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“Now you do.”
“Yes, my lady.”
She blew out an impatient breath. “Or have Aodh bring his own if he prefers, to ensure I can’t put a dropper of henbane in it. It is all the same to me. Honestly,” she said, turning back to the tower, “if I’d wanted to kill him, I have had a thousand chances thus far.”
*
“AND I AM TO BRING…whisky?”
Aodh repeated the message slowly, in case something had been misunderstood.
He’s spent the day in council with too many lords to count, and it was certainly possible that he was simply suspicious of everything. But something about this seemed…very suspicious.
Bran nodded. “That is what Lady Katarina said, sir. You’re to bring it yourself, to make sure she does not poison it.”
He sat back. “She said that?”
“Aye, sir.”
“That she’s thinking of poisoning me?”
Bran looked horrified. “No, sir! She suggested it to allay any concerns, you see, so you would know she hadn’t.”
“And were there concerns?”
Bran shuffled uncomfortably. “I might have asked a few questions about her request. Caused her to think I was suspicious.”
“And were you?”
“Well…it is unusual, sir. I mean…whisky. In barrels. In the cellar.”
“Why did we not know of them?”
Bran looked shamefaced. “I saw the barrels, sir. I thought they were wine.”
Aodh nodded thoughtfully. “But they are whisky.”
Bran started to smile.
Oak barrels of whisky, in the cellars of Rardove.
His men would bow down at her feet.
“But,” his squire went on, “she said not to worry, that she could have slayed you a dozen times already before now.”
Aodh’s head came up swiftly.
“If ’twas truly her goal. I suppose that means it is not her goal?” Bran framed it as a hopeful possibility.
Aodh turned and looked though the open window at the sunset, reddish gold and stretched to the edge of the world. “Do not fear, Bran, her danger is not of that sort, even if we do have to keep her locked in a tower to prevent her from ruining the plans of a lifetime.”
“Yes, sir.”
Aodh got to his feet. “Send for the whisky. Take it from the barrel with the clamshell mark.”
He picked up two glasses and went upstairs.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
