Chapter Eleven
T he rain began late in the afternoon and added to the gloom that filled the small hut. Liadan, trying desperately to keep her mam calm without dosing her to oblivion, at last sent Flanna off the visit her good friend, Lasair, only to give the lass a measure of peace she could not afford herself.
The two lasses were good friends and spent much of their time together at one home or the other. Liadan hoped Lasair’s mam would see fit to keep Flanna for a time.
As soon as the young girl left, she ran for the healer and brought him back with her.
“I cannot keep her quiet,” she confessed in a hush, just inside the door.
“Not even with the draught?”
“Save with the draught.”
Dathi lifted a brow at her.
“I do no’ wish to keep her dosed all the time. The draught sends her to a deep sleep.”
“Where she needs to be. She is grieving.” Dathi gave a sigh. “Let me speak with her.”
He entered Conall’s sleeping place, which Mam refused to leave. Liadan stood wringing her hands, hearing his soft, patient voice interrupt Mam’s weary sobs.
She wished she could be that patient, but she did not have it in her. She felt burned to the bone and had not had a chance herself to weep for her brother, to throw herself down and sob for the sheer hurt of it till she could weep no more.
Even Dathi’s quiet words, however, did not succeed in soothing Mam. He soon slipped back out, a concerned frown furrowing his brow.
“She is, aye, distraught. I suggest dosing her until her grief eases, as it will do in sleep.”
Aye, and mayhap the healer knew best. Perhaps sleep was the refuge Mam needed.
But with Conall gone, with Mam lost to sleep and Flanna taking comfort elsewhere, whom did Liadan have?
The answer came soon enough after the healer, having administered his dose, left.
He called softly from outside the door, his voice deeper than the pelt of the rain, and when she went there, he asked, “Mistress, might I come in?”
She could scarcely leave him outside in such a downpour even if she wanted to.
“Aye.”
He came with his head bent, shedding water, and with Conall’s sword in his hand. She saw right off he had a number of scrapes and abrasions, and that his tunic had torn. She did not comment.
“How is your lady mother?”
She did not want to answer him. The serpent, pretending concern. Her words came bitter. “I have just had the healer. She will no’ stop with grieving. I have sent Flanna away—for some relief.”
“I am sorry.”
So he should be.
He lowered himself to the floor just inside the door. As near to outside as he could get.
Liadan cast him a look. “Come closer to the fire. Warm yourself. I do not need an ailing man on top of a grieving woman.”
He came and sat beside the hearth, still saying nothing. Stretched his hands out to the warmth. She saw that they trembled ever so slightly.
What must this be like for him? She did not care. Serpent .
Silence reigned for many long moments. The draught having taken swift effect, Mam at last eased to silence on Conall’s bed.
“What happened to ye?” Liadan asked at length, and nodded at the scrapes.
His lips twisted, and when he spoke, he sounded as bitter as she. “Hard training session.”
“I suppose ye will want those hurts tended.” She’d often cared so for Conall’s simple cuts and strains, him never wanting to trouble the healers.
“Nay, mistress.”
“But—” She saw now that he was bleeding from a cut on one forearm and what looked like a nasty slice to his right hand.
“Nay, mistress. Leave it be.”
“Then I suppose ye will want to eat.”
Again, silence met her statement.
She began to ramble, the words spilling from her aching heart. “Conall always came home from training gey ravenous. Well, he was eager to eat most times, but after working hard he swore he could eat a whole boar on his own. And when he returned from a battle, well… But”—she caught herself—“I expect ye would know that.”
“Aye.”
“Since I would ha’ fed Conall, I suppose I should feed ye instead. Such a simple thing, is it not? Feeding someone. Someone who is hungry. Yet it means a great deal. I used to enjoy seeing Conall eat hearty. Whether Mam fed him or I—”
She paused because her voice broke under the weight of her tears. She could not—would not—weep in front of him. Not in front of him.
“I need naught, mistress.”
Well, that had to be a lie. He needed feeding and a change of clothing, and those hurts tended, without doubt. But he was a liar, was he not? He’d lied about killing her brother.
A question screamed in her head. Why? Why, by all the gods, would he hurt the friend he loved? It made no sense.
She set about preparing a hasty meal, mixing the grain for cakes to lay on the hot stone, stirring a pot of meat. She filled a mug with ale, laid the whole of it aside, and lifted the vat of warm water from the fire.
“Now then, let us have a look at ye before we eat.”
