Étaín had done nothing wrong.
Donal had invited nothing.
But Étaín was easy to love. Donal was difficult to know.
And Aingeal had not been chosen before. Shame followed immediately. She lowered her gaze to her plate and forced herself to answer Tomas when he asked about winter oats.
Beside her, Étaín said something that made Brennach snort and the servants hide smiles. Donal answered in one of those dry, restrained ways that revealed almost nothing and somehow invited another question.
Aingeal looked up despite herself.
Étaín bright beneath torchlight, impossible not to notice.
Donal grave beside her brightness, all shadow and reserve.
For the first time since the kiss, Aingeal understood with cold clarity that hope had a price.
If she wanted him, if she dared imagine asking him to stay, then she had given the world a place where it could wound her.
Chapter fourteen
Étaín did not alter the castle’s rhythm, she only brightened it.
By the following morning, Aingeal discovered that was worse.
Étaín moved through the castle exactly as she moved through every room: with warmth, curiosity, and the easy assumption that people were worth noticing. She spoke to stable boys, old soldiers, and sharp-faced kitchen maids with equal attention. She drew two reluctant grunts of amusement from Brennach before the morning was half done. She made Tomas laugh over a story about a mule biting a priest’s sleeve.
So when she turned that same light toward Donal, no one could accuse her of special attention.
No one but Aingeal. The awareness waited before she ever left her chamber.
Étaín was somewhere below in the castle.
Donal too.
The morning was raw and damp. Mist clung to the lower yard and wet the well stones. By the time Aingeal reached the hall, Étaín had already charmed two servants, one kitchen boy, and the old woman from the bakehouse who claimed to dislike everyone under thirty and proved, once again, to be lying.
Aingeal should have smiled. Instead, she looked over Étaín’s shoulder into the yard.
Donal stood near the training space with Seamus and three boys. One lad limped on a turned ankle, and Donal had crouched in the dirt to show him how to shift his weight when one side failed him. His sleeve was rolled. The brown, sinewed line of his forearm showed where the bandage no longer needed changing.
Étaín followed Aingeal’s gaze with maddening ease. “He is patient,” she said.
“He is practical.”
“Most men prefer to be admired for their skill rather than troubled to teach it.”
“He was born to trouble people.”
“That also seems likely.”
Aingeal wanted, with sudden ugly force, to say, ‘He is not for you to notice. He is not yours’. The thought broke the instant it formed.
Not yours.
The truth lodged sharply. Whatever had passed between her and Donal, whatever hope had taken root, he was not hers. He was meant to leave. That had been their bargain. Yet the knowledge gave no peace.
In the courtyard, one boy overbalanced. Donal caught him before he sprawled, setting him upright with a hand to his shoulder and a word too low for the hall to hear.
