She shook herself, gave a shaky laugh. “Oh, it’s those hormones again. They’re turning me to mush.”

“ ’Tisn’t the hormones, Maggie.” Brianna rubbed her cheek over Liam’s head, caught the marvelous scent of him. “It’s being happy.”

“I want you to be happy, Brie. I can see you’re not.”

“That isn’t true. Of course I’m happy.”

“You’re already seeing him walk away. And you’re making yourself accept it before it even happens.”

“If he chooses to walk away, I can’t stop him. I’ve known that all along.”

“Why can’t you?” Maggie shot back. “Why? Don’t you love him enough to fight for him?”

“I love him too much to fight for him. And maybe I lack the courage. I’m not as brave as you, Maggie.”

“That’s just an excuse. Too brave is what you’ve always been, Saint Brianna.”

“And if it is an excuse, it’s mine.” She spoke mildly. She would not, she promised herself, be drawn into an argument. “He has reasons why he’ll go. I may not agree with them, but I understand them. Don’t slap at me, Maggie,” she said quietly and averted the next explosion. “Because it does hurt. And I could see this morning when he left the house that he was already walking away.”

“Then make him stop. He loves you, Brie. You can see it every time he looks at you.”

“I think he does.” And that only increased the pain.

“That’s why he’s in a hurry all at once to move on. And he’s afraid, too.

Afraid he’ll come back.”

“Is that what you’re counting on?”

“No.” But she wanted to count on it. She wanted that very much. “Love isn’t always enough, Maggie. We can see that from what happened with Da.”

“That was different.”

“It’s all different. But he lived without his Amanda, and he made his life as best he could. I’m enough his daughter to do the same. Don’t worry over me,” she murmured, stroking the baby. “I know what Amanda was feeling when she wrote she was grateful for the time they had together. I wouldn’t trade these past months for the world and more.”

She glanced over, then fell silent, studying the set look on Rogan’s face as he came across the lawn.

“We may have found something,” he said, “on Amanda Dougherty.”

Gray didn’t come home for tea, and Brianna wondered but didn’t worry as she saw that her guests had their fill of finger sandwiches and Dundee cake. Rogan’s report on Amanda Dougherty was always at the back of her mind as she moved through the rest of her day.

The detective had found nothing in his initial check of the towns and villages in the Catskills. It was, to Brianna’s thinking, hardly a surprise that no one remembered a pregnant Irishwoman from more than a quarter of a century in the past. But Rogan, being a thorough man, hired thorough people. Routinely, the detective made checks on vital statistics, reading through birth and death and marriage certificates for a five-year period following the date of Amanda’s final letter to Tom Concannon.

And it was in a small village, deep in the mountains, where he had found her.

Amanda Dougherty, age thirty-two, had been married by a justice of the peace, to a thirty-eight-year-old man named Colin Bodine. An address was given simply as Rochester, New York. The detective was already on his way there to continue the search for Amanda Dougherty Bodine.

The date of the marriage had been five months after the final letter to her father, Brianna mused. Amanda would have been close to term, so it was most likely the man she had married had known she’d been pregnant by another.

Had he loved her? Brianna wondered. She hoped so. It seemed to her it took a strong, kind-hearted man to give another man’s child his name.

She caught herself glancing at the clock again, wondering where Gray had gone off to. Annoyed with herself, she biked down to Murphy’s to fill him in on the progress of the greenhouse construction.

It was time to finish dinner preparations when she returned. Murphy had promised to come by and check over the foundation himself the following day. But Brianna’s underlying purpose, the hope that Gray had been visiting her neighbor as he often did, had been dashed.

And now, with more than twelve hours passed since he’d left that morning, she moved from wonder to worry.

She fretted, eating nothing herself as her guests feasted on mackerel with gooseberry sauce. She played her role as hostess, seeing there was brandy where brandy was wanted, an extra serving of steamed lemon pudding for the child who eyed it so hopefully.

She saw that the whiskey decanter in each guest room was filled, and towels were fresh for evening baths. She made parlor conversation with her guests, offered board games to the children.

By ten, when the light was gone and the house quiet, she’d moved beyond worry to resignation. He would come back when he would come, she thought, and settled down in her room, her knitting in her lap and her dog at her feet.

A full day of driving and walking and studying the countryside hadn’t done a great deal to improve Gray’s mood. He was irritated with himself, irritated by the fact that a light had been left burning for him in the window.

He switched it off the moment he came inside, as if to prove to himself he didn’t need or want the homey signal. He started to go upstairs, a deliberate move, he knew, to prove he was his own man.

Con’s soft woof stopped him. Turning on the stairs, Gray scowled at the dog. “What do you want?”

Con merely sat, thumped his tail.

“I don’t have a curfew, and I don’t need a stupid dog waiting up for me.”

Con merely watched him, then lifted a paw as if anticipating Gray’s usual greeting.

“Shit.” Gray went back down the stairs, took the paw to shake, and gave the dog’s head a good scratch. “There. Better now?”

Con rose and padded toward the kitchen. He stopped, looked back, then sat again, obviously waiting.

“I’m going to bed,” Gray told him.

As if in agreement, Con rose again as if waiting to lead the way to his mistress.

“Fine. We’ll do it your way.” Gray stuffed his hands in his pockets and followed the dog down the hall, into the kitchen, and through to Brianna’s room.