* * *
I pressed my hand down harder, felt the teeth grind behind her lips, thought about pressing harder still until there was blood, blood like she made come from poor Maura’s mouth, but I didn’t. It took her a moment to recognise me with my cap and male attire, my hair hidden. I could see in her gaze though, in the lambent glow from the last of the hearth-fire, that she was wondering not just why I was there, but why I was hale and hearty and not coughing my lungs out. I put a finger to my lips, and when she nodded, I removed my hand. She managed to stop herself from asking, ‘Where’s the quilt and why didn’t it work?’
Instead she said, ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I, cousin dear, am running away.’ I sat on the edge of the bed and she scootched herself up against the pillows, staring big-eyed as I continued, ‘And you are going to help me.’
‘Why would I do that?’
‘Because, Brigid, you don’t want me to marry Aidan any more than I want to marry Aidan.’ I folded my arms. ‘And this is easier than trying to kill me, don’t you think?’
‘I didn’t want to kill you…’
‘I gave the quilt to Maura.’
A tremor travelled through her features and I thought she might cry. She has no reason to hate Maura, who was always kind to her. Maura would give Brigid the pick of the fresh biscuits in the kitchen – when I complained later she told me that I lived at the Hallow and always had the first of treats, but Brigid wasn’t there all the time. Couldn’t I share, just a while? I could. Look where it got me.
‘I found her in time. She’s well enough.’ Well enough until Aidan decides to ask her where I was.
‘It wouldn’t have killed you,’ she said defensively.
‘Maybe not, but I’m young. Maura?’ I shook my head. I wondered how much Brigid knew of Aidan’s plans, and decided it was just enough to make trouble for him. ‘Trust me, Brigid, you don’t want any death on your conscience. And I swear I will come back and haunt you.’
‘Well, if anyone was going to… I… I just wanted to make you sick, hurt. Just a little to teach you a lesson,’ she said, then asked, ‘Does Aoife know?’
I stared at her. Or perhaps she knew even less of Aidan’s plans.
‘Aoife is dead, Brigid. She… she died the morning after we returned to Hob’s Hallow.’ And she stared at me in return, shocked. Her brother came out to the Hallow without telling her why. I tossed up whether or not to tell her how Aoife died; decided no. ‘But Aidan still thinks to marry me.’
‘Of course, he does.’ She shook herself.
‘Help me get away now and I’m out of your hair forever.’
‘That’s too good an offer to refuse,’ she sniped, and I was suddenly pierced. In these last few days I’d lost my grandfather, buried my murdered grandmother, discovered my dead parents were actually alive and left me behind to pay a debt, abandoned Maura and Malachi to an uncertain fate, and been promised to a husband I knew wanted to hurt me. Brigid’s casual snark slipped between my ribs when I’d thought myself armoured against her.
‘Why?’ I cried out, too loudly, then bit down on my sobs. ‘Why do you hate me so?’
‘Because you hate me! We were so close then one day… one day Mother said I wasn’t allowed to come and visit, and that you didn’t want to see me again.’ She hissed at me, arms wrapped around her curled-up knees, fists clenched. Her face turned red with anger, but tears gathered in her eyes.
I rose and turned my back to her, then swiftly pulled up my sweater and shirt so she could see the mess Aoife had made of me. Once a year, perhaps, I arranged two mirrors in my bedroom and examined the landscape of my own flesh to see if it had changed. Brigid gave a sharp intake of breath. What she saw was a relief map of scars, turned that strange white of mounds of skin raised over deep wounds when they heal.
‘Do you remember Rian O’Meara? Do you remember he kissed me? I was so excited and I told you… and you told Aoife…’ I paused, licked my lips. ‘You told Aoife and she did this to me because she thought I was going to be a whore like my mother.’
‘No—’ Brigid sounds strangled.
‘That’s what she yelled at me as she beat me. That I was no better than a slut, letting a common cur touch me.’ I felt my cousin’s fingers on my skin, so light as if they couldn’t believe what was beneath them. I pulled my clothes into place and faced her again. ‘And she made sure that I knew you had told her.’
Brigid’s face was stricken, her lips moving lips a fish gasping to be put back into a pond.
‘Rian disappeared not long after. His body was never found. And his mother always looks at me in the same way, as if it was all my fault.’
Tears made dark marks on Brigid’s nightgown and the white bedlinen. ‘She… Aoife asked me… she told me how important you were to the family, that you had to be protected from anyone who might harm you, because that would harm the family.’ She was in full flow now, tears and snot and sobs, the words being pushed out over the top. ‘And you talked, when you told me, of running away with him.’
And I remembered then all the stupid girlish things I’d said. Things that meant everything to me
