Sir Donal. The man from the south. The man the council had chosen. The man she had agreed, unwillingly, to marry.
Heat flashed through her. Then cold. She searched his face for some sign that he had not known who she was in the field, that this had all been chance and awkwardness and nothing more. But his expression remained measured. Controlled. He looked not like a man caught by unpleasant truth, but like one who had expected consequence and resolved to meet it in silence.
So, fate had not sent a stranger into her path.
It had sent her future.
The rest of the ride passed in a courtesy so strained it might as well have been hostility. Neither of them spoke again before the castle rose ahead, gray and severe against the dimming light. They passed through the gate.
Aingeal dismounted without looking at him and handed Bríd’s reins to the waiting groom. “Thank you,” she said.
He gave a brief nod. “My lady.”
That small, courteous answer scraped along her temper. She whirled away at once and went to find Seamus in the barracks yard.
The scent of sweat, leather, and iron permeated the air. Men shouted. A cuirass struck the ground with a clang that echoed off the walls.
Seamus spoke with three guards when he spotted her. He dismissed the men and followed her toward the shelter of the eastern wall where ivy crept between the stones and the noise of the yard dulled.
Only then did she face him. “Why did you not tell me who he was?”
Seamus’s expression shifted at once. “Sir Donal,” he said quietly. “You gave me no chance.”
Her fists clenched inside her cloak. “What game is he playing? He knew. You must have told him who I was.”
Seamus hesitated just long enough to answer her without words.
“And yet he spoke to me on the road as though I were any passing noblewoman. In town, he kept his distance. He did not court me. He did not even acknowledge what this is.” She spread one hand in a tight, furious gesture. “Is this how he means to begin? By acting as though I am an afterthought?”
“He may have thought…”
“Do not make excuses for him.” She folded her arms tightly. The chill in her had little to do with the weather. “I am not a campaign, Seamus. I will not be inspected and then claimed.”
His expression softened.
“He is not like other men,” Seamus said. “He is cautious. A soldier.”
“No,” she said after a moment. “He is not like other men.” Her gaze drifted back toward the yard, toward the place where she had watched him with his sword that morning. “He notices everything. Measures everything. He guarded me well enough. But he held himself apart. And if he thinks he can arrive here, say nothing, and simply step into my life, into this land, into our rule, without earning it, then he is mistaken.”
Seamus held her gaze. “Give him time. He may not want this marriage any more than you do.”
That possibility struck her hard. Perhaps his silence was resistance. Perhaps it was caution. Or perhaps he truly believed vows and duty were enough, that once a match was decided, words no longer mattered.
That night, when the castle had quieted and the torches burned low beneath the eaves, Aingeal stood again in her solar. The last light had set over the hills. The unfinished embroidery waited on the table behind her, its tangled threads looking more like a question than a pattern.
She thought of his hands on the sword. Steady. Efficient. Without vanity. She thought of the old woman in the market, wrapped in his cloak. She thought of her own years of struggle, the long work of proving she was not temporary, not ornamental, not someone to be ruled through.
And suddenly the authority she had fought so fiercely to hold felt more fragile than she wanted to admit.
Aingeal rested her forehead against the cool stone of the window and told herself what she had told herself a hundred times before, in fear and anger and private resolve.
She would not be managed.
If this marriage were to serve her people, it would be built on shared labor and respect. Or it would not stand at all.
Chapter five
The guest chamber were Reginald stayed was small and plain, little more than a stone box dressed in courtesy. A narrow cot stood against the wall. A single taper guttered low in an iron sconce, its flame bending each time a draft slipped beneath the door. A stool held his sword within easy reach, as if cold steel might offer the sort of counsel flesh never could. His boots lay neatly at the foot of the bed. The wooden chest near the hearth was strapped shut.
