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emotions battering inside her to allow her to see, as she wanted, the right direction to take. "I need to think about this, Brie. It's rested this long. It can rest awhile longer."

    "I'm sorry, Maggie."

    "Don't take this on your shoulders as well." A bit of the bite and briskness came back into Maggie's voice. "They're burdened enough. Give me a few days, Brie, then we'll decide together what's to be done."

    "All right."

    "I'd like to keep the letters, for now."

    "Of course."

    Maggie crossed over, laid a hand on Brianna's pale cheek. "He loved you, too, Brie."

    "In his way."

    "In every way. You were his angel, his cool rose. Don't worry. We'll find a way to do what's best."

    Gray didn't mind when the leaden sky began to spit rain again. He stood on a parapet of a ruined castle looking out on a sluggish river. Wind whistled and moaned through chinks in the stone. He might have been alone, not simply in this spot, but in this country, in the world.

    It was, he decided, the perfect place for murder.

    The victim could be lured here, could be pursued up ancient winding stone steps, could flee helplessly up, until any crumb of hope would dissolve. There would be no escape.

    Here, where old blood had been spilled, where it seeped into stone and earth so deep, yet not so deep, fresh murder would be done. Not for God, not for country. But for pleasure.

    Gray already knew his villain, could picture him there, slicing down so that the edge of his knife glinted silver in the dull light. He knew his victim, the terror and the pain. The hero, and the woman he would love, were as clear to Gray as the slow run of the river below.

    And he knew he would have to begin soon to create them with words. There was nothing he enjoyed in writing more than making his people breathe, giving them flesh and blood. Discovering their backgrounds, their hidden fears, every twist and turn of their pasts.

    It was, perhaps, because he had no past of his own. He had made himself, layer by layer, as skillfully and as meticulously as he crafted his characters. Grayson Thane was who he had decided to be, and his skill in storytelling had provided a means to become who and what he wanted, in some style.

    He would never consider himself a modest man, but considered himself no more than a competent writer, a spinner of tales. He wrote to entertain himself first, and acknowledged his luck in hitting some chord in the public.

    Brianna had been right. He had no desire to be a Yeats. Being a good writer meant he could make a living and do as he chose. Being a great one would bring responsibilities and expectations he had no desire to face. What Gray didn't choose to face, he simply turned his back on.

    But there were times, such as this, when he wondered what it might be like to have roots, ancestry, a full-blooded devotion to family or country. The people who had built this castle that still stood, those who had fought there, died there. What had they felt? What had they wished for? And how could battles fought so long ago still ring, as clear as the fatal music of sword against sword, in the air?

    He'd chosen Ireland for this, for the history, for the people whose memories were long and roots were deep. For people, he admitted, like Brianna Concannon.

    It was an odd and interesting bonus that she should be so much what he was looking for in his heroine.

    Physically she was perfect. That soft, luminous beauty, the simple grace and quiet manner. But beneath the shell, in contrast to that open-handed hospitality, was a remoteness, and a sadness. Complexities, he thought, letting the rain slap his cheeks. He enjoyed nothing better than contrasts and complexities-puzzles to be solved. What had put that haunted look in her eyes, that defensive coolness in her manner? It would be interesting to find out.

    Chapter Three

    He thought she was out when he came back. As focused as a hound on a scent, Gray headed to the kitchen. It was her voice that stopped