Even as she was wondering what that had to do with anything, Murphy was cupping her chin in his hand and turning her face west.
"And there," he said, gesturing. "The clouds gathering up from the sea. They'll blow in by noontime and bring us rain. A soft one, not a storm. There's no temper in the air."
The hand on her face was hard as rock, gentle as water. She discovered he carried the scents of his farm with him-the horses, the earth, the grass. It seemed wiser all around to concentrate on the sky.
"I suppose farmers have to learn how to gauge the weather."
"It's not learning so much. You just know." To please himself he let his fingers brush through her hair before dropping them onto his o
wn knee. The gesture, the casual intimacy of it, had her turning her head toward him.
They may have been facing opposite ways, with legs dangling on each side of the wall, but they were hip to hip. And now eye to eye. And his were the color of the glass her mother had collected-the glass Shannon had packed so carefully and brought back to New York. Cobalt.
She didn't see any of the shyness or the bafflement she'd read in them the day before. These were the eyes of a confident man, one comfortable with himself, and one, she realized with some confusion of her own, who had dangerous thoughts behind them.
He was tempted to kiss her. Just lean forward and lay his lips upon hers. Once. Quietly. If she'd been another woman, he would have. Then again, he knew if she'd been another woman he wouldn't have wanted to quite so badly.
"You have a face, Shannon, that plants itself right in the front of a man's mind, and blooms there."
It was the voice, she thought, the Irish in it that made even such a foolish statement sound like poetry. In defense against it, she looked away, back toward the safety of grazing cows.
"You think in farming analogies."
"That's true enough. There's something I'd like to show you. Will you walk with me?"
"I should get back."
But he was already rising and taking her hand as though it were already a habit. " Tisn't far." He bent, plucked a starry blue flower that had been growing in a crack in the wall. Rather than hand it to her, as she'd expected, he tucked it behind her ear.
It was ridiculously charming. She fell into step beside him before she could stop herself. "Don't you have work? I thought farmers were always working."
"Oh, I've a moment or two to spare. There's Con." Murphy lifted a hand as they walked. "Rabbitting."
The sight of the sleek gray dog racing across the field in pursuit of a blur that was a rabbit had her laughing. Then her fingers tightened on Murphy's in distress. "He'll kill it."
"Aye, if he could catch it, likely he would. But chances of that are slim."
Hunter and hunted streaked over the rise and vanished into a thin line of trees where the faintest gleam of water caught the sun.
"He'll lose him now, as he always does. He can't help chasing any more than the rabbit can help fleeing."
"He'll come back if you call him," Shannon said urgently. "He'll come back and leave it alone."
Willing to indulge her, Murphy sent out a whistle. Moments later Con bounded back over the field, tongue lolling happily.
"Thank you."
Murphy started walking again. There was no use telling her Con would be off again at the next rabbit he scented. "Have you always lived in the city?"
"In or near. We moved around a lot, but we always settled near a major hub." She glanced up. He seemed taller when they were walking side by side. Or perhaps it was just the way he had of moving over the land. "And have you always lived around here?"
"Always. Some of this land was the Concannons', and ours ran beside it. Tom's heart was never in farming, and over the years he sold off pieces to my father, then to me. Now what's mine splits between what's left of the Concannons', leaving a piece of theirs on either side."
Her brow furrowed as she looked over the hills. She couldn't begin to estimate the acreage or figure the boundaries. "It seems like a lot of land."
"It's enough." He came to a wall, stepped easily over it, then, to Shannon's surprise, he simply put his hands at her waist and lifted her over as if she'd weighed nothing. "Here's what I wanted to show you."
She was still dealing with the shock of how strong he was when she looked over and saw the stone circle. Her first reaction wasn't surprise or awe or pleasure. It was simple acceptance.
It would occur to her later that she hadn't been surprised because she'd known it was there. She'd seen it in her dreams.
"How wonderful." The pleasure did come, and quickly now. Tilting her head over her eyes to block the angle of the sun she studied it, as an artist would, for shape and texture and tone.
It wasn't large, and several of the stones that had served as lintels had fallen. But the circle stood, majestic and somehow magically in a quiet field of green where horses grazed in the distance.
"I've never seen one, except in pictures." Hardly aware that she'd linked her fingers with Murphy and was pulling him with her, she hurried closer. "There are all sorts of legends and theories about standing stones, aren't there? Spaceships or druids, giants freezing or fairies dancing. Do you know how old it is?"
"Old as the fairies, I'd say."
That made her laugh. "I wonder if they were places of worship, or sacrifice." The idea made her shudder, pleasantly, as she reached out a hand to touch the stone.
Just as her fingers brushed, she drew them back sharply, and stared. There'd been heat there, too much heat for such a cool morning.
Murphy never took his eyes off her. "It's an odd thing, isn't it, to feel it?"
"I-for a minute it was like I touched something breathing." Feeling foolish, she laid a hand firmly on the stone. There was a jolt, she couldn't deny it, but she told herself it came from her own sudden nerves.
"There's power here. Perhaps in the stones themselves, perhaps in the spot they chose to raise them in."