Chapter Four

The lady Oonagh had told me my trips to the village were to stop; it was unsuitable, she said, for the lord Colum’s daughter to be out and about the neighborhood like some tinker’s child, getting her feet muddy and mixing with all sorts of riff-raff. I must put all that nonsense aside, and start learning to be a lady. Music—now that was appropriate. I spent a morning performing to her on the flute, and, reluctantly, the harp, for she ordered our little instrument brought down to the hall. Fortunately, my father was occupied elsewhere that day. It quickly became plain to her that I had little more to learn. Sewing, then. She asked to see my handiwork, and I was obliged to confess that I had none. Oh, I could mend, and hem a gown or a tunic. But fine work had never been called for in this house of men. Oonagh showed me a veil of thinnest lawn, sprinkled with a myriad tiny birds and flowers. It was indeed beautiful; draped over her shining hair, it gave her the look of a queen. She would show me the techniques I needed for such work. It would take a great deal of time and application, so no more trips to visit the sick with a basket of lotions and drafts. Let someone else do it. “No one else has the skills,” I said without thinking. It was the simple truth. Oonagh’s eyes narrowed and her fine, arched brows tightened with displeasure.

“Unfortunate,” she said. “Then these people will do whatever they did before you came along, my dear. Be here with your needles and thread straight after breakfast tomorrow. We have a great deal of lost ground to make up.”

I lasted no more than a few days. My fingers, so deft at bandaging and mixing and measuring, were clumsy and awkward with needle and fine silk. Under her scrutiny I broke the thread, and dropped the needle, and stained the delicate fabric with blood from my pricked finger. I longed for one of my brothers to interrupt and rescue me, but they did not. Planning was underway for another journey beyond our borders, and they were consulting maps, or exercising horses, or endlessly polishing and sharpening weapons.

Even my father was preoccupied in the lady Oonagh’s presence and she did not like it. Something was troubling him. But I continued to ply my needle, and she watched me. Sometimes she asked questions, and sometimes she sat there in silence, which was worse, for I could feel her mind reaching out toward mine, as if she would know my most secret thoughts. I tried to shield myself from her, the same way Finbar had learned to veil his mind from me. But she was very strong, and if she could not read me direct, she was clever with words, and knew how to trap.

“Your father is busy these days,” she said pleasantly enough one morning, watching me as I stitched laboriously at a long stem in shades of green. “Planning to ride out again soon, he tells me. I had hoped he would remain longer at home, but men become restless.” She gave a little laugh, shrugging narrow shoulders in her blue velvet gown. “Wives get used to it eventually, I suppose.”