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only shrugged. “I simply asked you to go for a walk with me. Nothing more. I’m sorry, Brendan, but you have no effect on me at all, either for good or for ill.” And she turned to gaze out at the bay.  
    “You are saying that I do not touch your feelings at all?” He sounded incredulous.  
    “I am saying that I have never let myself get carried away by a handsome face or a set of broad shoulders—much less a sweet-sounding voice. I have learned to control my emotions very well.”  
    “Ah, I think I understand now. You have never known love.”  
    She turned back to face him. “I have never allowed myself to know love. I have been determined that I would never love any man unless I was certain he was the right one. So far I have succeeded quite well.”  
    “So far.” He sounded amused.  
    Muriel raised her chin. “Do your best, Brendan. Talk sweetly to me, gaze into my eyes, bring me little gifts. None of it will make any difference. I will be the one to control my feelings—not you. That is one thing I can promise.”  
    He merely nodded, his eyes shining. They continued their walk.  
    The hills around the dun were sprinkled with color, as though last night’s storm had dropped flowers instead of rain. Scattered in the sunniest open grass were bright yellow dandelions and primroses. Surrounding the largest rocks were thorny gorse bushes, filled with sweet-scented, tiny, golden blossoms, and the star-shaped, purple-blue spring gentian. Nearby were blackberry bushes just beginning to flower in white.  
    At the edge of the shade cast by the oak and willow trees were the pink blooms of foxglove, long and slender. Beneath the oaks in the deepest shade were little violets, purple and blue and white.  
    As a backdrop to the flowers were masses and masses of dark green three-leafed clover with clusters of tiny white blossoms. All of it made a lovely contrast to the gray rocks and gray-green sea.  
    Brendan looked down once more on the massive rings of the dun. “Flowers and clover, cattle and sunshine, and a fortress home where all can live in safety and contentment,” he said. “It is the same at Dun Bochna. And for the same reason, I am sure.”  
    “And what reason would that be?” Muriel almost smiled in spite of herself. He was certainly a grand talker, if nothing else.  
    “Why, its king, of course!” He turned his brilliant smile on her as they walked, his gold-brown hair ruffling in the wind. “King Murrough’s land reflects his own character, his own virility, his own justice. King Galvin’s land does the same.”  
    Muriel turned away from the bright light of his smile and made herself look only at the grass where she walked. She nodded in answer, her face serious. “Of course,” she said. “It is always so. A king’s land is like his queen. If he serves it and protects it and cherishes it, with his mind and his body and his heart, it will bloom beneath his hand. But if he is false—or disfigured—or weak—”  
    “His land will become the same,” Brendan said. “As you say, Lady Muriel, it is always so. No one knows this better than I, who will be king of my own land someday.”  
    She glanced up at him, beginning to smile again. It was almost too easy to hold him at a distance, to keep him in his place. “Yet I see nothing of a king about you, or even of a prince. You have no fine clothes or good iron weapons. There is no tanist’s torque around your neck or king’s gold on your wrists or fingers. All you have are boasting words and fanciful stories.”  
    Muriel thought he would stop and frown at her, give her some indignant response, but he only laughed and spread his arms and went on walking.  
    “Some men might need such things for others to know them as a king, but I am one who does not! Every time I set out, the warrior men follow me; every time I return, I bring more cattle and more wealth; and everywhere I walk, the land blossoms under my feet. You can see