Page 40 of The Queen and the Half-blood
MIRREN WAS UNUSUALLY quiet while she readied Lara for supper—her movements jerky as she took out the High Queen’s braids and brushed her hair.
“Ouch.” Lara winced as the hog bristle brush caught. “What’s up with you this evening?”
“Nothing,” Mirren replied quickly. “Sorry, My Queen!”
Lara swiveled on the stool where she perched before the hearth in her alcove, her attention settling on her handmaid.
Mirren wasn’t herself. Her face was pinched, and her blue eyes were slightly red.
Lara frowned. “Have you been crying?”
Mirren waved her concern away, a little of her usual spirit returning. “No.”
Lara fixed her with a level look. “You’d tell me if you were in any bother, wouldn’t you?” She didn’t want Mirren to keep her worries to herself. Guilt stabbed at her then. She’d been so caught up in her own problems of late, she hadn’t given anyone else much thought.
Mirren gave a wan smile in response.
“I’m sorry if I haven’t been myself recently,” Lara said with a grimace. “I hope I haven’t been overly demanding with you?”
“Of course not.”
“Well then.” Lara folded her arms across her chest. “What is it?”
Her handmaid swallowed. Clearing her throat, she lowered her gaze to the hairbrush she still gripped. She then began turning it over and over in her hands. “Tonight is the blood-letting.”
Lara nodded. “Aye … and what of it?”
“Torran has asked me to partner with him.”
The words were whispered, as if she were revealing a terrible thing, and Lara stilled. Torran mac Rab was Cailean’s second-in-command. While they’d been on campaign, he’d held the fort in Lara’s stead. She trusted his loyalty as much as she did Cailean’s. Nonetheless, Mirren now trembled at the thought of taking part in the blood-letting with him.
Rising from her stool near the sleeping alcove, Lara took a step closer to Mirren and laid a hand on her shoulder. “Hey … it’s all right.”
But she knew it wasn’t.
Over three years earlier, two enforcers had cornered Mirren outside the broch and brutally raped her. Overnight, she’d gone from a light-hearted lass who saw the best in others, to a cynical one who feared men—warrior druids especially. She’d also insisted that Bree teach her how to fight and wield knives. She’d even asked one of the Guard to tutor her in knife throwing—a skill that had come in handy when Lara and her mother had been attacked in the North, for Mirren had thrown the blade that brought down the queen’s killer.
“Are you afraid of him?” Lara asked softly.
Mirren grimaced. “I’m not sure. I find it hard to see the good in any enforcer these days.”
“Even Cailean?”
“Aye … even him.”
A pause followed, while Lara considered how to respond. Once, she would have been at a loss for how to speak of such things, having had little worldly experience. But now, after hermarriage to Dunchadh of Braewall, she knew what it was to fear a man—what it was to hate one. Nevertheless, she’d tread carefully here. “You know that I partnered with Cailean at the blood-letting … twice?”
Mirren’s blue eyes widened. “You did?”
“Aye … it was before you came to live in the broch.” Lara flashed Mirren a sheepish smile. “Just between you and me, I was smitten with him at the time … so when he asked me to partner with him, I fell over myself to accept.”
Mirren’s eyebrows rose, her lips curving. “What was it like … to bond with someone in that way?”
“Exciting … intimate. You share more than blood … it’s as if your life forces entwine for a short while. Afterward, you feel … close.”
“You weren’t jealous when he ordered himself a bride then?”
Lara sighed. “No, I always knew my father would arrange a match for me … for the good of Albia.”
