Aingeal lifted her chin. “You have come from Donal’s lands.”
“Aye, my lady.”
“Then come inside and warm yourself. Donal should be sent for at once. We will hear what business --”
Donal was already crossing the yard from the training ground with Seamus beside him, two boys trailing after them.
Aingeal lifted her arm to indicate him. “There.”
The messenger went still.
So still Aingeal felt it before she understood it.
Then Donal looked up.
Aingeal would remember that moment for the rest of her life.
His face emptied, as if something inside him had known this day would come and had simply prayed, uselessly, not to meet it here.
The whole yard seemed to narrow with terrible precision to the space between the man from the south and the man she had begun, against every intention, to love.
Ciarán stared at Donal. Recognition came first. Then disbelief. “No,” Ciarán said.
Aingeal turned to him slowly. “What did you say?”
Ciarán looked only at Donal. “I know the face of the man I served,” he said, each word roughened by shock. “I held Donal O’Raida as a boy when his mother died. I put a sword in his hand when he was twelve. I buried his father and stood beside him at Rathmore when he took the oath.”
Donal did not move.
Aingeal felt the first crack open inside her. “Ciarán,” she said, though she barely recognized her own voice.
The man’s gaze finally shifted to her. Pity moved through his face. “That man is not Donal O’Raida.”
The words struck the yard like a dropped blade. For one impossible heartbeat, no one moved.
Then every silence in the castle broke at once.
Chapter twenty-two
“That man is not Donal O’Raida,” Ciarán said.
Aingeal heard a serving girl gasp at the hall doorway, heard one of the boys near Seamus scrape his boot against the stone. Heard, impossibly loud, the creak of saddle leather from the gray horse.
Donal stopped where he stood.
Aingeal turned back to Ciarán, certain she had misheard him. “What did you say?”
The man took one step forward, never taking his eyes off Donal. His face had gone hard beneath road dirt and weather. “I said that is not Donal O’Raida.”
Tomas had come out behind her now. Brennach too. Father Cillian appeared in the chapel passage as if drawn by the instinct priests had for disaster. Men from the hall spilled slowly into the open and stopped there in a stunned hush.
Aingeal felt every eye turn toward her. Her voice went cold. “Be careful.”
Ciarán dragged his gaze from Donal and faced her fully. “My lady, I am careful. I served Donal’s father before him. I knew theboy at ten and the man at twenty. I rode with his guard three winters ago when the lower marsh took the east fields. I have broken bread in his hall.” His face tightened. “That man is not Donal O’Raida.”
Aingeal looked at Donal, at the man who had used his name.
He did not speak.
