"The bard claims that what other men saw with their eyes, Fintan saw with his heart. It is said Fintan had a rival for Grainne's love, and when she chose your father, the other man was so maddened with jealousy he blinded Fintan while he slept so he would never again see her face. Knowing what the loss would cost the proud warrior she loved, Grainne went to the fairies and offered to surrender her own sight if they would restore Fintan's to him. Her tears so moved the fairies, they took pity on the lovers and cast an enchantment upon Fintan."
"Do not." Caitlin squeezed the words through a tight throat. "Do not spin stories trying to make me feel better."
"You do not believe me? I cannot blame you. I would scarce have believed it myself, except that one of his spear casts kept an enemy from cleaving my skull in two with a battle axe. I saw the miracle of Fintan's gift with my own eyes."
"And my mother? Did you know her?"
He looked uncomfortable and more than a little defiant. "She was like you—dark-haired,blue eyes. Yet even she was not so..." His gaze traced Caitlin's features. He stopped. "She might have been kind to me if I allowed her. But all I could see in her beauty was the poison that killed my father."
Caitlin's lips trembled, her eyes burned. He glared at her for an instant in alarm.
"You want to know about your parents?" he asked, gruff. "I can tell you this. I once heard your father say that he had been struck blind because she was... all the light he would ever need."
His eyes peered into hers, sparking with something almost like hope, as if he expected something from her. Approval for the tale he had spun? Gratitude for the story he had told? Something she could not give him.
Her throat ached, and this time she did not even try to hide the tears.
"Perhaps that was why they did not need me," Caitlin said in a small voice.
She curled her arms tight about her, imagining such a great love, a love that had never been shared with her. The bracelet cut into her wrist as she wrestled with betrayal, a child's endless wondering about what terrible flaw she had that enabled them to abandon her, forget her. And nowthey were dead. She would never be able to ask them, make things right.
Niall rose, and she was surprised to feel the woolen folds of his cloak swirl about her shoulders. It was warm from his body, smelling of wind and earth, horse, and a feint scent that was all Niall's own.
She did not protest. She only lay down on the ground, curling herself beneath the folds of wool to hold back the pain.
Chapter 4
She was finally asleep. The shuddering of her breath as she fought to hide her tears had quieted. The fingers that had clenched on the edge of his cloak unfurled. The knowledge that the woman was resting at last should have afforded Niall some relief. But it seemed his conscience would not.
What had Conn been thinking, sending Niall on this quest? If the chieftain had searched for a hundred years, he could not have found a task Niall of the Seven Betrayals was less suited to perform.
Conn should have sent an entourage to fetch Caitlin from the abbey, a retinue manned by courtly guards skilled in easing the fears of asheltered young woman. Perhaps Declan. Niall closed his eyes, picturing the burly flame-haired warrior who was the closest thing Niall had ever had to a friend.
Declan, the vicious scar on his face scarce visible once he uttered his hearty laugh, his merry eyes tempting anyone nearby to see life as a grand adventure. Declan would have known exactly what to say to the woman. He would not have spilled out the news that her family was dead. He would not have let her weep silent tears alone. He would have found a way to comfort her.
Yet even if Conn had sent Declan, Caitlin needed a woman nearby, some female to wait upon her, soothe her during the first distressing hours after she was torn from the only home she had ever known. Prepare her as only another woman could for her entry into court.
Even the most dull-witted man in Ireland should have guessed what a woman like Caitlin would need on this journey, and Conn, with his near-legendary wisdom, should certainly have known it would be disaster with no one except Niall to see to the girl.
Niall's gaze was unwillingly drawn yet again to Caitlin's profile, pale and perfect against thedark backdrop of cloak. One hand was tucked beneath her cheek like a child's, black ringlets and fingers of shadow tracing her fair skin in patterns like the mystic writings on stone. Silky lashes curled upon the crest of her cheek, her lips slightly parted.
She might have been a fairy maid asleep in her woodland bower were it not for the dried tears on her cheek and the way she curled her lithe body, tight, as if to guard against another blow.
A blow like the one he had dealt her when he had told her that her parents were dead. Niall winced. Why had he opened his accursed mouth in the first place? He was supposed to guard her, not talk to her, by the blood of Cuchulain!
But no, he had not kept quiet. He had not let her babble on about mothers and fathers she had never seen until she tired of the subject.
He had charged into catastrophe carelessly as a moonstruck lad into an enemy's ambushing sword, and he had thrashed about until Caitlin had emerged, bloodied, not in the flesh but in a deeper place, where emotions dwelled.
He had hurt her, and yet... how could he have let her ride into Conn's fortress with dreams in her face for everyone to see? How could he have let her learn the truth with countlessstrangers looking on? The mean-spirited among them eager to see the daughter of mighty Fintan fall? It would have given any enemies she might make a terrible weapon to use against her in the days to come. And with her beauty, her grace, her lineage, exalted as the stars, there would be plenty of people at Glenfluirse ready to hate her.
Not that they would ever be honest enough to let her see—no, they would use their wit to flay her so subtly, she would not even know they had struck until she glanced down to see she was bleeding.
Why did that image even now have the power to stir something hot and poisonous in his veins, a kind of anger he had never allowed himself to feel? He shoved it back. He had no time for such emotions. They stole a man's concentration, could distract him from his goal. And there was no way Niall could afford that.
He stared into the flames, hard, remembering every insult that had been heaped upon him. Even with Conn's kindnesses, the gaping hole within Niall had remained year after year, filled with the shame and horror of his father's betrayals.
In Niall's place, most men would have riddenfar away from Ireland, taken a new name to escape such a poisonous lineage.
