Aoife forced a smile. “So I have to make the best of it. I’ll sneak food out to the woods, if you can find a way to get it to the village.”
“That I can do.” Cormac said, biting off another chunk of bread.
“And I’ll keep working on Halverton.”
He gave her that look again, the one that said she was too naive. “Even after your conversation with Alton, you still haven’t realised you can’t change a man like him? You’ve done well getting anything out of him at all. A few small mercies. But you can’t undo what he is.”
She crossed her arms, more to hold herself together than to argue. “I don’t think anyone’s born cruel. Something made him this way, and if I can figure out what that is, maybe I can fix it.”
“Maybe,” Cormac tried to shrug, then hissed as pain sliced through him.
Aoife moved to check his shoulder.
“I’m all right.”
Aoife relaxed again.
“Aoife, some people don’t want to be fixed.”
***
Cormac fell asleep after that. Aoife took out her mother’s book and looked for anything she might have missed that would help Cormac heal faster. She hadn’t been reading long when there was another knock at the door.
Aoife’s heart jumped. She shot out of her chair and rushed toward the door to make sure whoever it was couldn’t barge in. She glanced toward the bed, her hand resting on the doorknob. Cormac was still dozing.
“Miss Aoife?” came Mrs Harrow’s calm voice. “Might I have a word?”
Aoife hesitated, then cracked the door open enough to see the housekeeper’s lined face and folded hands. “Of course,” she said. “Shall we walk?”
Mrs Harrow inclined her head. Aoife slipped out, closing the door behind her without ever opening it fully.
They walked side by side down the corridor, their footsteps soft against the carpet. Mrs Harrow said nothing for a long time. The silence stretched. Why had she come?
At last, the older woman spoke. “I think it’s time you knew a little more about Edward,” Mrs Harrow paused. “About Lord Halverton’s past,” she said, correcting herself. It was the first time Aoife had heard his given name.
Aoife slowed her pace. “Oh? You said some stories weren’t yours to tell.”
Mrs Harrow looked toward the window, rain dripping softly from the eaves. When she spoke again, her voice was low.
“Aye. And perhaps they aren’t.”
A breath.
“But sometimes… keeping a story secret does more harm than telling it. I’d hoped he’d tell you himself. It would help to understand him more if you knew what he’d been through.”
Aoife waited for the housekeeper to continue, but Mrs Harrow took a moment. Whether choosing her words carefully or hesitating over making the confessions Aoife wasn’t sure.
“He wasn’t always like this,” Mrs Harrow said at last. “When he was small, he used to follow me about. I was a maid in his father’s house, you see. He’d follow me from room to room, asking endless questions about what I was doing, my little shadow.”
Aoife had done the same as a child, shadowing her mother wherever she went. Asking about the herbs she was mixing, the treatment she was applying. She found it hard to imagine Halverton as a child, harder still to imagine him interacting with the maids.
“He was always clever, even as a boy. He was sent away to the best schools, the best university. It was clear to all he was destined for great things and then… Well…”
Mrs Harrow paused, and Aoife waited, longing to hear the story she was sure the housekeeper was on the cusp of telling her. The story that would explain him.
“You’ve heard of the insurrection at Dún Maebh?”
Aoife nodded, startled by the apparent change of topic. Of course she had heard of the insurrection. Unrest in the capital city had exploded into violence on the streets. Normal people fed up with Eldrossi control. A spontaneous outpouring of anger at an oppressive regime that had quickly been crushed.
