But before I did any of that, I would go to Flidais’s quarters and speak with her. Exactly what I would say, I was not sure. I must hope that, when the time came, the right words would come with it.

I slept fitfully and woke with an aching head. So much for Donagan’s theory about the mead. I could not possibly visit Flidais at this hour. The light beyond my window was the earliest pale wash of dawn. But I would be unable to settle to anything else until I spoke with her.

My bedchamber had several doors. One to the hallway; one to the small chamber next door where Donagan slept within easy reach. A third door connected my chamber directly with Flidais’s bedroom in the women’s quarters. That door had remained firmly closed since her arrival at Winterfalls, and would do so until we were hand-fasted.

I’d had the women’s quarters expanded and fitted out with all the comforts a high-born lady would expect, along with some additions of my own devising, such as a little chamber with a writing desk. When Flidais sat there she could look through a round window into a patch of garden planted with many of the flowers she had described in her letters. There was a strip of lawn for Bramble to roll on and a little door through which the dog could come in and out of the house unaided. I had seen nothing of Bramble since that first, awkward day.

I threw on some clothes and slipped out without waking Donagan. Folk were stirring. Sounds came to me from the kitchen, where they would be kindling cooking fires and preparing for the day’s work. I went outside; a walk would clear my head.

The royal holding at Winterfalls was substantial and well maintained. While I was growing up, my family had usually stayed here over the summer, and I wondered, thinking back, whether my mother had enjoyed those respites from the formality of Cahercorcan as much as I had. The place had been in capable hands then, and it still was. My steward, Aedan, and his wife, Fíona, had been here as long as I could remember. Their children were of an age with me. My stable master, Eochu, could be abrasive when displeased, but had such a remarkable touch with horses that nobody ever said a word against him. Eochu went everywhere accompanied by his dogs, a pair of brindled lurchers who were the loves of his life, though nobody else thought much of them. Then there was Niall, who tended to the Winterfalls acreage, its fine breeding cattle and its crops, with assistance from a small army of folk and a team of well-trained herding dogs.