Chapter Thirteen
A rdahl returned to the hut at the end of that day’s training carrying a number of new abrasions that caused Liadan to narrow her eyes. Another hard day he had passed with his fellow warriors, and no mistake. It made her wonder.
Were the young warriors with whom he drilled not supposed to be his friends, men who had known him life long? Were they so quick to turn on him?
Aye, and had she not known him most of her life also? He had spent as much of his time here in her mam’s hut as his own. Taken his meals here often. Fallen asleep by the fire.
She had been attracted to him then. Considered him the bonniest man to walk the face of the world. Had conspired to make him see her as more than a child. More than Conall’s wee sister.
As a woman.
She still considered him braw and handsome. As he quietly entered the hut with his hair hanging down his back in an auburn mane, moving with that quiet competence, and set his weapons just inside the door, her pulse quickened. Against her will, it did. She could no longer feel attracted to this man. Could not allow it.
He shot her one swift look from assessing eyes before glancing away.
“Mistress Liadan. How fares your lady mother?”
“Sleeping. Quiet, for now.” Dosed by Dathi’s draught. Liadan did not like that, but it was better than the endless weeping.
Weapons laid aside, Ardahl looked at his hands. “I am filthy. I will go wash.”
Liadan did not intend to follow him. She but remembered there was no clean cloth there at the washing place around the side of the hut, so she caught one up from those she’d washed earlier and headed out.
She caught Ardahl at his ablutions with his back to her, bent over the wooden basin. He’d had time already to strip off his tunic, so she had a clear view of him, the auburn waves of hair swept to one side. Broad shoulders narrowing to lean hips, clad in rough leggings that failed to disguise the play of muscles. A rash of abrasions. He’d been put down onto the turf a number of times this day.
He’d presumably fought his way up again.
Liadan froze as if an iron grip had seized her by the heart—or lower down.
Hearing something—surely not Liadan’s quiet step—he turned. Caught her standing there eyeing him.
The view from the front was even better than the other.
“A cloth. For drying.” She flung it at him and fled for the hut.
She must be mad to think of him that way. Still think of him that way. After he’d killed her brother.
Maeve’s words returned to her mind. My Ardahl would not have harmed a hair of Conall’s head. There must be some truth in it.
When she reentered the hut, her mam was stirring, whimpering in her sleep. Liadan went to soothe and provide comfort, and soon heard Ardahl come in behind her, nearly silent.
He would need to be fed. Might once more need his hurts tended. Suddenly, she wanted to weep.
She still hadn’t had a chance to do that. To weep properly for her brother. To throw herself down and sob as Mam had done.
She could not afford to give way. If she did, she might break entirely.
Mam subsided back into sleep and Liadan tiptoed out to find Ardahl seated beside the door. His place. That of a hound.
Her heart twisted in her breast.
“Come. Sit where ye can get warm. I have made supper.”
Just the two of them, with Flanna still at Lasair’s house and Mam lost to sleep. A terrible silence fell between them as Liadan filled his bowl.
To break it more than anything else, she spoke. “It appears ye have had another rough day at training.”
He shrugged. “They will keep knocking me down until they tire of it. Or I cannot get up again.”
“I can scarce believe they have all turned on ye—those who were your good friends.”
He gave her a long look. She had turned on him. “Not all. There are a few who hold their tongues and their opinions.”
“Have ye hurts that need tending?” She could see that he had. An ugly abrasion covered one side of his jaw and the tattoo on one arm had been bisected by a scrape.
He shook his head. “Leave it be.”
“But—”
“Leave it be, mistress.”
They ate in silence for several moments, Liadan picking at her food. “I went to see your mam.”
That captured his attention. He laid his food aside and studied her intently. “How did ye find her?”
What to say? Would he want the truth? If she were him, she would want the truth.
“She suffers the loss. I do not doubt she longs to see ye. But she has faith in ye also—that you did not do this deed.” Liadan stumbled over those words.
He nodded somberly. His hair fell forward, half screening his face. “I worry for her alone. No one to do for her.”
In Liadan’s opinion, he should worry. She did not say so.
He raised his eyes to meet hers. “’Twas kind in ye to go to her, mistress. I appreciate it.”
“Whatever happened between ye and Conall, whatever quarrel took place, ’twas none of her doing.”
“We never truly quarreled. Never in all the years we were friends.”
“Then how? How did the knife end up in his heart?”
“Will ye believe me if I say again I do not know?”
“I cannot.”
“Then—there is no more to be said.”
Another silence fell, this one fraught. She did not need to defend herself. Not to him. He had been caught in the act, and her brother slain. Cathair had seen—
Her thoughts stumbled there. And who was Cathair? What did she think of him?
Foremost among the warriors, the great war chief Dornach’s assistant, and a force to be reckoned with. There had ever been something she could not like about him, though. A braggart, he was. Well, many of the clan’s warriors boasted of their deeds or paid Chief Fearghal’s bards to do so.
Except Ardahl. He had ever been humble despite the fact that he must by now rival Cathair for the place of first among Fearghal’s warriors.
That struck her forcefully. Cathair’s rival.
Nay.
It could not be. No one, not even Cathair with all his arrogance, would do anything so treacherous.
She had it all wrong. Her heart did. Ardahl MacCormac was a serpent.
She needed to keep that in mind.
*
Ardahl slept beside the door that night. The cold came in under the leather curtain and all his wounds stung. None of that bothered him so much as his thoughts.
His near-crazed thoughts.
He had never wanted much from life. At least, he didn’t believe so. Just to work hard to rise among Fearghal’s warriors. To prove he’d been right to take a different path from his father and turn his back on the chariots. To take care of his mother following Da’s death. To spend time with Conall.
All of that, now gone. He’d become a pariah among his fellow warriors. Forbidden to care for Mam.
Conall, gone from him.
Lying there as the night dragged past, he relived it over and over again. Conall turning upon him, there on the training field. The sheer rage and—aye—betrayal in his eyes. The knife blade coming at him.
He had reacted with pure instinct. Had he directed that blade into Conall’s heart?
If so—if so, it had not been by intention.
Why had Conall been so angry? Why had he turned upon Ardahl that way? Ardahl would have bet his life such a thing could never happen.
He had near lost his life.
Mayhap ’twould have been better if he had. Better than what he now endured. For he had no way to defend himself. No way to make it right. He had to live with the scorn of all who knew him.
The hate and despair in Mistress Liadan’s eyes.
Near morning, her mother came awake there on Conall’s bed and began again with her sobbing. Weeping and lamenting anew. Ardahl had to lie and listen while Liadan rose and sought to comfort the woman. The lass was patient and caring, he would give her that. But he could hear the weariness in her voice. The tears that threatened.
She did not want to dose her mam again. As well she had sent her young sister away from this, to seek some peace elsewhere.
He lay till he could bear it no longer before rising, taking up his weapons, and going out to await the dawn.