“You’re wrong,” she said quietly. “I do understand.”
SHE kept herself busy through the morning. If she did indeed go away the next day, she would leave something of herself behind. He wouldn’t be allowed to forget her.
She hung the curtains she’d mended, pleased when the sunlight filtered through the lace into patterns on the floor. In the laundry room she found tools and brushes and everything she needed. With a kind of defiance she hauled it all outside. She was going to scrape and paint the damn shutters.
The work calmed her, and that malleable heart she’d spoken of began to ache. Now and then she glanced over at the studio. He was in there, she knew. Where else would he be? Though part of her wanted to give up, to go to him, she did understand his needs.
He needed time.
“But it’s running out,” she murmured. Stepping back, she studied the results of her labors. The paint gleamed wet and blue, and behind the windows the lace fluttered in the breeze.
Now that it was done and there was nothing else, her body seemed to cave in on itself with fatigue. Nearly stumbling with it, she went into the house. She would lie down for a little while, catch up on the sleep she’d lost the night before.
Just an hour, she told herself and, stretching out on the bed, went under fast and deep.
CONAL stepped back from his own work. His hands were smeared with clay to the wrists, and his eyes half blind with concentration.
Allena of the Faeries. She stood tall, slim, her head cocked slyly over one shoulder, her eyes long and her mouth bowed with secrets. She wasn’t beautiful, nor was she meant to be. But how could anyone look away?
How could he?
Her wings were spread as if she would fly off at any moment. Or fold them again and stay, if you asked her.
He wouldn’t ask her. Not when she was bound by something that was beyond both of them.
God, she’d infuriated him. He went to the sink, began to scrub his hands and arms. Snipping and sniping at him that way, telling him what he thought and felt. He had a mind of his own and he’d made it up. He’d done nothing but tell her the truth of that, of everything, from the beginning.
He wanted peace and quiet and his work. And his pride, he thought, as his hands dripped water. The pride that refused to accept that his path was already cut. In the end, would he be left with only that?
The emptiness stretched out before him, staggeringly deep. Were these, then, after all, his choices? All or nothing? Acceptance or loneliness?
Hands unsteady, he picked up a towel, drying off as he turned and studied the clay figure. “You already know, don’t you? You knew from the first.”
He tossed the towel aside, strode to the door. The light shifted, dimmed even as he yanked it open. Storm clouds crept in, already shadowing the sea.
He turned for the cottage, and what he saw stopped him in his tracks. She’d painted the shutters, was all he could think. The curtains she’d hung danced gaily in the rising wind. She’d hung a basket beside the door and filled it with flowers.
How was a man to resist such a woman?
How could it be a trap when she’d left everything, even herself, unlocked and unguarded?
All or nothing? Why should he live with nothing?
He strode toward the cottage and three steps from the door found the way barred to him. “No.” Denial, and a lick of fear, roughened his voice as he shoved uselessly at the air. “Damn you! You’d keep me from her now?”
He called out to her, but her name was whisked away by the rising wind, and the first drops of rain pelted down.
“All right, then. So be it.” Panting, he stepped back. “We’ll see what comes at the end of the day.”
So he went through the storm to the place that called to his blood.
SHE woke with a start, the sound of her own name in her ears. And woke in the dark.
“Conal?” Disoriented, she climbed out of bed, reached for the lamp. But no light beamed when she turned the switch. A storm, she thought blearily. It was storming. She needed to close the windows.
She fumbled for the candle, then her hand jerked and knocked it off the little table.
Dark? How could it be dark?
Time. What time was it? Frantically she searched for the candle, found a match. Before she could light it, lightning flashed and she saw the dial of the little wind-up clock.
Eleven o’clock.
No! It was impossible. She’d slept away all but the last hour of the longest day.
“Conal?” She rushed out of the room, out of the house, into the wind. Rain drenched her as she ran to his studio, fought to open the door.
Gone. He was gone. Struggling against despair, she felt along the wall for the shelves, and on the shelves for the flashlight she’d seen there.