The Gallaghers of Ardmore Trilogy

how he’d meant to put it, but it was too late now. “We need each other. We mesh well, Jude. There’s no point in you going back to a life that didn’t satisfy you, when you can have one here that does.”
    “I see.” No, she didn’t see, she thought. It was like trying to look through dark, murky water. But she was trying to see. “So, you think I should stay here and marry you because you need a wife and I need . . . a life?”
    “Yes. No.” There was something wrong with how she’d phrased that. Something not quite right about the tone of it. But he was too flustered to figure it out. “I’m saying I could support you well enough until you find the kind of work you enjoy doing, or if you’d just rather work at making a home instead, that’s fine as well. The pub does well enough. I’m not a pauper, and though it may not be thestyle of living you’re accustomed to, we’d manage it all right.”
    “We’d manage it. While you . . . support me in the style I’m not quite accustomed to. Support me, until I bumble around and find what I might be good at doing?”
    “Look.” Why couldn’t he get the words to line up the right way? “You have a life here, is what I’m saying. You have one with me.”
    “Do I?” She turned away as she struggled to hold back something dark and bubbling that wanted to spew out of her. She didn’t recognize it, wasn’t sure she wanted to, but she sensed it was dangerous. The Irish, she mused, were supposed to be poets, to have the most charming of words flow right off the tongue.
    And here, for the second time in her life, she was being told she should marry a man because it would be good for her.
    William had needed a wife, too, she remembered. To help cement his position, to entertain, to look presentable. And of course, she’d needed a man to tell her what to do and when and how to do it. A wife for one, a life for the other. What could be more logical?
    The first time she’d been told that, she’d obeyed. Quietly, almost meekly. It infuriated and it shamed to remember that. It infuriated and it shamed to realize how much a part of her wanted to do the same with Aidan.
    But there was more to her now. More than she’d realized. She was making something of herself, and by God, she intended to finish. Without being guided gently along because she was so inept at finding her own way.
    “I’ve had time here, Aidan.” Face composed, voice level, she turned back to study his face in the silvered light of the swimming moon. “I’ve had time with you. Thesemonths don’t make a life, and it’s my life I’m trying to figure out, so I can build on it, make something of it. And of myself.”
    “Make it with me.” The quick jolt of desperation stunned him, left him floundering. “You care for me, Jude.”
    “Of course I do.” Somehow she managed to keep her voice pleasant when she said it, though that dark and bubbling brew was still churning inside her. “Marriage is a serious business, Aidan. I’ve been there, and you haven’t. It isn’t a commitment I intend to make again.”
    “That’s ridiculous.”
    “I haven’t finished.” Her voice was chilly now, ice over steel. “It isn’t a commitment I intend to make again,” she repeated, “until I trust myself, and the man, and the circumstances enough to believe it’s forever. I won’t be cast aside again.”
    “Do you think I would do such a thing as that?” Angry now, he gripped her arms, held tight. “You’d stand here and compare me to that bastard who broke his vows to you?”
    “I have nothing else to compare you to, or this to. I’m sorry that annoys you. But the fact is, marriage isn’t in my plans at this time. I thank you for the thought. Now I really should go back inside. I’m neglecting my guests.”
    “The hell with them. We’ll settle this.”
    “We have settled it.” Keeping that same rigid smile on her face, she shoved his hands away. “If I didn’t make myself clear, I’ll try again. No, I won’t marry you, Aidan, but thank you for asking.”
    As she said it, thunder boomed over the hills and a lance of lightning exploded, shooting a flash of thin white cracks across the bowl of the sky. She turned to walk into thehouse while the wind reared up to slap the air and send her chimes into a wild and bitter song.
    Odd, she thought, that her heart felt just the same. Wild and bitter.
    Aidan only stared after her. She’d said no. He simply hadn’t prepared