Page 109 of The Pirate Queen

“He might have been. And that’s enough.”

Finn squints at the sky, then rubs a knuckle along his jawbone. “There may be a better way to get your revenge.”

“Speak plainly.”

“Is August tenth today, isn’t it?” he asks.

“I suppose.”

“And five days from now, the Feast of the Assumption is celebrated on Caher Island, just south of here.” He points in that direction. “Six miles.”

Grace nods.

“Pious people, the MacMahons. They never miss that pilgrimage. Mass at Teampull Padraigh, a visit to St. Padraigh’s Bed, and then a gathering of holy water from Padraigh’s Well.”

Grace understands his meaning then. “An ambush?”

“That’s one way of looking at it.”

“And the other?”

“An eye for an eye,” he tells her.

Gutty slams Finn into the back wall of the tower house. Puts a forearm against his throat.

“Was it you?”

“No,” Finn chokes out.

“Prove it.”

“I came back with you, didn’t I? You stupid feck.”

“But did you go back on your own? Did you kill him?”

“I wish,” Finn says, then adds the only thing that Gutty can believe. “I can’t sail. Why do you think I needed you in the first place?”

Gutty steps back and lets him go. Nods.

“I hated him,” Finn says, rubbing his throat. “But still, I couldn’t have taken happiness from her.”

They glare at each other for a minute before Gutty says, “I asked her. Like you told me.”

“And what did your dairy maid have to say?”

“You were right. De Lacy had been around flirting with all the serving girls, then asking questions about Gráinne. Things he had no right to know. Like the number of her strongholds and who among the men she trusts the most. Where her kids had gone to foster. But mainly he had questions about the fleet. Who was the captain of each, and where they’re docked when not at Clare. Once he asked about the new O’Malley and if the clan trusts Donal to lead.”

“He was probing for weakness.”

“And he found it, didn’t he?”

Finn grinds his teeth. “She isn’t weak.”

“Maybe.” Gutty shrugs. “But she is vulnerable.”

At first, Grace thought to bury Hugh in the churchyard at St. Brigid’s Abbey. But she had no time to argue with the friar and the shipwrecked man wasn’t an O’Malley regardless. So the pasture beyond the tower house had to do. Five days ago they’d dug a hole and put him into the ground. She’d ordered a cairn built. A way for her to find him, should his family ever come looking. His death bothers her. It makes her restless. She wonders…Well. Too late for that.

The worst of it is that she will never know his real name. Grace had planned to ask him the night he was set to return, to needle the truth from him with lips or tongue or hand—whatever made him witless and honest. His presence among them is a splinter. The truth of which must be pried loose.