13. Chapter Thirteen
Chapter thirteen
Aingeal meant to speak to Donal after the morning meal. She walked the lower hall with a sheaf of accounts in her hand and Tomas at her shoulder. “Where is Praddig?” she asked.
“Padraig rode west to secure the grain roads,” Tomas explained, studying a ledger.
“My lady,” a breathless messenger skidded to a halt before her, “your cousin has arrived.”
For one suspended heartbeat, Aingeal only stared. The day had begun at a punishing pace, and she had no patience for riddles. Then the meaning struck.
étaín.
The accounts shifted in her grip. A smile broke over her face.
Tomas, with the quick intelligence of a man who knew her well, took the papers from her hand and stepped neatly aside.
Aingeal did not walk. She crossed the hall at a pace just short of running.
The great doors stood open to the courtyard. Pale afternoon light spilled across damp stones.
étaín Ní Néill stood near the outer stair with dust on her cloak and laughter already alive in her face. She turned at the sound of the doors, and the instant she saw Aingeal, her whole expression lit as though someone had set a candle behind her skin.
She was beautiful.
Aingeal thought it every time she saw her, and every time it landed freshly.
étaín’s beauty was never still. It did not command a room into silence.
It warmed it and invited it nearer. Her chestnut hair had loosened from its braid in soft, wind-curled strands.
Her blue eyes laughed before her mouth did.
“Aingeal!” étaín came toward her in a rush of skirts, cold air, and travel-worn leather.
Aingeal met her halfway. They collided hard enough to make Aingeal stagger, then both laughed as arms wrapped tight and held.
Her cousin’s embrace was as familiar as home. Horse, dust, lavender oil, winter wind. Relief moved through Aingeal with such force it was almost irrational. “You took too long,” Aingeal said.
étaín drew back and framed Aingeal’s face between gloved hands. “I came as fast as roads, weather, and men permitted, which means I deserve hot ale and admiration.”
“You deserve a bath.”
“I always deserve a bath. I also deserve admiration.”
Aingeal laughed, low and helpless and real.
The courtyard changed around them. Servants pretended not to stare and failed.
A young guard grinned openly when étaín greeted him by name despite not having seen him in more than a year.
Brennach, who had followed at a slower pace, stood with his arms folded and the expression of a man grimly prepared to resist delight and already losing.
étaín saw him at once. “Brennach, you old crow.”
“Lady étaín,” he grunted.
She kissed his weathered cheek.
He bore it with the stoicism of a man who had long since accepted that resisting étaín was futile and faintly ridiculous.
The whole yard seemed to lean toward her. People straightened when she looked at them. Faces softened. Voices warmed. étaín had that rare gift: she made people feel more alive simply by treating them as though they mattered.
Aingeal had loved her for that since childhood. For that, and for a hundred other things. For slipping into her chamber after her father died and refusing to leave until she slept. For laughing at the exact right moment. For never mistaking gentleness for weakness.
“You look tired,” étaín said, still holding Aingeal’s wrists.
“And you look impossible.”
“That is because I rode for days and still outshine everyone in this yard.”
“Modesty was never among your virtues.”
“No,” étaín said cheerfully. “But being correct often is.”
Aingeal was still standing in that warmth when she felt another presence draw near.
Donal.
He had crossed from the training space by the armory, the bandage hidden beneath his sleeve. He stopped a few paces away, waiting with that contained courtesy of his.
Aingeal’s heart gave one abrupt, treacherous leap. The joy in her did not lessen.
étaín followed her gaze and turned.
Donal bowed. “Lady étaín.” His voice was grave and even.
étaín looked at him with the bright, open interest most men found impossible to resist.
And why should they? étaín looked at people as if she expected them to be interesting, as if she meant to discover the best of them if given time. The world adored her for it.
Aingeal had never begrudged that before.
“This,” étaín said, “must be Sir Donal O’Raida.”
“I am at your service.”
“Such a solemn answer. You may do better later, when the road has not shaken all the charm out of me.”
Brennach made a low sound that might have been a strangled laugh.
Donal did not quite smile.
Aingeal saw the smallest shift at the corner of his mouth. Not amusement exactly. Awareness of étaín and of the eyes on them.
“A long road does not usually improve a man’s wit,” he said. “I would not trust its effect on charm.”
