Chapter Thirty-Five
“Another round for my friend!” Dallan called, waving Maeve over and slapping Diarmid on the back.
Diarmid didn’t want another round. He didn’t really want much of anything. Except Cara, and even that he wasn’t certain about any longer. “Do you think we drink too much?” he asked no one in particular.
“Good God.” Conan nearly choked on his ale. “Alright, first, you know they water it down, right? It’s like we need to drink two cups to actually have one. And second, aren’t you the one who claims there’s no point to life if you don’t enjoy it?”
“It’s possible to enjoy things other than drinking,” Diarmid tried, wondering which of his friends would disagree first.
To his surprise, it was Finn, whom he’d always considered the most reasonable of the bunch aside from their fearless leaders. “It’s not possible to drink less while being hosted by an Ostman,” he said. He didn’t even sound like he jested. “My father always said drinking with a man is the best way to get his measure.”
“That, actually, explains a lot about Sitric,” Dallan replied, furrowing his brows as his dulled wits contemplated the idea. “At least you won the wager,” he added, his voice too cheery.
“That’s true!” Finn jumped on that small victory. “You don’t even have to pay for these drinks.”
“I didn’t actually.”
This time, Conan actually did spit out his drink. “What was that?”
“I went thirteen days,” he told them, desperately trying to keep the memories of Cara from intruding. “Not fourteen.”
Dallan swore an oath. “Truly?” his incredulous voice would’ve been fodder for teasing if the topic were different.
Only Finn didn’t look surprised.
“Does Sitric know?” Conan’s brows furrowed.
Diarmid did take a drink then. “He does.”
Silence descended as his three companions looked at one another. Diarmid couldn’t bear to see their faces, knowing he’d failed them as well.
He’d failed everyone, it seemed, though at least he hadn’t completely ruined their mission in the end. When none of them spoke, Diarmid couldn’t take it any longer. “I’m sorry I failed you,” he said, not meeting their gazes.
Every single one of them reached for him, Finn and Conan leaning across the table to give his shoulders an affectionate shake. “Don’t say that,” Conan ordered. “You’re a rogue and a drunkard, but I won’t let you lie. You did no such thing.”
“He’s right,” Dallan agreed. “Everything worked out in the end.”
Except it hadn’t.
Cara was marrying Sitric instead of Diarmid. She wouldn’t even have a civil conversation with him, believing that he left to bed another woman that night. Even if he had refuted it, she’d not have believed him.
Cormac hadn’t spoken with him since yesterday, at this same table. He’d finally been getting to know his eldest brother, the one who’d always been so different from him. Diarmid had managed to destroy that bridge before he’d even finished building it.
They were right, he supposed, that at least the mission had succeeded. When they arrived in Dyflin, Diarmid believed the only commitment he was capable of making was the oath he’d sworn to Brian, his oath into the Fianna.
As he sat listening to his friends try their hardest to cheer him, laughing and joking and celebrating their victory at The Broken Oar, Diarmid determined there was one other commitment he was prepared to make—a marriage to Cara.
With no hope of such an outcome before him, Diarmid supposed he’d have to make do with a successful mission for the Fianna. Though, at this point, he wouldn’t hesitate to exchange one for the other.
*
Cara sat inthe coziest chair in the seating area in front of her room, a warm woolen blanket draped over her and The History of the Trojan War cracked open in her lap. Astrid and Gormla had gone to the market in town, searching for silks that wouldn’t cost enough to give Sitric palpitations. The Fianna, apparently having enjoyed their adventure aboard the Ostman longships, hurried down to the harbor at daybreak to continue training, Sitric with them.
After speaking with Sitric yesterday, they’d returned to complete the betrothal at her behest. As per Brian’s wishes, when she married Sitric, he would become king of Thurles, her sister remaining as steward in Sitric’s absence. The kingdom, meager though it may be, would remain in their family, giving both Cara and her sister security after the debacle with Aodh and giving Sitric a position within Brian’s kingdom and a smattering of more fertile lands.
She should be thrilled to have achieved all that she’d hoped for and to have recovered some small part of herself along the way. Try though she may to be proud of her accomplishments, Cara felt wretched.
The door to Niamh’s room opened beside her, giving Cara a start. “You’re up late,” Cara commented, furrowing her brow. “Are you feeling alright?”
“Oh, aye,” Niamh replied gently, shutting her door behind her. “I stayed up too late last night.”
Cara nodded, looking back to the beautiful book in her lap. “I’m familiar with that problem.”
Niamh let out a soft laugh, grabbing herself a blanket on her way to the chair across from Cara. “I’ve not read that one all the way through,” she commented, pulling her legs up under her and draping the blanket over her lap. “Do fewer people die at the end than at the beginning?”
“More, actually,” Cara said.
“My father spent a fortune on a tutor. He was not terribly pleased when he learned I hadn’t finished all my reading.”
“I didn’t realize you were a noble.” Cara mentally chided herself for never having asked after Niamh’s family before. The woman had been tending her own family’s aches and pains for years. Cara realized then how little she knew about someone she’d lived beside for six years.
“Oh, I’m not,” Niamh replied hastily. “My father is a merchant.”
Cara wondered at that. She knew the healer lived in a cottage with her mother and maid—which, she realized belatedly, explained why Niamh and her mother had a lady’s maid. But she’d never heard of a father. And Niamh spoke as though he yet lived. “What happened to him?”
Niamh’s lips tightened. “I wouldn’t know,” she said. “He left.”
“I’m so sorry,” Cara told her. “I’m sure you were devastated—I cannot imagine it.” She’d fallen apart when Torna had left, and he’d been in her life but briefly. Cara couldn’t begin to fathom what she’d be like now if it had been her own father who left.
“Thank you.” Niamh wrapped her arms about her knees, which remained tucked tightly beneath her brown woolen blanket. “It made trusting people difficult,” she said, her voice oddly tentative. “With Dallan, for example, I was so afraid that he would leave me and break my heart that I left him before he had the chance.”
Ah. So that’s what she was getting after. Cara sighed, growing weary of everyone else giving her advice on Diarmid. “I’m glad that it worked out for you and Dallan,” she replied, “but I don’t see how it could for me. My family’s kingdom isn’t worth spending my life with a man who hurried to bed the first serving maid he could find.”
Niamh’s eyes narrowed. “Do you mean Maeve?”
“I do.” Cara’s chest tightened at the thought. “Everyone saw him there with her.”
“That’s what you believe happened? That he went down to the alehouse and bedded her?” Niamh shot out of her chair, laying the blanket over it and reaching for Cara. “Let’s go.”
Cara bristled at the unexpected command, but closed her book and stood, sensing Niamh wouldn’t relent until she cooperated. Moving far more leisurely than Niamh, Cara folded her blanket and walked her book back to the storage chest in her room.
“Where are we going?” she asked as Niamh strode toward the door.
“To the alehouse.”