Étaín smiled faintly. “I was right.”
“About what?”
“He is gentler than he looks.”
Aingeal turned on her. “You have known him one day.”
Étaín blinked, then looked over the rim of her cup. “And?”
“And you speak as though you have been reading him for weeks.”
“Well,” Étaín said lightly, “perhaps I am unusually gifted.”
Something cold and mean moved under Aingeal’s skin. The monster. She could control it. She had for years. “It would be better if you applied your gifts elsewhere,” she said evenly.
Étaín lowered the cup. For a brief instant, her face went still. Not offended. Alert. “Would it?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
The danger in the question was immediate. One wrong answer and everything would spill open: jealousy, hope, the new vulnerability where Donal was concerned, the humiliating tenderness of it all.
Aingeal reached for dignity and found only sharpness. “Because he is in my service, not yours.”
Étaín’s mouth curved slowly in recognition. “Ah.”
The quietness of it humiliated Aingeal more than laughter would have.
Étaín lowered her cup. For once, she did not tease. “You are tense.”
“The border is tense.”
“And you are trying to wear that as an answer to everything.”
Aingeal turned away before her cousin could read more in her face and headed for the accounts chamber.
Afterward, everywhere Étaín went, she seemed to cross Donal’s path.
Aingeal saw them near the physician’s bench, where Donal helped bind a farmer’s broken wrist. She saw Étaín ask whether the western path would flood before winter’s first hard freeze, and Donal answered after the smallest pause. She saw themfrom the gallery when Étaín leaned on the rail and listened while he and Tomas argued over whether the northern ridge needed two more men or four.
Donal remained distant. He did not seek Étaín out. Did not soften into charm. Did not smile in surrender to her brightness. He answered. He listened. No more.
But he listened.
And Étaín, beloved, beautiful, impossible not to notice, drew answers from him where others might have received only reserve.
By midafternoon, Aingeal’s jealousy had ripened into something uglier because she could no longer contain it. Shame came at once. It made the whole thing feel childish. Unworthy of a woman who held land, counted grain, commanded men, and had buried girlish foolishness beneath duty years ago.
Yet the hurt remained.
She found herself on the battlements not because she needed air, but because she could not bear another enclosed room. Wind cut clean across the stones, smelling of marsh water and distant peat. From that height, she saw more than she wanted.
Étaín stood near the well, one hand braced on the rope post as she spoke to Donal, who had just crossed from the hall with Seamus. Seamus kept walking.
Donal stopped. After a moment, he answered her.
Aingeal could not hear the words. She did not need to. Étaín smiling. Donal listening. The ease of it.
