Chapter 13
It was more than a week later when Fiona stormed into the neat little garden, a fresh-carved spear in one hand, her brow drawn in its perpetual glower.
Caitlin glanced up and wondered if the girl's face would freeze that way one day.
She stifled a sigh and struggled to muster a smile for Niall's sister.
"I have finally unraveled what all this—this madness is about." Fiona waved the spear in the air. "My brother cannot fool me with all these acts of concern. The vile knave is trying to poison me!"
Caitlin could not help but laugh as she brushed the dirt from her hands. "Fiona, I am certain that he is not."
"And to make doubly certain he is plagued by me no longer, he has devised another plan in case the poison fails.
An unfortunate hunting accident when he is teaching me to throw this woman-sized spear!
" She cast the beautifully formed weapon into the pile of half-wilted weeds Caitlin had spent the morning uprooting.
Caitlin touched the fallen spear with an odd twinge, knowing it was as close as she would ever get to touching her father. "Fiona, Niall would never hurt you. Whatever could have given you such a crazed idea?"
"This is the third morning in a row I have come down to find a basket full of berries sitting at my place at the table.
I have pondered it long and hard, and there can be only one reason Niall put them there.
He has doubtless poured some potion over them to drug me insensible so he can bend me to his will! "
Caitlin laughed, shaking out the skirts of her leine as she stood. "For the love of the saints, Fiona—"
"And as if that is not villainous enough, there is the despicable way he is behaving toward our mother!" Fiona shuddered in pure outrage. "Do you have any idea what he has done to her?"
"I cannot begin to imagine."
"He has taken her to gather flowers!"
"An innocent enough pastime, I would think"
"He intends to place them upon our father's grave!" If the girl had accused Niall of tossing babies about on spear points, she could have seemed no more horrified.
A surge of sympathy squeezed Caitlin's chest—sympathy for this confused, angry girl, her bewildered mother, and the man who was taking his first steps across the chasm of hurt and betrayal that had kept him separated from them for so long.
"Perhaps it is time they both mourned," Caitlin suggested.
"Mourn? Niall hates our father. He has made no secret of it.
This is just a trick to put us off our guard.
Niall is Conn's son now! I should have guessed that it was only a matter of time before he resorted to the chieftain's ways.
Aye, lure your enemy in with a show of false kindness when he is most desperate, offer forgiveness like some sweet goblet of silver when he is dying of thirst, then the instant he starts to take a drink, yank the snare tight about his throat until he cannot breathe! "
Caitlin stared at her. "Do you truly believe Niall is capable of such treachery toward anyone? He is the most honorable man I have ever known."
"He is the only man you have ever known!
" Fiona scoffed. "Growing up in an abbey did not furnish you with many examples, I would imagine.
I have seen what men can do! The best—men like our old servant Keefe, who gave his hand, would have given his life to protect us.
Aye, and my father, with his courage and honor.
And I have seen the worst in the men who raided Daire.
" Fiona paced across a cluster of tiny parsnip shoots, so distraught she trampled several of her precious new plants.
She caught sight of the bedraggled little stems and cursed under her breath.
Wheeling, she glared at Caitlin in blatant accusation. "I knew how to treat Niall before. But now—" Something vulnerable stole into her eyes for a heartbeat before she shuttered it away.
"Now you are afraid?" Caitlin suggested. "For it would hurt you too terribly if the change in him was not real?"
Fiona bristled with denial. "I am not afraid! Niall is nothing to me anymore."
"If that is true, I am sorry for you both. I know you mean a great deal to him."
"Bah!" Fiona spat on the ground. "You are mad."
"The day I wandered off gathering plants, he—"
"Doubtless raged at you for daring to defy him."
"A little, at first," Caitlin admitted, surprised at the tender throb she felt in her breast at the memory. "He had been searching for me a long time, had feared for me. He takes too much responsibility upon himself."
"Tell me nothing about my brother's sense of responsibility, Caitlin! We have all but starved on it here at Daire."
The hard accusation was true, Caitlin knew, and yet it was far too simple to lay blame at Niall's feet.
What had happened between Fiona and Niall and the land that was their birthright was far more complex than either of them could admit.
