The Gallaghers of Ardmore Trilogy

both?
    She turned, wanting to sit down until she felt steadier, and saw Lady Gwen. “A lot of help you’ve been. His song, you told me. His heart’s in his song and I was to listen. Isn’t that just what I did?”
    “Not closely enough,” was the answer. Then Brenna was alone.
    •  •  •
    He knew how to walk off a mad. He’d done so before. He trooped over the fields, letting the moonlight guide him. Thinking wasn’t the order of business, movement was.
    He climbed the cliffs, let the wind and the water clear his head. But the anger wouldn’t pass. He’d given his heart to a woman who thought very little of him as a man.
    Sent off his music, had she? And to a stranger, a man neither of them had met face-to-face or measured. And not a word to him about it, just following her own whim and expecting him to shuffle right along in her wake.
    Well, he wasn’t having it.
    Didn’t she think he could see her line of thinking? Just how simpleminded did she think he was? Oh, Shawn’s an affable sort, and clever enough in his way, but he’ll not get off his arse unless someone plants a boot on it.
    So this was her boot this time around. If the man’s going to sit about and play with music half the time, we’d best see if we can do something practical with it.
    It was his music, not hers, and she’d never troubled herself to so much as pretend to understand or appreciate it.
    And what did this man Magee know about it anyway?
    Celtic Records, Shawn’s mind murmured. Come now, you’ve looked into such matters enough to know just what Magee and his like know about it. Why pretend otherwise?
    “Neither here nor there,” Shawn muttered and heaved a rock over the cliff. Hadn’t he already turned it over in his head that once he’d met Magee for himself, gotten a feeling on the man, he’d consider the possibility of showing him a piece of music?
    A piece he chose. A piece he decided was right. Because by Christ it was his work and no one else’s.
    And when was the last time he’d decided a piece was finished and ready and right?
    Approximately never, he was forced to admit and heaved another rock for the hell of it.
    Magee wanted to buy it.
    “Well, fuck me.” Struggling to separate his anger from the rest, Shawn sat on the ledge.
    How could he explain to anyone what he felt when he pulled notes and words out of himself? That there was a fine and quiet joy in that alone. And that the rest, the doing something with it, as Brenna put it, made him feel like he was standing way out on the edge of a cliff. He hadn’t been ready to take the leap.
    Now he’d been pushed, and he resented it. No matter that the result was something he wanted, the pushing was uncalled for. And that’s what she’d never understand.
    So where were they, then, if they had no better understanding of each other than this?
    “Pride’s an important thing to a man,” Carrick commented from his perch on the rocks.
    Shawn barely spared him a glance. “I’m having a personal crisis here, if you don’t mind.”
    “She’s slashed a gash in yours, and I can’t blame you for taking the stand you have. A woman ought to know her place, and if she doesn’t, she needs to be shown it clear.”
    “It’s not a matter of place, you arrogant jackass.”
    “Don’t take it out on me, boy-o,” Carrick said cheerfully. “I’m with you on this one. She overstepped, no question of it. Why, what was the woman thinking, taking something of yours and going off with it that way? No matter that you’d given it to her, a kind of gift, one might say. That’s nothing but a technicality.”
    “Well, it is.”
    “And so I’m saying. Then as if that wasn’t nerve enough, what does she do? Fixes it up so you’ve the evening free—”
    “She fixed it up?” For lack of something more satisfying, Shawn heaved another rock. “I knew I wasn’t crazy. Damn it all.”
    “Playing with your mind, that’s what she’s about.” Carrick waved a hand, then tossed the little star that clung to his fingertips out over the water, where it trailed silver light. “Cooking you a meal, making everything, herself included, pretty for you. A more devious female I’ve never known. You’re well shed of her. Maybe you should take another look at her sister, after all. She’s young, but she’d be malleable, don’t you think?”
    “Ah, shut up.” Shawn got to his feet and strode off, scowling at the merry sound of Carrick’s laughter.
    “You’re