Page 18 of Shadow Spell

“And if he’d harmed you and the boy, where would we be?”

“Well, he didn’t, did he? And between us we gave him a solid boot in the balls. I’m here, Branna, as ever. We’re meant for this, so I’m here.”

“You’re a thorn in my side half the time.” Her hand turned under his until their fingers curled together and gripped. “But I’m used to you. You’ll have a care, Connor.”

“I will, of course. And the same for you.”

“The same for us all.”

***

IT AMUSED HIM, AND TOUCHED HIM WHEN MEARA FELL INTOstep beside him as he left the house for the falconry school.

“Are you leaving your lorry then?”

“I am. I want to walk off that breakfast.”

“You’re guarding my body.” He slung an arm around her shoulders, pulled her in so their hips bumped.

She’d dressed for work at the stables, rough pants and jacket, sturdy boots, and with all that hair braided back to hang through the loop of her battered cap.

And still she made a picture, he thought, the dark-eyed Meara with the gypsy in her blood.

“Your body can guard itself.” She glanced up, watched the hawks circle in the heavy sky. “And you’ve got them keeping an eye out.”

“I’m glad for your company all the same. And this gives you time to tell me what’s troubling you.”

“I think a mad sorcerer bent on our destruction’s enough to go around.”

“Something else brought you to Branna last night and had you staying through it. Is it a man giving you grief? Do you want me to lay him low for you?”

He flexed one arm, made a fist, shook it fiercely to make her laugh.

Then she sniffed. “As if I couldn’t lay any I wanted low—or otherwise—myself.”

He laughed in turn, sheer delight, and gave her hip another bump. “I’ve no doubt on that one. What is it then, darling? I can hear the buzzing in your head like a hive of angry wasps.”

“You could stop listening.” But she relented enough to lean against him a moment, so he caught the scent of his own soap on her skin. An oddly pleasant sort of thing.

“It’s just my mother driving me half mad, which is a normal enough day in the life. Donal’s got himself a girl.”

“So I’ve heard,” he said, thinking of her younger brother. “Sharon, isn’t it, moved to Cong this past spring? A nice girl, from what I’ve seen. A pretty face, an easy smile. Don’t you like her then?”

“I like her fine and well, and more to the point Donal’s mad for her. It’s lovely, really, to see him so taken, and happy with it, and her very much the same.”

“Well then?”

“He’s after moving out of the house, and in with his Sharon.”

Connor considered that as they walked through the pretty morning toward work they both loved. “He’s, what, twenty and four?”

“And five. And, yes, past time he moved out of his mother’s house. But now my mother and my sister Maureen have their heads together and have come to the horrible conclusion I should move back in with Ma.”

“Well now, that won’t do, not for a minute.”

“It won’t.” Now her sigh held relief, as he understood the simple and bare truth. “But they’re laying it on like courses of brick. The guilt, the pressure, the bloodylogicas they see it. Oh, Maureen’s after saying our mother can’t be left on her own, and me being the only one unhampered, so to speak, it stands I should be the one to right the ship. And Ma’s right behind her with she’ll have the room for me, and it would save me the rent, and how lonely she’ll be without a chick or child around.”

She shoved both hands in her pockets. “Bugger it.”

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