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He’d remembered. A flare of a moment. But where lurked one memory, others must remain.
The knife. The blood. If his mind didn’t play him false, the scavengers had sought to kill him. He rubbed absently at a spot above his heart. A tingle answering his touch.
Wheeling around, he caught Sabrina’s frightened look before it vanished behind a calm mask.
“So what kept them from murdering me?” he asked, his voice bleak against his tongue.
She chewed the edge of one fingernail. Raked him with an appraising eye, her brows scrunched in thought. “Honestly? I don’t know.”
He watched her. She felt his gaze in a pricking between her shoulder blades. His presence like the churn of heavy air before a storm. She crossed the courtyard on her way from the dormitory to the library. Steps quick as she threaded puddles. Skirts pulled up to keep them from dragging through the mud. Yet she sensed him lurking in the stable’s shadows, pausing only as she passed.
She slanted her gaze in his direction. Coat discarded. Sleeves rolled back, revealing the slash of scarring. Harsh midnight visage like some ancient effigy. The shovel in his hands gripped with grim executioner familiarity.
Anguish. Grief. And heartbreaking loneliness. The surge of his emotions hit her like a series of crushing body blows. And as happened at the seashore, the air seemed to shimmer around Daigh, and in place of his coarse homespun, she could have sworn she caught the glint of armor, the luxury of a fur-lined cloak, and a scabbard hanging low upon his hip.
She blinked, and the image vanished as suddenly as it had come. Only a queer fluttering in her stomach remained, accompanied by a sweep of heat that flushed her skin. Made November’s damp chill resemble sultry June.
He caught her eyes on him. Offered her a nod of acknowledgment.
“Did you only attend to your duties with as much eagerness,” Sister Brigh snipped, passing Sabrina like an agitated crow. All beady eyes and ruffled black skirts.
She cast an embarrassed smile in Daigh’s direction, but he’d resumed his work and did not look her way again.
Still, long after she’d left him, the strange, swooping plunge of her insides troubled her. His haunted stare lingered in her mind’s eye. His desperation wrenched her soul.
She was his last hope. She alone could save him. She knew this as strongly as if someone had etched it upon her heart.
But how? And from what?
The kitchen’s low banked fire cast a warm glow over the stone floor and up the whitewashed walls. Rain pattered against the high windows, and a smell of baking hung sweet and doughy in the air.
Up to her elbows in dishwater, Jane pushed a bedraggled strand of hair from her face with an elbow. “Why do you suppose Kilronan wants you to join him? I would have hardly called him a doting brother.”
Sabrina forked a piece of cold ham onto a plate. Added some boiled potatoes. “He’s not. Or he hasn’t been until now. I place the blame squarely at the feet of that woman he married. She’s probably decided she wants an unpaid companion and thinks I’m the perfect candidate.”
“Would Kilronan allow his only sister to be bullied about by his wife?” Jane asked.
“Would he marry a penniless nob
ody with a murky past and doubtful morals? Had you asked me that last year, I’d have said never. But then here we are, so I can’t say I know what my brother is capable of.”
Some pickles. A roll. Sabrina had missed lunch and dinner today. Sister Ainnir had finally forced her to leave the infirmary to grab a late meal.
“Naught will change in ten minutes, Sabrina,” she’d said as she pushed her out of the ward.
A dollop of mustard. A bit of leftover tart. Sabrina nibbled a corner. Apple. Her favorite. Make that two tarts. She turned her attention back to Jane. “Which is why I refuse to go to Dublin. The next thing I know Aidan will have me locked in a room until I marry some horrid, smelly man with a fortune obtained in the sheep bladder industry.”
“Can’t imagine there’d be much money to be had in sheep’s bladders,” Jane commented, “though I did know a gentleman in Belfast who’d made all his money from kippered herring. Smelled perpetually of dead fish.” She placed the saucepan in the drying rack. Began scrubbing an enormous blackened pot. By the looks of the pile still soaking in the sink, she’d be here all night.
“What did you do that has you chained to the scullery so late? Aren’t there usually more of you to do the washing up?”
Sabrina didn’t envy her friend her duties in the Glenlorgan kitchens even if Sister Evangeline was by far the jolliest of the bandraoi, with a rosy, cherubic face and an enormous round belly. In fact, she bore a marked resemblance to the Prince Regent in a dress. Frightening thought.
“Usually there are more to help,” Jane explained, “but Sister Miriam is sick with a head cold, Prudence is suffering her monthlies, and Charlotte is visiting her sister in Cork who’s just had a baby, so I volunteered. I don’t mind. I like the time alone to think.”
No more needed to be said. Solitude was a precious commodity in Glenlorgan. Sabrina had the quiet hours of night duty in the infirmary. Jane had her after dinner washing-up. One lived here long enough, one learned to carve out a small oasis of quiet. That, or one followed Sister Bertha’s dubious example and went stone deaf. Drastic, but effective.
“I saw you with Mr. MacLir this afternoon.” Jane flashed her a wicked grin, fanning herself with a sudsy hand. “Now I’d marry him if he smelled like dead hippopotamus.”
