The ladies answer according to their own hearts

The hush that fell was sudden and complete. Every pair of ears strained to hear who was coming into the manor house, as if they were all elves in that room, though of course only Paul could have heard more than the great door’s slam.

Perhaps Benedict could, too, but if Benedict had noticed his father’s disappearance, he had not made a fuss about it. Certainly he made no reaction to his father’s possible return now.

Finally it was Liadan who took it upon herself to lighten the mood. She sat herself up in the crook of Condal’s arm and let out a merry squeal. She earned no more attention than a smile from Condal and a whispered salutation from Lady Gwynn, but at least the silence had been broken.

Paul said, “It’s only Colin and my father. Rua’s not here.”

“No Aengus either?” Cat asked from the bed.

“Fie! He had better not be!” Flann said. “If Rua isn’t!”

“You have no proof they left together! What’s—”

“Ladies!” Paul pleaded.

“I can’t think of one reasonable place for them to go together,” Flann insisted, “let alone two places singly! They went together, you may be certain, and had a good reason to keep it a secret!”

“Nobody,” Cat said, “elopes in the middle of the night with a thirteen-​year-​old boy in tow, and a guard who’s halfway in love with the lady besides!”

“Ladies!” Paul said. “Not again!”

Liadan laughed at her uncle’s groan. But Flann did not answer, for even her ears could detect Colin stumping and creaking down the narrow hall. Osh would be with him, silent as a breeze.

She hadn’t said too much, had she? She had only insisted that Lasrua had likely run away with Aengus. It was what Osh thought, too. When the steward had come to ask them whether they had seen Aengus that morning, the first thing Osh had asked was “Where is Rua?” A little grimly, but he had seemed resigned.

He was not looking grim now, though his smile was tired.

“Oh,” he said after he had crept in and peeked into the cradle. “I did not make too loud a knock.”

Cat said, “It will take more than your little cat’s paw tapping to wake this girl. We’ve been talking, and Liadan’s been jabbering herself silly, and Una has scarcely batted an eyelash.”

While Osh gazed upon his newborn granddaughter, Flann stared over his bowed back at Aengus’s father. Colin looked as grumpy as ever, so there was nothing to be learned from his face. But Flann wondered what strange circumstances could compel him to come directly upstairs without a stop in the pantry for a drink.

Osh turned next to Gwynn.

“Good afternoon, my lady. I beg your pardon, I forget every rule of precedence when I see my granddaughter.”

Gwynn had been so quiet and retiring all afternoon that Flann had almost forgotten she was there. But with the first word addressed to her she came to life, in that misty rainbow way of hers—sparkling, smiling, beaming with a soft light that blurred hard edges and smoothed over shadows.

“It is quite right for you to do so,” she said. “Everyone knows new babies and new mothers are counted as royalty.”

“I did not know,” Osh said, “but I know now.”

He stooped to kiss the backs of her fingers. With Osh’s gaze lowered, Gwynn’s beaming smile dimmed. And even from this angle Flann could see tension in the crinkles around Osh’s eyes and the furrow between his brows. Oh, what had happened?

Straightening, Osh asked Gwynn, “And how are the new royal people in your family?”

Gwynn recovered and smiled up at him. “Hetty and the baby are both quite well, and Hetty sends her good wishes. And I am glad I had the chance to congratulate you in person, Osh, for I was just about to go.”

It was a lie, of course, but it was graciously told.

“Ah, you do not have to leave on our account,” Osh said. “I am certain you want to know what happened to Domnall.”

Cat asked, “Do you know where they are, then?”

Osh said simply, “Yes.” He looked down to unbutton his cloak, with quick glances left and right at Liadan and Flann. “I forget who is next in precedence for greetings. My daughter or my wife.”

Cat looked pleadingly at Flann. Flann looked at Paul. Paul looked as if he was about to vomit something up. Flann hoped it was the question everyone was too afraid to ask.

Meanwhile Colin—who could have understood none of their conversation thus far—stumped up to the cradle to do his duty by the new princess of the family. After a frowning inspection, he asked, “Is this kid breathing?”

