The Gallaghers of Ardmore Trilogy

me?” Impatience shimmering now, Carrick glared at Shawn. “A year, a century.”
    “A year is a century when you’re waiting for love.”
    Emotion swam into Carrick’s eyes before he closed them. “You’re clever with words as well as tunes. And you’re right.”
    Once more he snapped his wrist and the sun was back, winter pale. “Still, I waited, and too long I waited, to go to her that last time. And from the sea, through the deep blue depths of it, I took its heart. And from this, hundreds of sapphires I gathered for her, and these, too, I poured at her feet. For my Gwen, all that I had and more for Gwen. But she told me she was old, and it was too late. For the first time, I saw her weep about it, weep as she told me if I’d once given her the words that were in my heart instead of jewels, instead of promises of eternities and riches, she might have been swayed to give up her world for mine, her duty for love. I didn’t believe her.”
    “You were angry.” Shawn had heard the story too many times to count. When he’d been a boy, he’d often dreamed of it. The dashing faerie prince astride a white winged horse, flying to the sun, to the moon, to the sea. “Because you had loved her, and didn’t know how else to show it, how else to tell her.”
    “What more can a man do?” Carrick demanded, and this time Shawn smiled.
    “That I can’t tell you. But casting a spell that has you both waiting over the centuries was probably not the wisest action.”
    “I’ve my pride, don’t I?” Carrick said, tossing his head. “And my temper. Three times I asked, and three times she refused. Now we wait until love meets love three times and accepts all. Flaws and virtues, sorrows and joys. You’re clever with words, Gallagher,” Carrick said, and the edgy smile was back. “I’ll be displeased if you take so long to make use of them as your brother did.”
    “My brother?”
    “Three times.” Carrick was on his feet now, his eyes dark and brilliantly blue. “And one is met.”
    It was Shawn’s turn to rise, and his fists were bunched. “Are you speaking of Aidan and Jude? Are you telling me, you bastard, that you put a spell on them?”
    Carrick’s eyes flashed, and thunder rumbled in answer. “You great fool of a man. Love spells are nothing but wives’ tales. You can’t play magic inside the heart, for it’s more powerful than any spell. Lust you can order up with a wink, desire with a smile. But love is love, and there is nothing can touch it. What your brother has with his Jude Frances is as real as the sun and the moon and the sea. You’ve my word on it.”
    Slowly Shawn relaxed. “I’ll beg your pardon, then.”
    “I’ll take no offense at a brother standing for a brother. If I did,” Carrick added with a thin sneer, “you’d be braying like a jackass. You’ve my word on that as well.”
    “I appreciate your restraint,” Shawn began, then tensed up again. “Are you after thinking that I’ll be the second stage in the breaking of your spell? For if you are, you’re looking in the wrong direction.”
    “I know where I’m looking well enough, young Gallagher. It’s you who doesn’t. But you will, soon enough. You will.” Carrick bowed gallantly. And vanished just as the skies opened and rain fell in a fury.
    “Well, that’s perfect, isn’t it?” Shawn stood in the driving rain, angry and puzzled. And very late for work.
     
     
     

 
FOUR
     
     
     
    H E WAS A man who liked to take his time with things. To mull and consider, to weigh and to measure. So that’s what he did, telling no one, for the moment, of his meeting with Carrick at the side of Old Maude’s grave.
    It concerned him a bit. Oh, not the meeting with a faerie prince so much. It was in his blood to accept the existence of magic, and in his heart to appreciate it. The manner of the discussion was what worried him, and the direction it had taken.
    He’d be damned if he’d find himself picking out, or being picked out by, a woman, and stumbling into love just to fall in line with Carrick’s plans and wishes.
    He just wasn’t the marrying and settling-in sort, as Aidan was. He liked women, that he did. The smell of them, the shape of them, the heat of them. And there were, well, so many of them out there. All fragrant and rounded and warm.
    As much as he tended to write about love, in all its delightful and painful varieties, on the personal level he preferred to skirt around its edges.
    Love, the