étaín laughed.
Aingeal stood very still. It was nothing. A harmless exchange. Courtesy meeting courtesy, wit answered with measured wit. Yet the sight of them together, étaín all warmth and motion, Donal all reserve and shadowed stillness, struck some hidden place inside her.
étaín asked where he had ridden from. He answered with careful economy, enough and no more. She asked whether the roads south of the marsh swallowed horses whole as songs claimed, whether the south was as damp as the north. He answered each time with quiet distance, neither encouraging nor cold.
It should have soothed Aingeal, but it did not.
She did not tell étaín that Donal was meant to leave before vows. She did not tell her that the pact had shifted, that none of it was simple, that she had kissed him the night before, or that all morning she had been trying not to think stay as if the word might draw itself into being.
Instead, she said, too briskly, “étaín, you are cold and dusty, and if I do not get you indoors at once, you will charm the household into neglecting its work.”
“Too late,” étaín said. “They are already ruined.”
The servants laughed.
Aingeal was absurdly grateful. She drew her cousin toward the hall.
Donal stepped aside to let them pass. As they did, his gaze met Aingeal’s for the briefest instant.
Inside, warmth closed around them. Servants appeared with towels, hot ale, questions, and smiles. étaín answered all of it with such easy delight that within moments she had three maids laughing, a kitchen boy blushing, and Tomas looking both exasperated and amused.
At first, Aingeal was only glad. Glad for her cousin’s voice in the castle. Glad for the way even Brennach’s heavy face softened when étaín threatened to braid his beard in his sleep.
But as the afternoon lengthened, something else threaded itself through the gladness.
A sudden awareness of how much she had to lose.
étaín wanted to see everything: hall, gardens, her old chamber, the repaired walls, the new boys in the yard. She wanted broth, gossip, news of marriages, deaths, and scandals. Aingeal, laughing despite herself, gave her nearly all of it.
Yet even in those easy hours, she found herself listening for Donal. His voice in the lower court. A murmur near the hall when Tomas asked about the eastern path.
Each time, Aingeal’s attention betrayed her and turned.
Each time, étaín noticed and curiosity sparked.
Aingeal had seen it: the way étaín’s eyes sharpened when his name was mentioned, the way she listened when Tomas spoke of his usefulness on the border, the way she glanced toward the yard where he stood with Seamus and two boys.
It was only curiosity.
That was what Aingeal told herself.
Only curiosity.
At supper, the hall sat easier after the raid had passed without fresh alarm. Benches were full, voices warm, the fire built high against the damp cold outside.
Aingeal sat with étaín near enough that their sleeves brushed. Donal sat at Aingeal’s right, the place they had chosen so the castle would grow used to seeing them aligned.
étaín noticed.
Her gaze passed from Aingeal to Donal and back in a flash of understanding too quick for anyone else. Then she smiled and turned to her broth.
Aingeal hated being watched so closely, but hated even more that she could not conceal it.
The meal was half over before étaín spoke directly to Donal. The subject was small: a southern road washed out beyond the marsh, a rider delayed two days by bogged ground. Yet the exchange drew Aingeal’s awareness taut.
“You have traveled those roads?” étaín asked.
“I have traveled enough roads to distrust most of them.”
“That is not the same answer.”
“No,” he said. “It is only the safer one.”
étaín laughed.
Donal’s eyes held the attentive stillness he had when he listened in earnest.
And Aingeal, against all sense, felt the first true stab of jealousy. It coiled in her gut like a snake. It was not large, but she knew the shape of it at once and feared what it could become.
étaín had done nothing wrong.
Donal had invited nothing.
But étaín was easy to love. Donal was difficult to know.
And Aingeal had not been chosen before. Shame followed immediately. She lowered her gaze to her plate and forced herself to answer Tomas when he asked about winter oats.
Beside her, étaín said something that made Brennach snort and the servants hide smiles. Donal answered in one of those dry, restrained ways that revealed almost nothing and somehow invited another question.
Aingeal looked up despite herself.
étaín bright beneath torchlight, impossible not to notice.
Donal grave beside her brightness, all shadow and reserve.
For the first time since the kiss, Aingeal understood with cold clarity that hope had a price.
If she wanted him, if she dared imagine asking him to stay, then she had given the world a place where it could wound her.