Her heart twisted in her breast.
“Come. Sit where ye can get warm. I have made supper.”
Just the two of them, with Flanna still at Lasair’s house and Mam lost to sleep. A terrible silence fell between them as Liadan filled his bowl.
To break it more than anything else, she spoke. “It appears ye have had another rough day at training.”
He shrugged. “They will keep knocking me down until they tire of it. Or I cannot get up again.”
“I can scarce believe they have all turned on ye—those who were your good friends.”
He gave her a long look.Shehad turned on him. “Not all. There are a few who hold their tongues and their opinions.”
“Have ye hurts that need tending?” She could see that he had. An ugly abrasion covered one side of his jaw and the tattoo on one arm had been bisected by a scrape.
He shook his head. “Leave it be.”
“But—”
“Leave it be, mistress.”
They ate in silence for several moments, Liadan picking at her food. “I went to see your mam.”
That captured his attention. He laid his food aside and studied her intently. “How did ye find her?”
What to say? Would he want the truth? If she were him, she would want the truth.
“She suffers the loss. I do not doubt she longs to see ye. But she has faith in ye also—that you did not do this deed.” Liadan stumbled over those words.
He nodded somberly. His hair fell forward, half screening his face. “I worry for her alone. No one to do for her.”
In Liadan’s opinion, he should worry. She did not say so.
He raised his eyes to meet hers. “’Twas kind in ye to go to her, mistress. I appreciate it.”
“Whatever happened between ye and Conall, whatever quarrel took place, ’twas none of her doing.”
“We never truly quarreled. Never in all the years we were friends.”
“Then how? How did the knife end up in his heart?”
“Will ye believe me if I say again I do not know?”
“I cannot.”
“Then—there is no more to be said.”
Another silence fell, this one fraught. She did not need to defend herself. Not to him. He had been caught in the act, and her brother slain. Cathair had seen—
Her thoughts stumbled there. And who was Cathair? What did she think of him?
Foremost among the warriors, the great war chief Dornach’s assistant, and a force to be reckoned with. There had ever been something she could not like about him, though. A braggart, he was. Well, many of the clan’s warriors boasted of their deeds or paid Chief Fearghal’s bards to do so.
Except Ardahl. He had ever been humble despite the fact that he must by now rival Cathair for the place of first among Fearghal’s warriors.
That struck her forcefully. Cathair’s rival.
Nay.