*
Ardahl stole a look at Liadan from between his lashes as she tended the cuts on first his one arm and then the other.
She hated him. He could feel that in the stiffness of her touch as well as the antagonism streaming off her. Her eyes remained cool and distant as she swabbed the ugly injuries, smeared on some kind of salve, and wrapped them in clean cloth.
Never had he been so close to her. Indeed, until two days ago he had still thought of her as a child, if he’d thought of her at all.
Could he have been more mistaken?
A child no longer, she had a lovely bosom that pushed against the inside of her bodice, of which he could catch the merest glimpse when she leaned forward to him. Graceful hands and long, narrow limbs. Her honey-colored hair, all plaited, fell over one shoulder. Her eyelashes, the color of autumn barley, were sinfully long, and she had a scattering of tender freckles on her nose. More dusted across the tops of her breasts.
She made it difficult for Ardahl to breathe, and for more than one reason.
He uttered no sound as she tended him. Occasionally she glanced up as if measuring his response to her touch, and their eyes met. Held.
She had beautiful eyes, did Liadan. Blue like Conall’s, like the sea on a clear day when it turned still and depthless. A beauty withal, was Conall’s sister.
But she was Conall’s sister. And she hated him.
When she finished her work, she sat back on her heels, still only a hand’s reach away.
“Did they do this to ye on the training field, batter ye this way?”
“Do no’ worry for me.”
“’Tis difficult to break the habit o’ worrying for someone once ye’ve begun.”
To Ardahl’s surprise, he smiled. “Ye be like my mam—one who cares for others. She is the finest woman I know.”
Her gaze clung to his. She tipped her head to one side. “Ye will be missing her.”
Ardahl had to clench himself tight against that thought. “I bade ye no’ to worry for me.”
“Nay. I should not. But—they are your own friends who battered ye on the training field.”
“They are Conall’s friends.”
“I see.”
Did she? Could she glimpse how he was feeling? Far more battered in spirit than in body. Sick with missing Conall. With missing his mam. His own fire, his own bed. The ease he used to know. The ability to hold his head up, having proved his worth.
All of that, gone. And those who had been his lifelong companions turned on him.
“I wish,” he said suddenly, speaking to her because there was no one else, “I could have him back even if for just a few moments, that I might ask him why. Why he raised a weapon to me. He, with whom I had scarcely so much as quarreled.”
Again Liadan’s gaze met his, this time with a hint of surprise. Her lips parted as if she would speak.
Instead she got to her feet, turned away. Ardahl felt the loss of her nearness like a cold wind.
“Eat your supper,” she told him, a faint quiver in her voice. “You may sleep there by the fire tonight.”
“My place is beside the door.”
“Aye, so it is. But not this night.”
They sat there, one of them on either side of the hearth, while he ate, listening to the rain crashing down. Liadan took nothing for herself, nor did she speak to him, but he could feel her in an odd way, as if the faint stirrings of the connection forged between them while she tended him still clung to their spirits.
Not a sound came from outside, besides the rain. It felt oddly isolating, as if, with the grieving woman asleep, they two were alone in the world.
It took Ardahl a long while to speak. In truth, he finished picking at his meal before he did.
“Mistress, I have no right to ask ye for anything more. But if ye would grant an act o’ charity—not for me, but for another who I know must be hurting—”
She started when he spoke, as if he’d interrupted some private reverie. Of grief, no doubt. Through the leaping flames she looked at him.
“Your mam?”
“Aye. I care naught for myself.” He could not allow that. Dornach was right—he must accept his fate however the gods bestowed it, and go on. “She will be desperate in her grief. If ye could find it in your heart to stop by her hut on the morrow. Make sure she is all right. She has no one now.”
He stopped abruptly. This woman who hated him would not care for his mother’s heart, would she?
Yet she had offered him care.
Roughly he said, “I have no right to ask it of ye.”
She did not speak. There was no sound but the rain pelting ever harder and the crackling of the flames. Despair touched Ardahl’s heart.
At last, Liadan sighed. “’Tis no’ easy for me to get away. To leave Mam.”
“To be sure.”
“Wi’ Flanna gone, I have no one to mind her.”
“I understand.”
“If I can—” She left it hanging, a mere whisper in the air between them.
“If ye may, ’twould be an act o’ great kindness, and I would be gey grateful. And if ye may—” Again he caught himself.
“What?”
“Tell her I love her.”