“Murphy’s a man for space, and for the feel of his own land under his feet.”

Shannon glanced back to see Alice studying her. “I know. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone as . . . rooted.”

“And are you rooted, Shannon?”

“I’m comfortable in New York,” she said carefully. “We moved around a great deal when I was a child, so I don’t have the same kind of roots you mean.”

Alice nodded. “A mother worries about her children, no matter how tall they grow. I see Murphy’s in love with you.”

“Mrs. Brennan.” Shannon lifted her hands, let them fall. What could she say?

“You’re thinking what does this woman want me to do? How does she expect me to answer what wasn’t even a question?” A hint of a smile played around Alice’s mouth. “You don’t know me anymore than I know you, so I can’t tell by looking into your eyes what your feelings are for my son, or what you’ll do about them. Feelings there are, that’s plain. But I know Murphy. You’re not the woman I would have chosen for him, but a man chooses for himself.”

She glanced at Shannon and laughed. “Now I’ve insulted you.”

“No,” Shannon said stiffly, insulted. “You have a perfect right to speak your mind.”

“I do.” Smiling still, Alice began to rock. “And would if I did or not. But my meaning wasn’t clear. I thought for a time, a short time, it would be Maggie for him. As much as I love that girl, it worried me fierce. They’d have driven each other to murder within a year.”

Despite all common sense, Shannon felt a niggling tug of jealousy. “Murphy and Maggie?”

“Oh, nothing more than a passing thought and a little wondering between them. Then I thought it would be Brianna. Ah, now that, I told myself, was the wife for him. She’d make him a strong home.”

“Murphy and Brie,” Shannon said between her teeth. “I guess he was making the rounds.”

“Oh, I imagine he made a few, but not with Brie. He loved her, as he loved Maggie. As he loves his sisters. It was me, planning in my head and wishing for him to be happy. I worried, you see, because he was twenty-five, and still showing no partiality for another of the girls hereabouts. He was working the farm, reading his books, playing his music. It was a family he needed, I’d tell myself. A woman beside him and children at his feet.”

Shannon moved her shoulders, still irked by the images Alice had conjured in her head. “Twenty-five is young for a man to marry these days.”

“It is,” Alice agreed. “In Ireland men often wait years and years longer. As they know once the vows are said there’s no unsaying them. Divorce isn’t a choice for us, not by God, and not by law. But a mother wants her son fulfilled. I took him aside this one day in his twenty-fifth year, and I sat him down and talked to him from my heart. I told him how a man shouldn’t live alone, shouldn’t work himself so hard and have no one to come home to of an evening. I told him how the O’Malley girl had her eye on him, and didn’t he think she was a pretty thing.”

Alice’s smile had faded when she looked back at Shannon again. “He agreed as she was. But when I began to press him about thinking more deeply, planning for the future, taking a wife to complete his present, he shook his head, and took my hands in his and looked at me that way he has.

“ ‘Ma,’ ” he said, “ ‘Nell O’Malley isn’t for me. I know who is. I’ve seen who is.’ ” Alice’s eyes grew dark with an emotion Shannon couldn’t understand. “I was pleased, and I asked him who she was. He told me he hadn’t yet to meet her, not in the flesh. But he knew her just the same as he’d seen her in his dreams since he was a boy. He was only waiting for her to come.”

Shannon swallowed on a dry throat and managed to keep her voice level. “Murphy has a tendency toward the romantic.”

“He does. But I know when my boy is having a fancy and when he means just what he says. He was speaking no more than the truth to me. And he spoke nothing more than the truth when he called me a short time ago to tell me that she’d come.”

“It’s not like that. It can’t be like that.”

“It’s hard to judge what can and can’t be. In the heart. You’re holding his, Shannon Bodine. The only thing I’ll ask of you is to take care, great care with it. If you find you can’t keep it, or don’t want it after all, hand it back to him gently.”

“I don’t want to hurt him.”

“Oh, child, I know that. He’d never choose a woman with meanness in her. I’m sorry to have made you sad.”

Shannon only shook her head. “You needed to say it. I’m sure I needed to hear it. I’ll straighten things out.”

“Darling.” With something close to a chuckle, Alice leaned forward again to take Shannon’s hand. “You may try, but he’ll tangle them up again. You mustn’t think I said all of this to put the burden on your shoulders alone. It’s shared between you, equal. What happens between you, joy or sorrow, will be caused by both of you. If your mother was here, she’d be telling Murphy to take care with you.”

“She might.” The tension in Shannon’s fingers relaxed a little. “Yes, she might. He’s lucky to have you, Mrs. Brennan.”

“And so I remind him, often. Come now, let’s see if my daughters have finished cooking the lamb for dinner.”

“I should get back.”

Alice rose, drawing Shannon with her. “You’ll have your Sunday meal with us, surely. Murphy’ll want you. So do I.”

She opened the front door, stepped back, and welcomed Shannon inside.

Chapter Eighteen

As much as Murphy enjoyed seeing Shannon with his family, dangling one of his nieces on her knee, laughing over something Kate said, listening intently to his nephew explain about carburetors, he wanted her alone.

It seemed the family he loved so well was conspiring to keep him from fulfilling that one simple and vital wish.

He mentioned very casually that it was a lovely night for a drive, and he thought Shannon would enjoy it. Whatever response she might have made was drowned out by his sisters’ chattering to Shannon about fashions.

A patient man, he waited a time, then tried again, suggesting a trip to the pub—where he was sure he could slip Shannon out in a wink. But his stepfather pulled him aside and began to drill him on the workings of the new combine.