"Please, Jessie, listen to me," he said. "Please say that you could go to the mountains each year after Midsummer and stay until Harvest. I would not keep you from Brianag! But lowcountry folk have always gone into the back country in summer! Only now, you will have your own house to stay in, and the clan as neighbors! There is plenty of room for guests, and you may bring with you anyone you wish!"
I was staring at him now, my heart pounding, my breaths quick. "What are you saying, Robbie?" I said. "That you want me to live with you at Barraigh in the summer, and without you at Brianag the rest of the year? Is that the sort of arrangement you believe will please me?"
He stared back at me, and again made a visible effort to say what came next. "I will stay at Brianag with you," he said, "because I love you and I cannot be separated from you, ever again."
I could not speak. I felt stunned.
"I love you, lass," he said.
"Then the story is true!" I said."It was true!"
"What story?" he said.
"You will live with me at Brianag now?" I said, still amazed by his declaration. "You love me, Robbie? You truly want to be my husband?"
He stood and took my face in his hands again. "Oh, God help me, Jessie, I do!" he said.
"I have driven myself beyond exhaustion, beyond endurance, in order not to think of you. I tried to put enough distance between us, enough time, that my ardor might cool! And yetI lie awake at night, longing for you! I have since the first time you kissed me, on the road to Gillean!" He stroked my hair back. "I never had any inkling that you were so beautiful, so passionate-you were a child to me, like a sister! And though I was shocked by what occurred, from that moment on, Jessie, I have loved you. I did not know it! I did not know what love felt like! And then the night I first took you, God in heaven-I was so befuddled! I behaved like a fool. I could not think, could not begin to tell you my heart's truth, even when you left Gillean, even when we were married, for I did not know myself!"
"And what of Eco?" I said, determined to make him responsible for it all.