“If ye may, ’twould be an act o’ great kindness, and I would be gey grateful. And if ye may—” Again he caught himself.
“What?”
“Tell her I love her.”
Chapter Twelve
Folk stared whenLiadan made her way through the settlement. Some stole furtive, curious glances. Some shot her sympathetic ones. A few stepped forward and delayed her to express their shock and grief at Conall’s passing.
She wondered how long it would take for his killing to cease being the center of every conversation. A long while, she should think. For now it would be on every lip, the topic of discussion in the council chamber and the warriors’ hall.
That her brother’s death should become a matter of gossip!
But that was the way of their folk. They spoke of status and standing. They reached for it and they lived by it. Chief Fearghal’s bards, for he had two of them, both aged, sang of it and told stories in his hall of his ancestors. How great they had been. How high.
How never had they brought shame upon their blood.
That made her think again of Ardahl MacCormac. The way he’d looked at her in the firelight last night when she tended him. The wound in his eyes.
She hated him, aye. But she was not an unfeeling woman. The gods knew, she often felt too much.
She’d seen pain in Ardahl’s eyes, aye. Pain that brought her out on this damp, cloudy morning after Flanna had stopped by to collect a few of her belongings.
“Stay wi’ Mam, will ye?” she had bidden her sister. “I have an errand to run.”
When Flanna, clearly reluctant, gazed into Conall’s sleeping place, Liadan had assured her, “Mam still sleeps. I dare not leave her alone, is all.”
So she could not take long over this errand. She dared not.
Last night’s rain had ceased but the air struck chill, and mist rose from the sodden ground. Maeve’s hut sat on the far side of the settlement and at a distance.
When Liadan arrived, the place looked deserted, the door tight shut, not so much as a glimmer of light showing from within.
She very nearly turned and went back home. Something stopped her. With a look over her shoulder for the staring faces, she stepped up and rapped the doorframe.
No answer.
“Mistress MacCormac?” she called.
The leather curtain wiggled as it was untied and swept aside.
Maeve MacCormac did not appear well. For as long as Liadan had known her—near all her life—she’d been a well-kept woman, quiet and unassuming yet always neat. She had a look of her son, Liadan decided, standing there facing her. The same red-brown hair and eyes that nearly matched. She might have been a beauty once.
Now her hair, loosely bundled, billowed around her pale face. Her clothing appeared to have been slept in, and a frown of pain hovered between her eyes.
“Mistress MacCormac? Be ye well?”
The woman said nothing. Hastily, Liadan eased her back from the doorway and into the hut.
Her heart fell at the state of the place. Ash choked the hearth, and no flame showed there. Items lay strewn about, dishes and pots. A ewer lay on its side. The air had a musty smell.
“Liadan?” Maeve MacCormac’s gaze clung to her. “What is amiss? Is it my son?”
“He sent me, aye. He worries for ye.” And with good reason, so it seemed. A death might as well have occurred here, from appearances.
It struck Liadan that must be the weight of loss Maeve MacCormac now bore.
“Has aught happened to him?”
