, Connor. Despite it, because of it, around it, through it. We have to live as best we can.”
“You think he’ll beat us?”
“I don’t. No, he won’t beat you.”
Deliberately, Connor slid a hand onto Aine’s bridle, looked into Fin’s stormy green eyes. “Us. It’s us, Fin, and will always be us.”
Fin nodded. “He won’t win. But before the battle, and bitter and bloody it’s bound to be, we have to live. I might choose another life if I could, but I’ll make the most of the one I have. I’ll come to the cottage soon.”
He let Aine have her head, thundered away.
With his mood mixed and unsteady, Connor drove straight to the cottage. The light filtered through the windows of Branna’s workshop, bounced over the colored bottles she displayed that held her creams and lotions, serums and potions. Her collection of mortars and pestles, her tools, the candles and plants she set about were all arranged just so.
And Kathel sprawled in front of her work counter like a guard while she sat at it, her nose in the thick book he knew to have been Sorcha’s.
The fire in the hearth simmered, as did something in a pot on her work stove.
Another beauty, he thought—it seemed he was surrounded by them—with her dark hair pulled back from her face, her sweater rolled up at the sleeves. Her eyes, gray as the smoke puffing from the chimney, lifted to his.
“There you are. I thought you’d be here long before this. Half the day’s gone.”
“I had things to see to, as I told you clear enough.”
Her brows lifted. “What’s bitten your arse?”
“At the moment, you are.”
No, his mood wasn’t mixed, he realized. It had tipped over to foul. He stalked to the jar on the counter beside the stove. There were always biscuits, and he was slightly mollified to find the soft, chewy ones she rolled in cinnamon and sugar.
“I’m here when I could get here. I had the hawk sale to
deal with.”
“Was it a favorite of yours— Never mind, they all are. You have to be realistic, Connor.”
“I’m bloody realistic. I sold the hawk, and the buyer was beautiful, available, and interested. I’m bloody realistic enough to know I had to come back here for you and this, else I’d be having myself a good shag.”
“If a shag’s so bleeding important, go get it done.” Eyes narrowed, she fired right back at him. “I’d rather work alone than with you pacing about horny and bitter.”
“It’s that it wasn’t so bleeding important, hasn’t been so bleeding important since before the solstice that worries me.” He stuffed one cookie in his mouth, wagged the other in the air.
“I’m making you some tea.”
“I don’t want any fucking tea. Yes, I do.” He dropped down onto one of the stools at her work counter, rubbed Kathel when the dog laid his great head against Connor’s leg. “It’s not the shag or the woman or the hawk. It’s all of it. All of this. All of it, and I let it bite me in the arse.”
“Some days I want to climb up on the roof and scream. Scream at everyone and everything.”
Calmer, Connor bit into the second biscuit. “But you don’t.”
“Not so far, but it could come to it. We’ll have some tea, then we’ll work.”
He nodded. “Thanks.”