The rest of the table rose, then the prince consort and Morag’s daughters followed her from the chamber. Ruith stood, waiting as they all vacated the hall, wondering what it was that set so ill with him. It wasn’t any of the looks Morag had given him, or the glares her daughters had given Sarah—irritating though those had been. There was something ...
They might have produced a child, and then Seannair would have allowed her to be raised like the savage lads he has rampaging about his kingdom.
Ruith frowned. Why would Morag have thought Athair and his bride would have produced a girl child?
“Ruith?”
He looked at Sarah. The thoughts tumbled over and over in his head, as if they’d been caught in a mighty wave and couldn’t right themselves. Athair and Sorcha had died . . . if they had produced a girl child . . . Morag wanted more power . . .
He looked at Sarah, then saw her, that beautiful, obscure gel who had inherited no magic at all from the witchwoman Seleg, but had somehow acquired the ability to see, an ability augmented by Soilléir of Cothromaiche, who had certainly taken a great interest in her.
Hadn’t he?
“Ruith.”
“I’m fine,” he said.
“I didn’t say you weren’t,” she said. “Shall we go?”
“Please,” he agreed.
She didn’t look any better than he felt. “Interesting dinner conversation.”
Aye, it had been. He reached for her hand. “We need to be about our business tonight, not tomorrow night.”
She looked as if she would rather have put it off a bit longer, but she nodded just the same.
He leaned close. “I’ll walk you to your chamber, then come fetch you after the house settles down to sleep.”
She took a deep breath. “I might try to use that spell again to see exactly—”
“Wait for me to come to you first.”
“But—”
“Wait for me.”
“I want you to understand, Your Highness, that the only reason I am submitting to your bullying now is that I’m almost too terrified to speak. It will not last, I assure you.”
“’Tis for your own good.”
“Why is it I’m fairly certain Soilléir said the same thing to you?” she muttered.
He only smiled and took her hand. His smile faded as he walked, though, for he knew that the unpleasantness at supper could only be intensified the longer they stayed.
Until it possibly spiraled into something he might not see coming.
He wondered why Morag had a pair of his father’s spells, why she was so obsessed with Seannair of Cothromaiche, why she feared the peoples of the north who wouldn’t possibly want her land or her keep. He understood the lust for power. He had spent the first ten years of his life watching it in full bloom. And though it had been dangerous, it hadn’t been directed solely at him.
Or at the woman he loved.
Aye, they would be about their business and get the hell out of the castle whilst they still could, before something happened to Sarah.
Something more than what he feared had already happened to her as a wee babe.
Twenty-four
Sarah stood in front of the fire Ruith had made her earlier in her chamber that still seemed to be smoldering from the spells he’d used to rid it of what had been there before, and looked around her. He had changed the closet into a rather lovely place, all things considered, with enough light to keep her from having to look into corners for unpleasant things. It was difficult to believe, sometimes, that the only reason he did what he did was that he wanted to make certain she was comfortable.
A pity there wasn’t anything he could do to ease the terror she felt over the task that lay in front of them.
She tried not to think about Athair and Sorcha, that poor pair who had perished in a way no one seemed to want to talk about. It occurred to her, as she stood there and looked into the flames of the fire, that if they were descended from Seannair of Cothromaiche, that patriarch with no delusions of grandeur, and so was Soilléir, then he and Athair were cousins.
Odd that Soilléir had said nothing.
Then again, she hadn’t mentioned their names after that morning in the garden of Gearrannan, so he would have had no reason to discuss them with her.
She felt rather than heard something behind her. She had scarce gotten one of her knives in her hand and turned before she realized it was