An Excess of Love Excerpt
An Excess of Love Excerpt
Chapter 1
I always loved my sister.
More than the world could ever understand.
Con was a wondrous child. Headstrong, funny and with a lightning wit. An old/young creature with a passionate nature and a sunny disposition a combination not at all contradictory, despite the picture one has of people of high passions being brooding and contemplative.
She was anything but that.
My father was enthralled by her joie de vivre, her robust spirit, her equestrienne gifts, her love of hunting and all outdoor sports – rare qualities in a little girl in those times.
It isn’t easy for me now – despite the years that separate us – this telling of her story…
Thirty years have passed by since then, yet I can see her clearly as she was at The Rising, tall and spare, in her soldier’s motley, a blood soaked bandage wound unnoticed around her ribs, a rifle at her shoulder, carried with the casual pride of one who knows full well how to use it. 
An ancient warrior queen like Maeve, she seemed to me that day; and yet she cried as we embraced, fearing never again to see each other on this side of eternity.
Had she not been taught by my father to compete and to fancy herself any man’s equal, would she have had the courage to defy an empire? Or is it simply that all our fates are in God’s hidden place and my sister, like the rest of us, merely went about the business of fulfilling her destiny, with never a choice possible but to do so. Perhaps the why of it doesn’t matter now …
And so to begin … the tale of her life and of mine, of all those whom I have loved, living or dead – and, of course, of that strange fated place, or state of mind, that wove the threads to the tangled skein of all our destinies – Ireland.