Riona by Linda Windsor Read Free Book Online

she’d made the right choice, both then and now.
    Aware that all eyes rested on her, she emerged from the steady churn of her thoughts. “I’ll join you after vespers.”
And a bath
, she thought, dropping in a slight curtsy before taking her leave.
    Nothing was wrong. It could not be.

F OUR
    I n the privacy of a corbeled stone dwelling assigned to them for the night’s lodging, Bran paced back and forth like a hound in a cage.
    “He sends his love?”
    Kieran ignored his friend’s incredulity. He swished his razor in the shallow stone washbowl and applied it to his stubbled jaw again, staring at the smooth plaster of the wall as if a mirror hung there. Amenities were few, as were decorations. A few crosses carved in the headers and doorframes were all that graced the slanted walls.
    Sparsely furnished as it was, the room was luxurious compared to most of the places they’d slept in the past year. It was paved and well drained, and the small fire in the round, sunken hearth filled it with a welcome warmth now that the sun reposed for the night.
    “He sends his love?”
Bran threw his hands up and dropped on one of the two stuffed pallets in the room.
    “S’bones, you are more worrisome than a gnat.” Kieran skimmed the water surface with his hand, sending it sloshing at the bard. “What would you have me say before curious monks and children? ‘Oh, Heber couldn’t come with us because he’s dead’?”
    Bran wiped the droplets off his tunic, unabashed. “You’ve only postponed her grief.”
    “Well,
you
could have confounded told her then.” Wiping his face with the hem of his cloak, Kieran turned to the light of the single candle in the room. “There, am I fit for a lady’s eyes?”
    “If it’s the sweet brush of Riona’s lips you’re preparing for, you’ve wasted your time.”
    “Ach, ’tis this very kind of thing that threatens the existence of the bards. You wear out your welcome with your barbed words.”
    “Given your temperament of late, your tongue has plied the same sharpening stone.”
    Kieran looked at Bran in surprise. The most timid of the O’Cuillincousins was growing a backbone as fearsome as his wit and tongue. He was a maker of love, not war, he claimed, but the journey across the sea had changed the young man. There was less of the romantic and more of the realist in him. But then, the same could be said of himself, Kieran supposed.
    Bran slapped him on the back. “You have my forgiveness for your churlish humor, for mine is by choice. Yours is by nature.”
    Kieran laughed, in spite of himself. The dart was well thrown. That’s what he got for waging wits with one of druidic lineage. “Come friend, let’s join the Lady Riona.”
    He offered his hand to Bran and hauled him up from the pallet.
    “Are you certain you want me present? After all, we’ve chosen the right speech, and as many times as you’ve repeated it, I see no reason—”
    Kieran held up his other hand. “I would consider it a favor. Truth, I’d rather face a horde of blade-wielding cutthroats armed with nothing but my teeth than see this matter done.”
    Bran looked over at the belongings on Kieran’s pallet. “What about your mother’s ring? Won’t you give it to your bride-to-be?”
    Kieran hesitated in the open door, then shook his head. “One battle at a time, my friend. One battle at a time.”
    Having rested after their arrival and subsequent request for a private audience with Riona once her duty to prayer was done, Kieran and Bran entered the refectory. The oak plank building with its receding gables and shingled roof of yew was abandoned for the evening vespers. The fires smoking in the kitchen, which adjoined to the dining hall by a covered arbor, held the evening meal for the praying servants of God. The melodic prayers and hymns of the worship filtered throughout the grounds of the stone-enclosed inner rath, weaving in and out of the stone, timber, and wattled structures scattered