The look on his face troubled me deeply. I wondered if he had looked like this long ago, when the newborn twin boys had breathed their last. If so, I had been too young, too wrapped up in my own grief to understand it.

“We must pray, I suppose,” Father sighed, and I heard in his voice a hope as fragile as a single thread.

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 3

I kept myself busy. Our serving people had never been so well supervised, our house never cleaner, our meals never more promptly served or more carefully prepared. Sibeal and Eilis completed twice as much sewing as usual and made dramatic progress with their reading and writing. Accompanied by a maidservant, I walked to the hawthorn early each morning to say a prayer and make an offering before commencing the day’s domestic activities. In the evenings I said I was too tired to play the harp, and it was more or less true.

Aidan kept trying to catch me alone in order to offer some kind of explanation. I could hardly be discourteous to him, since to do so would suggest I had had some expectations that the existence of this girl Rathnait had quashed. I would not let him see how much his dishonesty had hurt me.

“Clodagh!”

I was walking from kitchen to grain store, my hair bundled up in a kerchief and my feet in sturdy outdoor boots. Aidan fell into step beside me, shortening his long stride accordingly.

“I want to talk to you. Please.”

“I’m busy, Aidan.”

“Let me explain to you. About home and the betrothal. It’s not the way it sounds, Clodagh, I promise you—”

“I told you,” I said, “there’s no need for any kind of explanation. It means nothing to me. There’s no point in making this into more than it is. Now I must go.”

“It means something to me,” he said to my retreating back, and I almost stopped and let him tell me whatever it was, for he sounded genuinely upset. I ordered myself not to look back, lest those melting brown eyes make me act against my better judgment.