“For thinking the worst of me or for breaking our agreement?”
She winced. “Both.”
He was measuring her sincerity, she knew it deep down in her gut. It was on his face. He wondered if she could ever be trusted again.
“Ye are forgiven,” he said. No hesitation. No disappointment in his tone.
Brighit had not expected that. Somewhere in her thoughts she’d imagined him railing at her about her willfulness for not listening to him. And he would have been right to do so. Although breaking their agreement had not been her idea, she had gone along willingly enough. Niall had merely been looking for a way to indulge his beloved niece, but all his plans had gone awry.
“I was wrong to sneak off and to be on their land. I had thought no harm would come of it.” She hadn’t thought at all. Holding up her hand when he started to speak, she continued, “Do not ask more of me. I will speak only of my crime.”
Darragh flattened his lips, not in the least bit happy with her. “Crime? It sounds like defense to me.” He hesitated, his gaze dropping away. “I’m not certain how therig túaithewill judge it.”
She closed her eyes and took a calming breath. When she opened them again, Darragh was staring at her. “Tell me how it happened. Exactly.”
“I do not want to relive it.”
“I wouldn’t ask it of ye unless I needed to hear it myself.”
Brighit had gone over this so many times in her head, but where was she to start without implicating Niall?
“I was racing across the field, pushing Valiant up a hill at top speed.” The sight of Cathair following her flashed through her mind. “I saw a man following me and…” The sound of the fighting that had broken out behind her filled her ears. The others had attempted to send her to safety—they’d never imagined she would be chased. “…he was relentless in his pursuit. I couldn’t get away.”
She took a quivering breath. “When I thought I had lost him because he was no longer behind me, he knocked me from my horse. He’d gotten the jump on me, arriving at the bottom of the hill before I could.”
“Which hill?”
“What?”
“Tell me which hill ye went up?”
“The one to the east.”
“That is the opposite of mytúath.Did ye not wish to return home?”
She had been going where Niall told her to go, away from the MacNaughton so they couldn’t be traced back. “I was… panicked.”
Darragh watched her, his face expressionless.
“D'ye wish me to continue?”
“Not if ye continue to prevaricate.”
Brighit turned away, petrified that he’d see the truth of his words, her guilt, on her face. “I cannot—”
“Ye must tell me everything, Brighit. If they find out that ye killed him—”
“Seigine knows that I killed him. He saw me. He watched from the top of the hill as I murdered his brother.”
Darragh’s mind reeled with the revelation. She’d murdered a man with his brother a witness?
“Seigine watched the man beat ye?”
She nodded.
“And did nothing to help ye?” His irritated tone had Brighit pulling back, fear in her eyes.
“When he finally came closer… after I killed Cathair… I got on Valiant and I rode away from him. I was afraid of what he would do to me, but he didn’t chase me.”
