“I have slept beside worse provisions than this.”
“That is not a comfort.”
“No. But it is useful.”
She looked at him then. Rain ran down the side of his face. His expression held no expectation of gratitude. He had seen a problem and put his hands to it. “You did not take command from me,” she said.
His eyes lifted to hers. “It was not mine to take.”
The words landed softly, more dangerous for being plain.
A shout came from the roof.
Seamus had slipped on the wet ladder and caught himself with one arm hooked hard over the beam. Donal moved before anyone else had fully reacted, crossing the yard at a run, catching the ladder and bracing it with his shoulder.
“Hold,” he called.
“I am holding, damn you,” Seamus grunted.
“Then climb, not curse.”
Even Seamus obeyed.
Aingeal found herself smiling despite the rain.
Tomas came to her side, ledger clutched close beneath his cloak. His voice was pitched low. “He knew the brewhouse.”
“Yes.”
“He knew the pitch stores too.”
“He walks the grounds.”
“He walks them as if he expects to defend them.”
Aingeal looked at him. “That troubles you?”
“It reassures me and troubles me in equal measure.”
She followed his gaze. Donal stood beneath the roofline, one hand braced to the ladder, rain darkening his sleeves, his attention fixed upward until Seamus had crossed safely onto the thatch.
Tomas said, “He is useful.”
“So you have said.”
“Useful men are often the most dangerous to question.”
Aingeal did not answer.
Below the cart shed, the old farmer had begun helping the boys carry sacks. His anger had not vanished, but it had been given work. That mattered. The grain would not all be saved. That mattered too.
Yet the morning had not collapsed into blame because Donal had acted. Because she had trusted the action enough to use it.
And because, standing in a rain-soaked yard with ruined barley at her feet, Aingeal had felt for one clear, startling moment that they had met a crisis as two hands of the same body.
That was the danger.
By late afternoon, the brewhouse glowed red with banked fire and hard labor. Steam rose from the spread grain in thin, ghostly veils. Nessa moved among the boys with a wooden spoon in one hand and the authority of a queen. Every half hour she ordered the grain turned, and every half hour the boys obeyed as if disobedience might bring ruin upon their immortal souls.