The web of torn loyalties and betrayal and reluctant love was spun between them in a tangle that Caitlin had puzzled over through restless nights.
A tangle that still left her bewildered and aching for them all.
"I can only imagine what it was like for you, losing your father and brother, being left alone here to struggle to take care of your mother.
But I do know this—after Niall found me wandering the hills, he told me about the last day you all spent together as a family here, your mother's joy, your father's laughter.
He described the way you darted about the bushes gathering fistfuls of berries, remembered you could not eat enough of them.
When he spoke of you, I saw how vivid the memory was to him.
He recalled just how much you loved the berries so long ago.
Is it not possible that his gifts are telling you things he cannot say? "
Fiona fretted her bottom lip. "The only thing Niall can do for me now is to ride away from Daire, leave Mother and me as he found us! I want nothing from him."
"If that were true, you would have thrown his wooden sword into the fire, not kept it, safe, tucked upon your father's cairn so many years."
Fiona gaped, her cheeks flaming as if she had been caught in some shameful act. "How—how did you know?"
"Niall and I found the sword together. It is a beautiful place where your father sleeps, Fiona. So peaceful, well tended, filled with the love and memories you tried so hard to keep alive. After what I saw there, you will never make me believe that you had forgotten your brother."
"Nay!" Fiona said in a hard little voice. "I buried him there, in my heart, with my father. It was easier to pretend he was dead than admit that he left me behind on purpose and never even glanced back. The brother I knew is dead."
"He is alive, Fiona. And devoured by his guilt.
He was only a boy when Conn came to Daire, a helpless child just like you were, caught up in things he could not control.
He lost his father the same terrible way you did, but you still had your mother and Daire, fragments of their love all around you.
He was swept away from everything and everyone he had ever known. "
"You cannot expect me to give him sympathy?"
"He is not asking for your sympathy. Not even your forgiveness. All he is asking you to give him, Fiona, is a chance."
"A chance for what? To play at fairies and dragons again? A chance to bandage scraped knees and soothe my hurts? A chance to be part of the family he cast to the devil? It is not so simple to forget all that happened. You cannot begin to understand!"
"That is true. I never knew my family, and now I never will.
They are dead. It is too late for me. But not for you.
Niall meant to kill me in the woods that first night after we left the abbey.
I could still hate him for that. But I have not regretted for a moment offering him another chance.
He has shown me anger, aye, and impatience, but also great tenderness, a questing spirit, a desperate desire to do what is right.
He is a man with flaws like anyone, but he is a man who tries, Fiona. "
The girl stared at her, almost pouting, obviously torn. "But what if..."
"If he fails you again? Then you will be as you were when we found you—alone. But if you can mend things with Niall, heal this wound between you and your brother... think, Fiona. Neither of you will ever be alone again."
The girl swallowed hard, and, despite Fiona's best efforts to disguise it, Caitlin saw a flicker of hope in her face. "Is this how your nuns argue people out of lives of sin?"
Caitlin smiled. "I do not believe anyone could persuade you to do anything you did not want to do deep inside, Fiona. But if you sift through what I have said, if it feels right to you, then why not take this chance?"
Muttering imprecations on nuns, brothers, and perfectly good rages ruined, Fiona turned and walked away. Caitlin sighed, noting that Fiona strode determinedly in the opposite direction from the path Niall and his mother had taken earlier.
Stubborn and brave, bruised and still hurting, the girl tugged at Caitlin's heart almost as much as the stalwart man who was Fiona's brother, a man who had finally opened his heart to the most fragile sense of hope.
Twilight ran fingers of rose and gold across the green hills of Daire, setting their crests aglow.
Niall paused for a moment at his task. A rusted knife he had unearthed amidst the rubble of the castle mews days earlier was dulled with scraps of wood shavings as he gazed up at the countryside that had once been his home.
As the adored son of Ronan, he had been too busy about his mischief to take in the magic of this place.
And as Conn's fosterling, he had been too bitter to remember Daire with anything except shame.
But now, he saw the land as his father must have an eternity ago, with an unbidden welling of pride, an unwelcome ache at the rich gift of belonging to such a place.