Tears of the Moon by Nora Roberts

hold her down. If it was enough to make you cry, she should at least have the courtesy to listen to you.”
    â€œWell, she made me cry,” Mary Kate protested.
    â€œYours were temper tears,” Alice Mae said primly, using one of their mother’s expressions.
    â€œPart of mine were, too, I suppose.” With a sigh, Brenna snugged an arm around Alice Mae’s shoulders. “She had a right to be angry with me. I behaved badly. I’m so sorry, Katie, for the way I acted, and the things I said.”
    â€œYou are?”
    â€œTruly.” Tears swam up again, into her throat, into her eyes. “I just love you.”
    â€œI love you, too.” Mary Kate sobbed it out. “I’m sorry, too. I said awful things to you. I didn’t mean them.”
    â€œDoesn’t matter.” She shifted so that Mary Kate could scramble up to be held. “I can’t help but worry about you,” she murmured against her sister’s hair. “I know you’re grown up, but it’s not easy to think of you that way. With Maureen and Patty it’s not so hard. Maureen’s barely ten months younger than me, and Patty came just a year after that. But with you two . . .” She opened her arms so Alice Mae could slip in as well. “I remember when each of you came along, so it’s different somehow.”
    â€œBut I wasn’t doing anything wrong.”
    â€œI know.” Brenna closed her eyes. “You’re so pretty, Katie. And I suppose you have to test your skills. I just wish you’d test them on boys your own age.”
    â€œI have.” With a watery laugh, Mary Kate lifted her head from Brenna’s shoulder and grinned. “I’m thinking I’m ready to move up a level.”
    â€œOh, Mother Mary.” Brenna closed her eyes. “Just answer me this. Do you fancy yourself in love with Shawn?”
    â€œI don’t know.” She moved her shoulders restlessly. “I might be. It’s just that he’s so handsome, like a knight on a white charger. And he’s like a poet, so romantic and deep somehow. He looks at you, right in the eye. A lot of boys aim their eyes a bit lower, so you know they’re not thinking about you, but about the possibility of getting you out of your blouse. Have you ever noticed his hands, Brenna?”
    â€œHis hands?” Long, narrow, clever. Gorgeous.
    â€œThey’re an artist’s hands, and you just know, looking at them, how they might feel if he touched you.”
    â€œAye,” she said on a long breath, then caught herself. “What I mean to say is I can understand how he’d stir certain, well, juices, being as he’s pretty. I just want you to have a care, that’s all.”
    â€œI will.”
    â€œThere, now, you’re all made up.” Alice Mae got up, kissed both of them. “Now will you go away, Brenna, so we can all get some sleep?”

Brenna didn’t sleep much, and when she did, there were dreams. Odd and jumbled dreams with moments of clarity that almost hurt the brain. A white-winged horse carrying a rider dressed in silver, with his long black hair flying away from a finely sculpted handsome face.
    He flew through the night, with stars burning around him, higher and higher, toward the glowing white ball of a full moon. A moon that dripped light like tears, tears he gathered like pearls in his bag of shining silver. Pearls that he poured onto the ground at the feet of Lady Gwen as they stood outside the cottage on the faerie hill.
    â€œThese are the tears of the moon. They are my longing for you. Take them, and me.”
    But she shed her own tears as she turned away from him, denied him, refused him. And the pearls glowed in the grass and the glowing became moonflowers.
    And it was Brenna who picked them, by night, when their delicate white petals were open. She laid them on the little stoop by the cottage door, leaving them there for