Niabheara felt like throwing up her hands but her arms were full of baby. "I don't understand this," she said, frustrated. "What on earth do they expect you to do, fall down a well?"

"Not get pregnant," Miranda answered. "Not until I'm married, at least. It's not the kind of thing you get to take back. I'd probably have to leave home and go somewhere else to find a husband now." Then she scowled. "Not that I'd want a husband out of the town boys. But I had thought maybe I could meet someone nice at the University."

"It isn't the sort of thing you can take back, which you think people might take into account before they went around shunning people for it." Niabheara bristled, then looked at Miranda with more sympathy. "I feel I'm stealing all your mother's children one by one. Is there nowhere else you could go?"

"Italy," Miranda answered. "I could go stay with my mother's family. She's written to them. They're willing to take me and the baby and if I go there, they can tell everyone I'm a young widow or something tragic and romantic. Italians don't care as long as you go to church."

"Could you?" she said. "I can only imagine that it would be nearer to home for you than this."

"I could." Miranda started to cry again, a thin, trickling stream of tears pattering down her cheeks. "This isn't how I wanted to do things. I want to go different places and have adventures, not go different places because I can't go home. 'Sander gets to do everything he wants and it never ruins his life."

Niabheara sighed. "Your brother has his own troubles." She sat down with the baby, who was starting to get heavy. "Look, Mira. You've already decided that you can't take care of the baby and from what I know from Marcello, it's going to be a strain on your family if they try to keep her. She can stay with us. Or the final thing would be to find her a family. I know a lot of ladies this season who have already lost babies. She'd be looked after. But once that's settled, then we'll find something for you."

"He still gets to do whatever he wants, exactly when he wants to do it," Miranda answered. She let out a heavy sigh, and slumped against the table again. "Cormac needs to decide about the baby. I don't want to give it away somewhere where he can't see it. I just...I don't know what will be worse," she said, more quietly. "Knowing where she is and seeing her and being reminded or not seeing her again."

"Well . . . you know Judith is my real mother, don't you?" she asked. "We were in the middle of a war when she had me. There wasn't any way she could do what she needed to do and take care of a child. So she gave me to Meg. I. I won't pretend I feel the same for Judith that I feel for Morgana, but that's probably more that Judith isn't very easy to love. But I do love her. It's just that she's not my mother anymore. She's more of a grandmother, or a tough old aunt who shows up every once in a while. So it mightn't be like losing her and always being reminded of it. You'd still be something to one another."

"But that's what I'm not sure of," Miranda said. "I don't know if I want to be something to her. I don't know if I want her to know that I'm the person who left her. She'll hate me."