Cat squawked and nearly tumbled off the bed into the cradle. After a quick glance at the baby Flann cried, “Colin! Fie for shame! Of course she’s breathing! Why will you be scaring Cat so?”

Colin drew back, bridling. “What? She’s all red, isn’t she? God bless her!”

“Aye, for it’s a newborn she is! Fie! If she weren’t breathing, she’d be blue!”

Colin snorted and stumped off towards Benedict in his corner. “Fie, then, if my advice isn’t needed! Next time I see the whelp choking, I won’t tell you.”

“Colin!”

Cat wailed, “Paul!” and Paul—stymied by the Gaelic—demanded, “What on earth is he saying?” Meanwhile little Una simply took a tiny breath and sighed in her sleep. The outside world was brighter than what she’d been used to, but wails and shouts were nothing new.

Osh stepped up to Flann then, his cloak hanging open, and the wry look in his eyes turned her breathless outrage into a giggle she stifled by chomping down on her bottom lip.

“Ach, poor Osh,” she whispered as she helped him out of his cloak. “You’ve been with him all day?”

“Only one day?” he mused. “It seemed longer.”

This time Flann laughed aloud.

“My father,” Paul said, “did you find Rua?”

Flann felt a jolt run through Osh’s body when Paul spoke to him, but she couldn’t be sure it wasn’t something to do with slipping his arms out of his sleeves. She watched the two of them closely as she folded the cloak.

“I did not find Rua,” Osh said. “But I know where she is gone.”

Osh cringed at the loud chorus of “Where?” that followed. When all the voices had quieted again he asked over his shoulder at Colin, “How is that place called? I forgot it again.”

Colin swung Benedict up into his arms and stomped back into the room, holding the poor boy with one leg straddling his big belly.

“Dunfermline!” he said. He waited for the chorus of gasps and cries to die down before informing the company, “Osh says I’ll be getting another one of these for Christmas.”

“Another one of what?” Flann asked warily.

He heaved Benedict higher on his belly. “Pointy-​eared grandchild, God bless him.”

Cat wailed, “What? Osh!” and Paul asked, “What is he saying?”

Osh smoothed back his hair and sighed. “I did not say exactly that.”

“Exactly what?” Paul begged.

Colin stubbornly and vainly explained himself to Paul in Gaelic. “In the springtime, he said, your elf-​lasses are so hot they’ll fuck a broom handle if you leave it propped up at an angle.”

Osh gasped, “I did not say—what I think you said!”

Colin sniffed and wiped his nose on the back of his arm. After a moment’s reflection he said, “Something of that nature.”

Cat wailed helplessly from the bed, “Osh, what has happened? Where is Rua?”

“And where is Aengus?” Colin asked sagely, cobbling together one of his rare English phrases. “God bless him!”

“Where are Rua and Aengus?” Paul demanded.

Osh pressed his hands to his face. Flann wanted to put her arm around him, but there were times when Osh was grateful to be comforted, and times when he could not bear to be touched. She thought this was one of the latter times.

When he dropped his hands, his face was grave, and he spoke in that low voice of his that was better than a roar for making men pay him heed.

“Everyone will please be quiet now,” he said. “I will tell this one time. Then, if you wish to talk and shout every body at the same time, I will go downstairs with Colin and have a drink until you finish. Yes?”

Colin understood the word “drink” well enough. Paul looked chastened. And Cat said softly, “Go ahead, Osh.”

“Thank you. Paul, your sister left this morning before dawn, with Aengus. And with Domnall and Marcan also,” he added with a glance back at Gwynn. “We just got a message from Young Sigefrith, which Aengus wrote. They stopped at Raegiming this morning to change horses. By now they are far away from Lothere.”

“Headed for Dunfermline…” Cat said. She shot a triumphant look at Flann. “They’re going to find Malcolm!”

“Yes,” Osh said. “However, it is not why you think.”

He took a deep breath and looked down at his folded hands.

“Rua says I may tell you all now, what she told me last week. It is what Aengus told her, which Lord Colban told him. Malcolm,” he said, sending a quelling glance Cat’s way, “knows she is alive. He knows since a long time. He went far away on a ship when he learned.”

