Chapter Thirty-Four
She read the entire damned book that night. Devoured the illuminated pages as she saw the story she so loved brought to life before her eyes. Achilles’ hair shimmered gold, the shields and armor a brilliant bronze. When she looked at the deep blue of the water as the Greek ships sailed to Troy, she could almost feel it lapping at her skin, the warm sun on her face. Every character could be found somewhere within those magical pages.
When she read, Cara disappeared. She forgot all about betrothals and marriages and princes and kings—her princes and kings, anyway. It was just her and the story.
So when she turned the final page, closing the cover with a sigh, disappointment crept through her at the prospect of returning to her actual life. Yet, it must be done. She stood, placing the book back in its wrappings and storing it safely in the chest by her bed, her heart aching as she thought of the man who’d gifted it to her.
Directly following the morning meal, Cara, Sitric, Illadan, Cormac, Broccan, and Gormla met in the great hall, sitting at one end of a long trestle table. Illadan, Cormac, and Broccan represented Brian in the contract; Gormla sat in to aid Sitric. For the first time since he’d left on the raid, Diarmid’s absence was palpable, following her even when he was nowhere to be found.
She wondered what would have happened, had she chosen him. Would they have sat here today, she and Diarmid and all the rest of them, negotiating some alternate contract? Would they have needed to send word to Brian first? Whatever they discussed, she knew Diarmid would be grinning at her. Just like he always had.
She was being ridiculous, she reminded herself again.
“Cara?” Cormac’s voice intruded on her outrageous stream of thoughts.
Lord, she’d missed the entire conversation. “Excuse me,” she said, “I’m afraid I didn’t sleep well.” Or at all. “Could you repeat that?”
“Could you give us a minute, please?” Sitric asked, rising and offering his hand to Cara. “We’ll be back before you miss us,” he told the others with an easy smile.
They stepped out of the hall into a blistering eastern wind, a harbinger of the coming storm. Cara considered asking if she could return for a cloak when Sitric stepped into one of the smaller halls further back on the property. Built in the same style as the two larger ones, but a quarter of their size and with only one door.
“These are for various purposes,” Sitric explained, holding the door for her and closing it tightly behind them. “When we have guests like Brian, especially if he travels with his wife, we offer these cottages for their use. Or, as we are doing, I use them for private meetings when I don’t want anyone in the hall listening in.”
“Is something the matter?” Cara asked, unable to decipher Sitric’s unusual behavior. Granted, she found a good deal of his behavior unusual, but pulling her from such an important meeting and taking leisure time to speak in a cottage felt especially odd.
Sitric moved about the room, lighting the four braziers that stood, one in each corner. “You tell me.”
“Do you mean my misstep at the meeting?” she asked. “I really did get very little sleep. I’m terribly sorry that I wasn’t paying attention.”
“Don’t be,” he replied, his manner so easy she could forget he was a king. “It was so tedious it nearly put me to sleep,” he teased. “Why did you get so little sleep?”
Cara rolled her lips, considering whether or not to tell him the truth. “I was reading,” she admitted sheepishly.
“The book Diarmid brought you?”
She nodded.
“Did you enjoy it?”
“Very much,” she replied honestly. “If you don’t mind my asking, why are we here? I’m certain it’s not to talk about my irresponsible reading habits.”
Sitric chuckled, taking a seat on the bed—a near duplicate of the one in her room. “In an odd sort of way, it is, actually.”
What in the world did that mean? Cara inclined her head questioningly.
“When was the last time you stayed up all night reading a book?”
Cara thought a moment. “Honestly, I can’t recall. It must have been while I was still a child, having just learned my letters.”
“Precisely,” Sitric told her. “You are responsible to a fault, to my thinking. I could sense it when we met, and it was one of the things that made me believe we would not be a good match.”
“Are you saying that you like me more now because I stayed up too late?” Cara couldn’t scrape together a direction from any of his random questions.
“Hear me out,” he pleaded, his voice quiet, insistent. “If you never do this, why now? Why last night? What kept you reading?”
“I was enjoying the story,” Cara answered, feeling that much was obvious.
“You’ve read it a hundred times. It couldn’t only be that.”
Cara hesitated. “And, it kept me from worrying about…everything else.”
“Aha!” Sitric stood, now pacing the small room with his hands behind his back, as though solving the world’s greatest mystery. “My final question,” he promised. “What thoughts were distracting you so at the discussion just now? Your honest answer, Cara.”
The way he said it, Cara could tell he already had his suspicions. So she gave him her honest answer. “Diarmid,” she whispered, her chest filling with guilt.
“Don’t worry yourself over injuring my feelings. I like you,” he said, his deep voice filled with kindness, “but I never loved you. I simply thought that one day I could.”
“Did Diarmid put you up to this?”
“No,” Sitric chuckled. “He wished me well in my marriage and apologized for the four hundredth time for romancing my future wife. If he tries to apologize again, I may actually punch him, but not for the transgression. Just to end the interminable apologizing.”
“I appreciate your understanding and kindness through this mess that we’ve made,” Cara told him, “but I’m certain I’ve made the right choice.”
“You stay up all night reading the book he brought you to keep yourself from thinking about him. Then, when you’re forced to do anything else, you can’t stop thinking about him long enough to have a conversation that will determine your future. I’m not so certain you did make the right choice, and I felt obligated to point it out before this went too far.”
Cara couldn’t possibly change her mind now, even if she wanted to. Which she didn’t. “What of the runes?” she challenged, knowing how he trusted them. “They agreed with me.”
Sitric flashed her a grin that put her in mind of Diarmid. Again. “They didn’t, actually.”
“What?”
“I planned to go along with whatever you said,” Sitric admitted. “But the way they fell, they very clearly told me you should marry Diarmid. And, I must say, I’m inclined to believe them.”