14. Chapter Fourteen
Chapter fourteen
étaín did not alter the castle’s rhythm, she only brightened it.
By the following morning, Aingeal discovered that was worse.
étaín moved through the castle exactly as she moved through every room: with warmth, curiosity, and the easy assumption that people were worth noticing.
She spoke to stable boys, old soldiers, and sharp-faced kitchen maids with equal attention.
She drew two reluctant grunts of amusement from Brennach before the morning was half done.
She made Tomas laugh over a story about a mule biting a priest’s sleeve.
So when she turned that same light toward Donal, no one could accuse her of special attention.
No one but Aingeal. The awareness waited before she ever left her chamber.
étaín was somewhere below in the castle.
Donal too.
The morning was raw and damp. Mist clung to the lower yard and wet the well stones. By the time Aingeal reached the hall, étaín had already charmed two servants, one kitchen boy, and the old woman from the bakehouse who claimed to dislike everyone under thirty and proved, once again, to be lying.
Aingeal should have smiled. Instead, she looked over étaín’s shoulder into the yard.
Donal stood near the training space with Seamus and three boys.
One lad limped on a turned ankle, and Donal had crouched in the dirt to show him how to shift his weight when one side failed him.
His sleeve was rolled. The brown, sinewed line of his forearm showed where the bandage no longer needed changing.
étaín followed Aingeal’s gaze with maddening ease. “He is patient,” she said.
“He is practical.”
“Most men prefer to be admired for their skill rather than troubled to teach it.”
“He was born to trouble people.”
“That also seems likely.”
Aingeal wanted, with sudden ugly force, to say, ‘He is not for you to notice. He is not yours’. The thought broke the instant it formed.
Not yours.
The truth lodged sharply. Whatever had passed between her and Donal, whatever hope had taken root, he was not hers. He was meant to leave. That had been their bargain. Yet the knowledge gave no peace.
In the courtyard, one boy overbalanced. Donal caught him before he sprawled, setting him upright with a hand to his shoulder and a word too low for the hall to hear.
étaín smiled faintly. “I was right.”
“About what?”
“He is gentler than he looks.”
Aingeal turned on her. “You have known him one day.”
étaín blinked, then looked over the rim of her cup. “And?”
“And you speak as though you have been reading him for weeks.”
“Well,” étaín said lightly, “perhaps I am unusually gifted.”
Something cold and mean moved under Aingeal’s skin. The monster. She could control it. She had for years. “It would be better if you applied your gifts elsewhere,” she said evenly.
étaín lowered the cup. For a brief instant, her face went still. Not offended. Alert. “Would it?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
The danger in the question was immediate. One wrong answer and everything would spill open: jealousy, hope, the new vulnerability where Donal was concerned, the humiliating tenderness of it all.
Aingeal reached for dignity and found only sharpness. “Because he is in my service, not yours.”
étaín’s mouth curved slowly in recognition. “Ah.”
The quietness of it humiliated Aingeal more than laughter would have.
étaín lowered her cup. For once, she did not tease. “You are tense.”
“The border is tense.”
“And you are trying to wear that as an answer to everything.”
Aingeal turned away before her cousin could read more in her face and headed for the accounts chamber.
Afterward, everywhere étaín went, she seemed to cross Donal’s path.
Aingeal saw them near the physician’s bench, where Donal helped bind a farmer’s broken wrist. She saw étaín ask whether the western path would flood before winter’s first hard freeze, and Donal answered after the smallest pause.
She saw them from the gallery when étaín leaned on the rail and listened while he and Tomas argued over whether the northern ridge needed two more men or four.
Donal remained distant. He did not seek étaín out. Did not soften into charm. Did not smile in surrender to her brightness. He answered. He listened. No more.
But he listened.
And étaín, beloved, beautiful, impossible not to notice, drew answers from him where others might have received only reserve.
By midafternoon, Aingeal’s jealousy had ripened into something uglier because she could no longer contain it. Shame came at once. It made the whole thing feel childish. Unworthy of a woman who held land, counted grain, commanded men, and had buried girlish foolishness beneath duty years ago.
Yet the hurt remained.
She found herself on the battlements not because she needed air, but because she could not bear another enclosed room. Wind cut clean across the stones, smelling of marsh water and distant peat. From that height, she saw more than she wanted.
étaín stood near the well, one hand braced on the rope post as she spoke to Donal, who had just crossed from the hall with Seamus. Seamus kept walking.
Donal stopped. After a moment, he answered her.
Aingeal could not hear the words. She did not need to. étaín smiling. Donal listening. The ease of it.
Then étaín laughed and set her fingers, thoughtless and brief, on his sleeve. It was nothing. Her cousin’s idle touch. A knight’s grave tolerance. A single breath of contact in a public yard.
