Marcello was quiet. He sank down onto the edge of the bed. "It was easy?" he asked.

She gave him a pained look, started toward him, then stopped halfway. "Aye," she said quietly. "Of course it was. It was only hard afterwards. I knew I could either tell you, or else ne'er tell you."

Marcello shook his head. "You said I haven't disappointed you," he said quietly. "I need to say this to you. You've disappointed me. This is very possibly the most another person has ever disappointed me. I loved you. I gave my whole heart to you, freely. I would have given you my life. And you knew both those things and held them in no regard."

Niabheara nodded, slowly, without raising her eyes. "I know. And I knew from the start how this would end. I didn't forget you. I know how it seems. I remembered you." She ran her tongue over her lips. "What do you want?"

Marcello winced. "I want to turn back the clocks to this morning and have you break things off with Dierdre without ever having told me this had happened, so I could be with you and be happy and not have to question your fidelity or my trust. Right now, I don't know what I want. I know that nothing I want is anything I can have. I don't even know if I want to marry you, when I don't know if you can be faithful-- when you can't even promise me that you won't do this again."

Her arms curled back around herself. "It isn't going to happen again," she repeated in a dull, flat voice. "It's ne'er going to happen again."

He gave her a tight look. "You only just said that you couldn't say that," he reminded her quietly. "Which is it?"

The look she shot him, had it been accompanied by any blunt object, likely could have killed him. "I'm sick with myself," she told him. "I'm sick with love. I'm sick. I can't do this again because I can't live with myself."

Marcello's jaw clenched. "When I spoke with Meg, she said...she seemed to think that it would be a shame for us to be too hasty now. To throw out everything we have because of one thing we didn't. If I don't come back with you, I'm going to go with her to Ebhot and take Maalech with me. We'll stay with her and Donal. So the two of us can have some time away from each other to think and then we can see each other again when we both have our feelings sorted out from our thoughts. I could come with you to Cnoch-na-Niall and still do the same thing, come back as your guest and not your lover, until we're ready to sort things out and see if this can be mended. Or we can try to mend it now."

Niabheara swallowed. "I think it might be best we spent this time apart. We could stay as separate in Cnoch-na-Niall, but it would not be the same."