Chapter 15 #4
"Aye." Caitlin squeezed the word through a throat tight with unshed tears.
She could scarce bear the feel of his hungry gaze upon the circle of gold, wanted to wrap her fingers tight about the bracelet, hide it away from this slavering pig.
But he snatched the bracelet away from her, smudging the gold, running his fingers over the magnificent craftsmanship with sickening avarice.
Gormley spit, nearly striking the tip of Fiona's toes.
"The little rat can live for all I care.
" He polished the bracelet against his grimy sleeve.
"A thousand thanks, fairy queen," he said with a nod toward Caitlin.
"You can be certain I will not be forgetting you if I live longer than the sun itself.
" He chuckled. "When your brother comes back to Daire, Fiona, be sure to send him to this lady's fairy lair.
Is that not the kind of quests Niall of the Seven Betrayals is said to perform?
Slaying fairy kings and giants while he lets his sister rot alone? "
"You have what you came for," Caitlin snapped, unable to bear the torment on Fiona's face. "Leave before I decide to take the bracelet back."
Gormley chuckled. "As if you could take this from me!”
But then, as if thinking twice about losing his treasure, he flung Fiona to the floor and disappeared into the hall.
The girl sprawled across the floor, the rough stone raking her left cheek.
Blood welled in the wake of a nasty scrape.
Caitlin tried to help her up, intending to dab the blood away, but the girl jerked her arm free.
"What did you do that for?" Fiona demanded, scrambling to her feet. "I owed that fat wretch nothing after all he stole from Daire!"
"That may be, but he did not agree with you. He would have seen you dead, Fiona. God knows what he would have done to you!"
"The day I cannot outwit a knave like Gormley is the day I will cast myself from the castle roof. What were you thinking, plunging in like a witling? Now look what you have done!"
"I know I should not have let him see me, but—"
"See you? You might as well have had heralds announce your presence to half of Ireland when you gave him that bracelet.
No one hereabouts has anything half so fine since Castle Daire fell into ruin.
And for someone here to be casting such a treasure into someone else's hands—thunder and fire, the whole countryside will be talking about nothing else soon, what with Gormley, braggart that he is, thrusting the thing under everyone's nose! "
Fiona might even have seemed furious, if her voice had not cracked just a little bit. "Caitlin, do you know what you have done?"
Sick with a sense of doom, Caitlin swallowed hard. "I could not let him take you away."
"You might as well have done. When Niall discovers what happened today, he will kill me himself. That is, after he has ground your bones to dust between his teeth!"
"He will be angry, but once he hears the tale, he will know there was nothing else to do."
"Aye, there was. Plenty." Fiona regarded her with a suddenly solemn face. "You could have kept yourself hidden, waited for Niall to return, or see if there was some way to get me out of Gormley's clutches without putting yourself in danger. It is what I would have done."
"Fiona, you know you would have helped me."
The girl nibbled at her lip, a sad self-reckoning darkening her downcast eyes. "I have not stayed alive this long by hurling myself into danger on behalf of a near stranger, Caitlin. I learned early that I could barely hope to take care of Mother and myself."
Caitlin's chest ached as she saw the desolation in the girl's face, knew what Fiona said was true.
Regret softened Fiona's features with self-blame.
Caitlin cupped the girl's wind-chapped cheeks in her palms, saw Fiona gaze up at her, still amazed by what she had sacrificed moments before.
"I am sorry that you have been so long alone," Caitlin said softly.
Fiona's throat worked convulsively, and Caitlin knew there were tears in her eyes for just a heartbeat before the girl willed them away. "I like to be alone," Fiona said, her chin jutting out in a pale copy of her usual defiance.
"I might as well take poor Boann out to the pasture now," the girl said with a shrug. "I thought if you heard the lowing in the night, I could say it was a ghost, but it was going to be bloody hell dragging armfuls of grass all the way back here without you or Niall growing suspicious."
With that, the girl went to the cow, leading her out by the crooked horn. Caitlin listened to the sound of hooves upon the stone, felt them echo, hollow in her heart.
Eyes stinging, she pushed back the sleeve of her leine and stared down at her naked wrist. Strange, she had had the bracelet for such a short time, yet it had become a part of her, the one tangible link to the parents she would never know.
A life for a life, she thought. Niall had bought her life with everything he owned, with his past and his future.
He had initiated her into a world of passion she had never hoped to know, compelled her to love him.
Surely, a simple bracelet was not too much for her to give in return when his sister was in peril.
And yet... she shivered with sadness and loss and resignation. God help Fiona and Caitlin herself when Niall learned what they had done.