But the world shifted under Aingeal’s feet. Memory came swift and merciless. Máire in spring light. The ridge wet beneath their boots. That fierce, helpless, humiliating ache.
I wanted to be chosen.
Aingeal gripped the stone until cold burned through her gloves. She had not known then how quickly humiliation could turn to anger, and anger to action. Now she did.
A slow dread opened beneath the jealousy. Not fear of étaín. Not fear of Donal.
Fear of the girl she had once been.
The monster that prayer, confession, and years of discipline had not fully buried.
By supper, she wrapped herself in silence because silence was the only armor she trusted.
The hall was warm with firelight and too many bodies, too much laughter, too much life. Dogs slept beneath benches. Brennach and Tomas argued over grain. Ordinary life pressed in from all sides.
Aingeal sat with étaín on one side and Donal on the other. Trapped. She ate almost nothing. Spoke only when necessary. Donal, after one searching glance, stopped trying to catch her eye and turned his attention outward with that grave usefulness of his.
étaín asked Father Cillian some irreverent question about saints’ relics and whether they cured gout or merely enriched monasteries. Brennach grunted. Tomas looked scandalized and amused. Laughter moved down the table.
Then étaín turned to Donal. “And what do soldiers call relics when priests are not listening?”
Donal answered, “Weight to carry if the chapel catches fire.”
Half the table laughed.
étaín looked delighted. “At last. I had begun to suspect you had no wit at all.”
Donal’s mouth shifted. “I prefer to keep expectations manageable.”
Aingeal set down her cup too hard.
The sound cut through the nearest conversation.
étaín looked over. “Aingeal?”
Donal turned too, and whatever had been near the corner of his mouth vanished. He looked tired, confused, and hurt.
“What?” she asked too sharply.
étaín blinked. “Only that you nearly shattered the cup.”
“Then the cup should learn better balance.”
Silence followed. Not enough to stop the hall. Enough that those nearest looked elsewhere.
Donal said, low enough for only them to hear, “If I have done something…”
The care in the question split the day open, tightening while angering Aingeal. “Yes.”
Both of them stilled.
She heard the cruelty gathering and could not stop it quickly enough.
“You have stood in my hall,” she said, voice cold now because cold was safer than trembling, “taken your place at my side, and made yourself useful enough that everyone begins to think you belong there. If you mean to answer every question put to you as though nothing in you is hidden, at least have the courtesy not to do it in front of me.”
Donal went utterly still. Not the stillness of control, the stillness of a man struck where he had no armor.
Aingeal heard herself and knew she had said too much and not nearly enough.
“Aingeal --”
She rose before he could say more. The bench scraped over stone. Every eye at the high table turned. “I am tired,” she said. “Continue without me.” Then she walked from the hall before shame could stop her.
The corridor beyond was dim and cold. She kept walking until the noise from the Great Hall softened. Only in the upper passage did she stop, one hand braced against the wall, breathing as though she had run.
She had hurt him.
Worse, étaín had seen everything: the jealousy beneath the accusation, the hurt beneath the jealousy.
There would be no hiding from that.
Aingeal closed her eyes. Máire’s face rose at once. The ridge. The shame. The wanting.
No. Not étaín. Not Donal. Not again.
By the time she reached her solar, she knew the truth.
It was not étaín she feared. It was the girl she had once been.
Reginald half rose before he knew he had moved.
Aingeal had gone, the edge of her cloak disappearing through the hall door, and all he could think was that her face before she left had not held anger alone. It had been too brittle.
He took one step after her.
“Donal.” étaín’s voice stopped him more effectively than a hand.
He turned.
All brightness had gone from her face. Concern remained.
“She should not be alone,” he said.
“No,” étaín agreed softly. “But she should not be followed by you just now.”
The words landed hard. “I am not the cause of all her anger.”
“No. Only the part nearest the surface.”
He looked toward the door. Every part of him strained after Aingeal, toward the need to stop whatever hurt he had just seen break across her. “She is upset.”
“Yes.”
“And you would have me sit here?”
“I would have you think.” étaín leaned nearer, lowering her voice. “Whatever passed through her just now was not meant for the hall. Do not force her to defend herself again before she has caught her breath.”
Reginald’s jaw hardened.
“You may mean kindness,” étaín said. “She will only hear pursuit.”
That stopped him because he knew she was right. If he followed now, he would not soothe her. He would corner her. His hand closed once at his side, then loosened.
étaín’s face softened by a degree. “Give her time. Let her choose when she will face you next.”
He looked once more toward the doorway, feeling the pull like pain. Then, slowly, unwillingly, he sat back down, but everything in him remained turned toward the hallway where she had fled.