Page 154 of The Pirate Queen

“Everyone deserves their secrets.”

He had pouted then. “I suppose you have them too?”

“You are my only secret, Donal.”

He learned much while they waited for Gráinne and Richard to finish their lesson. The biggest surprise came at the end, however, when she announced her refusal to marry either of the suitors chosen for her. Then a heavy silence fell between them, and Donal doesn’t need an explanation for why.

“It’s taken him a year to work up the courage for that,” Nora said, her voice barely louder than the rustle of the hay beneath them. “He’s been in love with her since the night they met.”

But now O’Flaherty has found them, and there is shouting in every direction. She stiffens. Nora has a way of disappearing when O’Flaherty is near. She slips from rooms and into shadows, down stairwells and around corners. If O’Flaherty has ever noticed Nora’s presence in the castle, he’s never remarked on it—or, at least, not in Donal’s hearing. The bright, vibrant girl he loves becomes little more than wisp and murmur in the presence of the scowling young man from Connemara. Donal has never asked her why. He doesn’t need to. O’Flaherty is just like his father.

“I am fine.” Gráinne’s voice rises above the fray.

O’Flaherty’s voice now. “He had you on the floor! Every inch of you is covered in dirt. What have you been doing?”

“I slipped,” she says, “getting the eggs. He was just helping me up when you came in.”

“And why is he here in the first place?” O’Flaherty demands.

“I live here,” Richard answers dryly. Silence for a few heartbeats, then he adds, “You heard her. Tell Cook she’ll be in with the eggs shortly.”

There is a growl and shuffling, then the sound of angry footsteps marching away.

“The knives?” Richard asks once O’Flaherty is gone.

“Under my skirts,” Gráinne answers.

“That was quick thinking,” he tells her.

His sister laughs. “Our lessons stay between us. I don’t want your mother to interfere.” Donal listens as Gráinne gets up and dusts herself off. “But why did you knock me down?”

“It was that or let him find us kissing.”

“We weren’t—”

“We would have been,” Richard says, then falls quiet.

Donal thinks Richard must be looking at Gráinne, and he can guess the expression because Nora has seen it on his own face often enough.

Richard clears his throat. “Best we get back.”

Donal hears Gráinne make quick work of collecting the eggs despite every protest from the hens. Then the byre is quiet once more, quiet enough that Donal and Nora can rise from their place in the hay.

They leave the stall and inspect the throwing target. It’s chipped to pieces.

“I don’t want to take this from her,” Donal says.

“The lessons?”

“No. The hope that she can choose her own future.”

Mother, 1567

“Corsairs from Algeria”

Grace is thirty-seven years old

Her pains began in the night, somewhere near the Aran Islands as they left Galway. Grace ignored that deep pinch within her body because she does not have time to give birth, not now, not on this ship. And certainly not with that Algerian corsair riding their wake. It has been in pursuit for hours, ever since they took the turn around Slyne Head. The cunning bastards were hiding, waiting between Slyne and Chapel Island. And doesn’t Niamh look like easy prey, all loaded down with cargo?