Page 151 of The Pirate Queen

“Is it more comfortable now?”

“I amn’t getting blisters, if that’s what you mean?”

They had bickered for months about where Grace ought to carry her knife. She likes it hidden at her thigh but can admit—though not to him—that it’s impractical. She learned the hard way not to go around hiking up her skirts when she needs it. But her apron is no good either. She’d carried the knife there for weeks until it fell out of the open pocket in the Great Hall one evening after dinner. She stared at the thing as if her own eye had just rolled across the floor, and when The MacWilliam asked why she was carrying a knife, she lied and said she’d been helping Cook in the kitchens earlier and must have walked off with it.

“Best get it back to her, then,” he’d said. “I fear only two things in this world: God and that woman.”

Finola watched the entire exchange with quiet curiosity, and Richard had been forced to sneak into the kitchen in the middle of the night to steal the knife back for Grace.

So they’d decided she would keep the blade in her boot. That required him to make a smaller leather strap and sheath. And once it was complete, it chafed. But now her blade is readily accessible.

Grace can see when her brother gets bored with the fight. He hits the young O’Flaherty with a right uppercut, then swipes with one leg and knocks his feet out from under him. O’Flaherty lands with a wet squelch in the mud. But it’s hard enough to rattle his head and wind him.

“Have you had enough?” Donal asks.

“Feck off,” O’Flaherty says.

Without another word, Donal walks off and mounts his horse. Before riding away, he turns to Grace to make sure she will follow. He is none too keen to leave her alone with any of these boys.

“Should have broken his nose,” Richard says, then stands up and offers his hand. “Now we have to do this again next week.”

“Been walking into walls again, Donal?” The MacWilliam asks.

They are at the breakfast table the next morning, food spread in a heap across the table, and Grace does her best to look at neither her host nor the boy who has become a thorn in her side. He has a swollen face—two black eyes and a split lip. She thinks Richard was right. Her brother should have broken his nose and ended it.

“Just fists,” the young O’Flaherty says.

“So you’ve lost the name, then?”

“Not yet. But I’ve made peace with it. For now.”

“How so?”

He nods at Grace and, even though it must hurt, he grins. “I can live with her calling me O’Flaherty. It will be her name as well, before the end.”

“Only an O’Flaherty would take a loss and claim the win,” Richard grumbles beside her.

But Finola laughs. “My little brother is bold,” she says.

“Can your son say the same?” The MacWilliam asks, turning those twinkling dark blue eyes to Richard.

Grace stands abruptly and the bench clatters backward behind her. “If you’ll excuse me.”

She nods to her hosts and hurries from the Great Hall.

Laughter fills the air behind her.

Her cheeks are red and her heart is hammering in her chest when she runs directly into Walter Bourke in the stairwell. Richard’s older brother, The MacWilliam’s son from his first marriage, sets his hands on her shoulders to study her. He hasn’t been at the castle for much of the year. At Burrishoole learning how to be a chieftain, she’s been told.

He looks at her now like he’s seeing her for the first time. “Gráinne?”

“Yes.”

“You look different.”

“I don’t think so.”

“All grown up.”