He shook his head. “Word came later that he had been delayed. Mud, they said, or some fool excuse of weather. There was talk because the town expected him. One of my sister’s boys was there. Said folk watched for him all day and the next morning too, and no O’Raida ever rode through.”
Étaín’s mouth went dry. “Yet he arrived here.”
“Aye,” Murchad said slowly. “Or someone did.” He frowned then.
Étaín rose. “Would you know Donal O’Raida by sight?”
Murchad shook his head. “Never saw the man close enough. Knew the name, the lands, the route. That is all.”
“Who would know him?”
Murchad’s fingers stilled over the wick ends. “His own people.”
Étaín looked toward the hall.
“And if one of them came north?”
“Then there would be no guessing.” His voice had gone quieter. “If a man from Rathmore who knew Donal by face stood before our Sir Donal, the truth would have no place left to hide.”
Étaín thanked him, though later she could not have said what words she used. She left and crossed into the dim passage beyond, one hand against the cold wall as if the stone itself were needed to steady her.
Two days before Donal O’Raida was meant to arrive at Aingeal’s castle, the real man had not been seen in Ardglas at all.
The man now inside these walls did not fit the route. He did not fit the reports. Canterbury woke something in him he could not hide.
And Aingeal loved him.
Étaín had seen enough now to know it. She saw it in the sharpness of Aingeal’s voice, in the pain on her face when she thought no one looked, and in the way she had begun to guard Donal, not because she trusted him, but because she was already too far gone to bear losing him.
Étaín closed her eyes for one breath. She could not tell Aingeal yet. Not with proof still shaped like absence. But she could no longer pretend the danger was merely romantic. Merely political. Merely a matter of wounded pride.
And it was moving toward them.
The great doors had been left open despite the cold, and through them Aingeal caught sight of the rider who had just entered the courtyard mud-splashed and hollow-eyed, on a hard gray horse lathered nearly white.
Voices lowered, and heads turned.
One of the boys serving the midday meal froze with a pitcher in hand and had to be shoved aside before Tomas, already moving, nearly ran him down.
“Who is it?” Brennach asked.
Tomas looked through the doors. “No colors.”
By the time Aingeal reached the passage before the outer doors, the rider had already swung stiffly from the saddle. He was older than she had first thought, perhaps near fifty, broad through the shoulders, his beard shot with gray. His cloak was stained from the road. One boot gaped at the seam. He looked like a man who had ridden hard because delay frightened him more than exhaustion.
“My lady,” Tomas said sharply behind her, “best stay within --”
Aingeal ignored him and stepped into the yard. Cold struck her face at once. Wind caught the edge of her cloak.
The rider had turned, speaking fast to a gate guard, but when he saw her crossing toward him, he bowed awkwardly. “Lady Aingeal Ní Néill?”
“I am she.” Her gaze flicked once to the sweating horse, then back to his face. “Who comes to my gate in such haste?”
The man drew breath. His eyes moved toward the open doors and the people already gathering there. Then he said, “Ciarán mac Ruaidhrí, my lady. Steward of Rathmore. I served Donal O’Raida’s father and Donal after him.”
The name struck her like a hand closing hard around her ribs.
Donal O’Raida had once meant arrangement, alliance, necessity. Then the name had become a man standing at her side. A man with grave eyes and careful hands. A man who held her castle together in small acts and large ones. A man she wanted too much.
