Page 12 of The Pirate Queen

She wads the letter into a ball and throws it into the fire. Grace tells herself that she does so because it is not proper for a married woman to receive letters from another man. But she knows the truth: her husband would fly into a rage if he knew she’d received any letter at all.

Gutty’s fire—warm and glowing—does its job and devours the letter entirely. She watches it curl in on itself and turn to ash. Then she leans forward and inhales as the sweet smell of burning peat shifts—for a single breath—to the astringent scent of burning paper. Grace washes her face in the ewer of warm water set out for her and strips down to her leine. She crawls into the big empty bed and takes her half out of the middle, arms and legs spread like she is floating on top of a wave. She drifts there, trying not to cry. It takes hours for sleep to find her, so long that the embers of Gutty’s fire burn low and the night birds begin their solemn melody outside. But as sleep finally pulls her under, a response to Richard’s letter forms itself in her mind.

It is nightfall, some weeks later, when Grace returns to the castle after visiting one of the outlying villages. The windows are dark and the doors shut tight against the cold. Tonight is All Hallows’ Eve and she has been to Aillebrack with the Murray twins, settling rents and celebrating the end of the harvest. She stayed late, enjoying the bonfire and the rituals of this turning season. And for once, the Murrays did not urge her home before sunset. But now she wonders if she made a mistake. The castle seems shadowed with menace—and she wonders if the legends are true and the boundary between this world and the next has grown thin. It might scare her if she had lost loved ones, if she thought they had returned to knock on her door. But everyone Grace loves is still alive, so she allows the cold shiver to slide down her spine and away into the dark.

“Let me help you,” one of the Murray twins says, reaching to lift her down from the horse.

He waits until she nods permission.

Once on her feet, Grace unties her saddlebag and slings it over a shoulder.

“Thank you, Finn,” she tells him.

“We’ll get Enbarr brushed and put away,” the other twin tells her. “Best you get inside.”

“And thank you, Finn,” she tells the other.

He grunts something unintelligible, and they walk off together toward the stables.

It came as quite a shock to learn that—in addition to everything else—the Murray twins share the name Finn.

“Ye can’t both have the same first name!” she had objected when they told her.

“And why not?” one had said. “We have the same face.”

“Did your mother not want to differentiate between the two of ye?”

The second shook his head. “She never knew which one she was speaking to anyway.”

“Nonsense,” Grace told him. “Surely your own mother could tell ye apart?”

They had laughed in unison then, the sound an eerie melody. “Not when we took such pains to make sure she couldn’t.”

Ruddy taciturn bastards.

Grace adores them, despite every attempt not to.

She pushes through the front door of Bunowen Castle and makes her way through the dark halls and up to the fourth-floor privy chamber. She is content and tired and wants nothing more than her bathing ewer and her big bed. So she does not notice the lit torches outside the chamber, or the extra candles burning within. Grace doesn’t notice the man sitting at the desk until he speaks.

“Where have you been?”

Gráinne stops short at the sound of his voice. Looks away. Pulls inward, fortifying herself. It makes him angry, makes his teeth itch.

Donal O’Flaherty sits at his desk, Finola’s letter spread open before him. His boots are off and his feet are bare. Weeks since he has been home and this is how she greets him? With ice. No warm welcome. No kiss.

“Where have you been, Gráinne?”

“In the village.”

He rises. “None that we passed through.”

“We?”

“Me and Rory, who else? He’s been with me this fortnight. But I want to know where you were.”

She dips her chin slightly. Not a bow, not even a bob of the head. The barest whisper of respect. “Aillebrack.”

“Against my orders. Did I not instruct that you should remain at Bunowen and leave the management of the estate to me?”