Cara’s stomach dropped at the casual mention of his name. But what of Sitric? Had he been here as well? No one had told her that.
“Precisely so,” Niamh encouraged her. “If it’s too difficult for you—”
Maeve waved her hands. “No, no. As I said, if it’s of help to you, then I’m happy to do it. Best come back this way, though.”
They followed Maeve into the alehouse, a thatched roof hall supported by wattle and daub walls, much like every other Ostman homestead she’d seen. She walked through it to a cottage, much like the one Sitric had taken her into, and stopped just in front of the door.
“What would you like to know?” Maeve asked Cara.
“Tell us what happened, from the beginning until the men left in the morn,” Niamh answered for her.
“A group of sailors came down to the alehouse first,” Maeve began slowly, clearly recalling the night as she spoke. “Marga and Sorcha—the women who work here with me,” she explained, looking at Cara, “they’d gone to take a break as hardly anyone was in, what with the big feast up at the hall. They drank as sailors usually do, getting rowdier and deeper into their cups than I like to see. They all stood to return to their ship for the night, but one called that he’d be there in just a moment.” Maeve’s voice shook at her last words.
Niamh grabbed Maeve’s hand, in both of hers. “If you need to stop, we understand.”
“No,” Maeve whispered. “It’s best to get it out, not keep it in, as you always remind me.” She turned her attention to Cara. “He attacked me. Tore at my clothes, started wrestling me to the ground. The girls, when they heard me screaming, they came out of the cottage and bolted straight for Sitric. None of us could do a damn thing.
“I’ll spare you the details, but Sitric arrived just in time, Conan right behind him.” She smiled then. “That was the first time I heard a bone crack, when the two of them went after him. You can imagine it caused quite a commotion, though theneighbors all poked their heads out of their houses without coming to see the truth of it or offer aid. Diarmid, though, he’d been out walking and he came running. He said he’d heard a raucous at the alehouse when I asked him later.
“Anyway, Sitric minded the sailor while Conan went to find the ship’s captain. Diarmid came to the cottage to stand guard in case any of the man’s shipmates came back for him and started a brawl. By the time they’d gone and fetched my uncle to stay with us after that, they all had to rush back to get to the harbor by dawn.”
Maeve took several deep breaths as her story came to a halt.
Cara looked to Niamh, who nodded, her beautiful face looking like an angel of vengeance, ready to go find that sailor and break another of his bones. “Thank you,” Cara told Maeve, her own voice now shaking. “I know that wasn’t easy for you to share.”
“If you see them, will you thank them again for me?”
“Of course.” Cara’s mind reeled as she processed Maeve’s tale. Why hadn’t Diarmid told her that?
Because she wouldn’t have believed him. He’d said as much, and she knew deep in her bones he’d been right. And she’d been very, very wrong.
Cara had a mind to stay and get to know Maeve, but several customers seated themselves and she had to rush off to get them their ale. Cara satisfied herself with a promise that they’d both come back to visit Maeve. Not only did Cara’s heart break over this woman’s horrifying experience, but she owed Maeve more than the woman knew.
By sharing the worst day of her life, Maeve had stopped Cara from making the biggest mistake of hers.
“Why are you helping me?” Cara asked Niamh while they meandered down the rows of thatched roofs and wattle fences.“Doesn’t Dallan want me to marry Sitric since that’s what Brian commanded?”
Niamh clasped her hands behind her back. “Aye. But I’m not Dallan.” She threw a mischievous grin at Cara, quite uncharacteristic of the mild-mannered healer. Or, more likely, perhaps Cara didn’t really know Niamh at all. “And, as I said in the hall, I don’t understand what you’re going through with Diarmid, but I do understand the fear of being left behind.”
“I was so certain,” Cara sighed, weary of weighing her decision over and over. “But this changes everything.”
“Have you considered why it is that Diarmid is the person you felt safe enough to work with?” Niamh asked, waving to a gaggle of children who were smiling at the pair of them. “Why couldn’t it have been Sitric, or even me, who helped you?”
“It was always easy with him,” Cara admitted. “I trusted him.”
“You still do. You let him in right up until you realized that he’d gotten close enough to really hurt you, and then you pushed him away. Having pulled such a ploy myself once or twice, I’m quite familiar with the symptoms.”
“What made you decide to change?”
“I pushed him away hard enough that he really left. It took less than a day for me to realize I’d rather have my heart broken a thousand more times than live another day without him.”
Of all the things anyone had said to her over the past sennight, Niamh’s words were the ones that truly helped Cara see the situation clearly.
She’d done nothing but war with herself over her decision to marry Sitric since the moment she agreed to the betrothal. She’d found every way to distract herself, she’d pushed Diarmid as far from her as possible, to the point where he hadn’t felt comfortable trying to explain himself to her.
Because he shouldn’t have had to.
Her heart had known all along what her mind refused to acknowledge—that Diarmid was a man worth taking a risk on. Hopefully, it wasn’t too late to show him just that.
