Shadow Spell by Nora Roberts Page B

out.”
    â€œI’m glad for your company all the same. And this gives you time to tell me what’s troubling you.”
    â€œI think a mad sorcerer bent on our destruction’s enough to go around.”
    â€œSomething else brought you to Branna last night and had you staying through it. Is it a man giving you grief? Do you want me to lay him low for you?”
    He flexed one arm, made a fist, shook it fiercely to make her laugh.
    Then she sniffed. “As if I couldn’t lay any I wanted low—or otherwise—myself.”
    He laughed in turn, sheer delight, and gave her hip another bump. “I’ve no doubt on that one. What is it then, darling? I can hear the buzzing in your head like a hive of angry wasps.”
    â€œYou could stop listening.” But she relented enough to lean against him a moment, so he caught the scent of his own soap on her skin. An oddly pleasant sort of thing.
    â€œIt’s just my mother driving me half mad, which is a normal enough day in the life. Donal’s got himself a girl.”
    â€œSo I’ve heard,” he said, thinking of her younger brother. “Sharon, isn’t it, moved to Cong this past spring? A nice girl, from what I’ve seen. A pretty face, an easy smile. Don’t you like her then?”
    â€œI like her fine and well, and more to the point Donal’s mad for her. It’s lovely, really, to see him so taken, and happy with it, and her very much the same.”
    â€œWell then?”
    â€œHe’s after moving out of the house, and in with his Sharon.”
    Connor considered that as they walked through the pretty morning toward work they both loved. “He’s, what, twenty and four?”
    â€œAnd five. And, yes, past time he moved out of his mother’s house. But now my mother and my sister Maureen have their heads together and have come to the horrible conclusion I should move back in with Ma.”
    â€œWell now, that won’t do, not for a minute.”
    â€œIt won’t.” Now her sigh held relief, as he understood the simple and bare truth. “But they’re laying it on like courses of brick. The guilt, the pressure, the bloody
logic
as they see it. Oh, Maureen’s after saying our mother can’t be left on her own, and me being the only one unhampered, so to speak, it stands I should be the one to right the ship. And Ma’s right behind her with she’ll have the room for me, and it would save me the rent, and how lonely she’ll be without a chick or child around.”
    She shoved both hands in her pockets. “Bugger it.”
    â€œDo you want my opinion or only my condolences?”
    She slanted a look at him, bold brown eyes both suspicious and speculative. “I’ll take the opinion, though I may hurl it back in your face.”
    â€œThen here it is for you. Stay where you are, darling. You were never happy, not really, until you moved out to begin with.”
    â€œThat’s what I want, and what I know I should do for myself and my sanity, but—”
    â€œIf your mother’s fretting about being lonely, and Maureen’s fretting about your mother—who’s her mother as well I’ll add—being on her own, why wouldn’t it be a fine idea for your mother to move in with Maureen and her family? Wouldn’t it be a great help to Maureen to have her mother with her, with the children and all that?”
    â€œWhy didn’t I think of that?” Meara pulled away long enough to punch Connor’s shoulder, do a little dance. “Why didn’t I think of that my own self?”
    â€œYou hadn’t got through the courses of guilt.” In an old habit, he gave her long, thick braid a tug. “Maureen’s no right to push you to give up your flat, change your life just because your brother’s changing his.”
    â€œI know it, but I know as well, Ma’s next to helpless. She has been since my