He paused. He waited, probably, for them all to have the same thoughts that were running through Flann’s mind. Malcolm didn’t want Lasrua—didn’t want to be burdened with a wife, in any event. It was very like him.

And deep in her heart Flann felt a tick of satisfaction, like a key fitting into a lock: her cousin Malcolm had besmirched his own honor, notwithstanding the insults he had slung at her and poor Eithne. When next she met the man, Flann would spit in his face with a right good will. But for Lasrua’s sake and for Osh’s, she had been hoping for a different outcome this time.

Suddenly, sick with fright, she remembered Paul. She looked up at him, dreading the explosion that would shatter the fragile peace Osh had wrought with him last night. But Paul was quiet. His golden hair glowed in the sunlight, but the color of his cheeks was quenched. His sightless eyes were looking inward.

Osh sighed and resumed his tale. “This morning Aengus and Rua decided together to go to that place I forgot again, where he took a ship, to learn where he has gone. Rua wants to annul the marriage, but she did not need to find Malcolm for that. Father Matthew made already all the documents. I don’t know why she thought she…”

He lifted his hands and stared vaguely at the window, or at something far away.

Flann pressed her hand over her mouth and looked to Cat. Cat was having the same thought. An annulment. That might explain Father Matthew’s sudden unease that morning when—in the course of his visit to his newest wee parishioner—the simultaneous disappearance of Aengus and Lasrua had been revealed to him.

Flann had supposed that he had only scented a small scandal, for that was just what she had done. But Father Matthew must have realized it was worse. If Lasrua was not married to Malcolm—if she and Aengus were not kin after all, and she and Aengus both knew it—then their journey might lead to… exactly what Colin was anticipating with direfully triumphant glee. Flann felt ill merely from the glancing reminder of what unwed motherhood had been for her.

And even if Lasrua didn’t return with a wee bit of extra baggage stowed beneath her apron, it would soon be all over the valley that she had run away with three men who were no kin to her. Lasrua would find herself married indeed when she returned, by gate or by stile.

Liadan, by this time, was busy reaching for Condal’s crucifix with her dimpled hands, so it was Paul who finally broke the silence. He lifted his head until his gilded hair fell back from his face and murmured, “Rua and Aengus,” as if trying out the names together.

Osh looked up and quirked his mouth. “Paul,” he said, sidling up to his son, “I am certain I don’t need to say this. But if Rua says she will be happy with Aengus, then we will all be happy for her, and for your new brother, too.”

“I will be quite happy to call Aengus my brother,” Paul said, looking as smug as anyone might when being called upon to make a sacrifice that was no sacrifice at all. “I like Aengus.”

Osh snorted. “That,” he said, “is neither here nor there, because Rua did not say any such thing. Nor its opposite.”

“Well, and what are they doing?” Cat asked. “Why do they need Malcolm, if Rua has all the documents?”

“Does Rua have all the documents with her?” Paul asked.

Flann thought it a shrewd question, but it appeared Osh had already thought of it. He answered without hesitation, “I think she does.”

Condal ventured, “Mayhap they’re going to Dunfermline to see the Bishop to have it done?”

“Aye,” Cat said, “but then why not go to Whithorn to see the Archbishop? It’s closer, too.”

“Because Aengus didn’t want to meet any of our kin?”

What Condal meant, of course, was that Aengus might not want to meet Lord Colban while on such an errand as marrying Cousin Malcolm’s wife out from under him. Flann thought it possible. And seeing the Bishop rather than the Archbishop would be rather like Aengus’s ramshackle way of doing things.

“They said nothing about that, however,” Osh said.

His hand fluttered around the purse on his belt. Flann guessed the folded message from Aengus was inside. She doubted he would read it to her. Flann was privy to very little that passed between Osh and his daughter. She did not mind, but she wished that Lasrua could be launched into a happy adulthood, so that Osh would not have to worry so much about her. Osh’s grief over his daughter’s unhappiness was the one ache Flann could not approach to soothe.

“They said,” Osh continued, “that they go to find where Malcolm has gone. They do not say why. However—”

Osh twisted around to speak to Gwynn, who had eclipsed herself meanwhile in the alcove.

