“I’ve slept in places far rougher than this, Clodagh,” the old woman said, setting down her tiny bag at the foot of the makeshift pallet and waiting for me to leave. “A muddy hollow here, the fork of a tree there—give me a soft feather bed and I’ll be tossing and turning all night long. Go on now. You seem a busy sort of person, so off and do whatever it is you’re supposed to be doing. No need to hover so anxiously. I won’t lie down and fail to rise again; there’s sap in my old branches yet.”

Walking past the stable door on my way back to the kitchen, I heard the voices of two men from within. It took only a moment for me to realize that their conversation was private, but I could not move away now without drawing the speakers’ attention. They must be preparing their horses for this morning’s ride.

“. . . won’t even look at me,” Aidan was saying. His voice was choked up, not with anger but with distress.

“Why is this so important to you?” That was Cathal, and his voice, too, was different. There was no trace of mockery in it. He sounded genuinely concerned.

“Isn’t it obvious?”

“True love, you mean?” Cathal said in something more like his usual tone. “Aidan, if I’ve made your whole life a misery, I’m sorry. I mean that. I thought only to extricate you before you plunged deeper into a morass of your own making. Perhaps I misinterpreted the depth of your feelings for her. It did all seem rather sudden.”

“You weren’t here last year,” Aidan said. “She likes me. Liked me. If I’d spoken up then it would have been too soon. During that first visit we were friends, we had fun together, that was all it amounted to. It’s different this time. I knew it the moment she came running out of the forest and straight into my arms. I should have told her right at the start; she would have listened to me then. But now . . .”

There was a pause, during which I wondered whether to risk bolting for the house, and decided I could not do so without being heard. I could never, ever reveal to Aidan that I’d been listening to this.

“You did lie to her,” Cathal pointed out. “Clodagh doesn’t seem the kind of person who tolerates lies. Well, you wanted an opportunity to talk to her, and today’s ride is that opportunity. Be sure you make good use of it. And calm down or the lady will see you’ve been having a fit of the vapors. Here.”

The sound of someone blowing his nose. “Thanks,” Aidan said. “And thanks for speaking to Johnny for me. Getting the whole day off to do this was more than I expected.”