I hummed quietly to myself, working on a new verse. I’ve strayed in a wilderness tangled and wild . . . I hadn’t intended the song to be about Cathal, but it undoubtedly was. All the same, the sadness in it went beyond his story. When I thought of him as a boy, finding his mother dead, I thought of my own mother and the way she had looked when we told her Finbar was gone. I considered Father’s disappointment in me, and I thought of Johnny and Gareth, and how difficult it must be to love somebody and to have to keep it concealed from most of the world. I looked at Cathal again. He was lying on his back with his head turned away from me, his dark hair spread across the ground, the pale skin of his neck exposed above the fabric of his shirt. He had one arm outstretched, his hand open, the long fingers relaxed.

My heart stood still. Suddenly, urgently, I wanted to touch, to stroke, to lay my hand against his neck or his cheek. His pose was that of a sleeping child, all trust. But the feelings that surged in me were those of a woman for a man, the same I had felt earlier, but a hundred times more powerful. I wanted to lie down there beside him. I wanted to feel his body against mine. I imagined his hands touching me with tenderness and passion, and mine responding in the same way. I had not felt like this when Aidan smiled and spoke sweet words to me. My body had not responded in this way when I danced with him. And although Aidan and I had made excellent music together, I’d never had the slightest inclination to make up a song about him. The yearning that had stirred within me at Cathal’s first kiss, when we had thought we were saying goodbye, was growing so strong that there would come a time when it was impossible to conceal. Here by the fire at night, with the forest silent around us, it would be all too easy to surrender to it. I considered Cathal’s remark about setting obstacles between me and Aidan, the one he had refused to explain. His attitude to me had softened greatly; I’d have been blind if I hadn’t noticed that. Was there something more in it? Perhaps that was wishful thinking on my part. He did keep pushing me away.

I imagined saying I love you to Cathal. Or, still more shocking, I want you. How would he answer that? With tenderness or with mocking laughter? Once we were back in our own world, very likely he would be the old Cathal again, the one I could never be quite sure of. The trickster.

“Ouch,” I muttered as the comb snagged itself again.