“Domnall says I am to give you his apologies because he did not take his leave of you as he would have liked to do. And some things—probably nice things—in Gaelic, which I do not read, so I will cut them out for you to keep.”

While Gwynn was blushing prettily and thanking him, Colin estimated the nature of the digression well enough to say, “Domnall! God bless him!” and smirk in a devilish manner.

Flann watched him warily, fearing further commentary. She wasn’t certain just how well Lady Gwynn understood Colin’s proclamations, but the girl’s progress in Gaelic was uncanny, even considering her bosom friendship with Condal and the attentiveness of her smitten young tutor.

But Paul spoke up before Colin had dipped into his wellspring of vulgarity. “My father, did they say whose idea it was? Rua’s or Aengus’s?”

“Ach, Rua’s, to be sure!” Cat laughed. “If ever Aengus is having an idea, you may be certain it’ll mean no trouble taken for his own self.”

“Perhaps he considers it no trouble,” Paul said to his wife, “but a pleasure.”

Cat giggled on a snort and glanced wryly at Flann. “Even if! If Aengus is having ideas for his own pleasure, he’ll be looking no farther away than the pantry or the hayloft! No need to go all the way to Dunfermline for that!”

Condal valiantly held back her giggles until she glanced up at Gwynn and they both succumbed. Colin looked between the ladies’ faces, wondering what interesting joke he had missed. But Osh looked a little ill, and Flann had no desire to laugh.

“Why do you think she does this?” Osh asked her. “To find Malcolm?” He tapped his hand against his purse and turned to look at Cat, and even behind him at the girls. “Ladies? You are almost her age, too. Why do you think?”

“There’s no telling, Osh,” Cat said gently. “She’s keeping close to herself. But I’m not convinced she has given up on Malcolm. Only last night we were talking about him…”

Cat trailed off. Her dark eyes softened, looking back to that night—wondering, perhaps, whether Lasrua had been amused or hurt by the teasing. She had at least laughed. But perhaps that made it worse.

“I think,” Flann said, thinking of the girl’s brambly pride, “she simply wants to make Malcolm renounce her to her face.”

And then spit in his, she added in her head.

“I think,” Paul grumbled, “he’ll take one look at her and decide not to renounce her after all. At least not until the next morning.”

“And that’s where Aengus comes in!” Flann shot back, determined to dampen every spark that might flare into an argument between Paul and his father. “Fie! And who asked you, anyway? Are you a lady? Connie, what do you think? You’re close to her age.”

“I daren’t guess,” Condal said. Her nervous bouncing of Liadan was bringing the baby’s hands perilously close to her necklace. “But I think,” she added shyly, “that Rua and Aengus are sweet on one other. And Aengus is so much nicer than Cousin Malcolm.”

“Fie, because he’s chummy with you young girls?” Cat demanded, rising to Malcolm’s defense as she always did. “Wait till you’re a little older and Cousin Malcolm winks at you once, or leads you out to dance.”

“But Rua is a young girl, too,” Condal said. “And she always said she would like to see the world outside the valley. Perhaps she wanted to take a trip.”

“With Cousin Aengus,” Cat said skeptically.

Condal dimpled and blushed, looking as if she thought the idea more charming than not. Flann thought perhaps Mistress Condal was the young girlie who was hoping to take a trip with a man.

And then it occurred to her that the three of them had answered Osh’s question according to their own hearts more than Lasrua’s. She would mention it to Cat later. For now she was curious about something.

“What about you, Gwynn?” she asked. “What’s your vote? Is she hoping to get Malcolm back, hoping to cast his knavery in his teeth, or just hoping to get Aengus?”

Gwynn peeked out from behind the alcove, looking startled. It was always an effort to get any gossip out of Gwynn, which was a shame, for she had excellent access to information. Particularly about Lasrua, who lived at Nothelm Keep these days.

“I daren’t guess either,” she said. “But we might consider that perhaps Rua doesn’t know her own heart. Only time will tell. Perhaps a little part of her wants all three.”

Gracious as ever, the sly puss! But Flann thought she revealed more than she knew.