I did not want to believe she was lying. An imposter would have an obvious reason for pretending to be indisposed. But Flidais was no imposter; not unless her entire escort was telling lies along with her. An imposter could have used the headaches to conceal the fact that she could not read and write. She might have been conveniently indisposed so she need not respond to questions she could not easily answer; so she need not make conversation with her future husband until they were safely hand-fasted. Oran was not a simple kind of man. He would not be content with a wife who looked decorative, said little and kept out of his way. No, Oran had expected a wife who was his equal. A wife who could converse on his own level. A wife who loved the things he loved, a wife who was in every respect the Lady Flidais of the letters. Whoever had written those letters had done Flidais no favours at all. If they were a trick, the perpetrator had vastly underestimated the prince of Dalriada.

I’d have to tread carefully, despite the short time we had left. No leaping right in with probing questions, no tests of the lady’s skill with the pen or her knowledge of strategy or scholarship. I was in this household as a guest, and I must keep the real reason for my presence among these women secret.

On one point at least, Prince Oran had been right. I was good at my craft, and I’d been in Winterfalls long enough for the local people to know they could trust me. Within three days of our arrival, the prince’s serving people started bringing their aches and pains to me in the little storeroom off the kitchen where, at Brid’s invitation, I had set up my healer’s equipment. A day or two later I strapped up a training injury suffered by a man-at-arms and gave a groom a curative wash for a nasty case of nettle rash. I went out to the village to attend to one or two folk with chronic complaints, people who were used to seeing me every few days. In the past I’d undertaken those visits grudgingly. Now they made me feel like a captive creature set free.

I made sure I was in the sewing room with Flidais and her attendants for a good part of each morning. It was necessary to find some sort of task for myself so my presence there did not draw suspicion. The choice was limited. Me, sewing? Hah! If anything at the cottage needed mending, Grim did it. I could sew up a wound just fine, but the hem of a garment was another matter. Once, in that long-ago life, I must have managed. But the skills were lost. They were part of what I had left behind.