Page 208 of The Pirate Queen

“I am going to the beach. And any man that follows me will not return alive.”

The steward laughs at her like she’s some silly girl, a child making empty threats.

Then her blade is at his throat, pressed into the soft flesh beneath his chin. One droplet of red blood hovers at the tip. “You do not give me orders,” she tells him. “Not today, not ever.”

The man is so startled he doesn’t breathe.

“Do you understand?”

Grace waits for an answer, but he doesn’t move, doesn’t speak.

“G’wan, nod if you understand me.”

The nod forces her knife a fraction deeper into his flesh. The steward gasps. She pulls her knife away, then levels him with a cold glare. “The next time you dare try such a thing, I will separate your head from your neck.”

Grace wipes her blade on the shoulder of his leine and leaves the Great Hall.

Finn watches from a bend in the stairwell. In all his twenty years he has never seen a woman defend herself with a blade or set a man back on his heels. He cannot understand the feeling that rushes through him. Respect and awe and hilarity, but there is something else as well. Something deeper and unnerving. It scares him. Finn follows her, but at a distance, down the stairwell, through the kitchen, and to the main door. But not across the broad stretch of lawn or to the half-moon beach where she stands with her back to the castle, staring out to sea. He does not dare.

Murray watches his brother fall in love. As if some rock has been dropped from a great height into a still pond, the ripples spread across Finn’s entire being. Though his expression never changes, Murray can feel the movement in his brother’s soul. He stares at Gráinne as though she is the highest point on a compass, his true north. Murray has never had to share his brother with anyone. The anger hits him first; then the sadness. He does not want to share.

He goes to stand beside Finn at the door.

A long while later, his brother tells him, “I don’t know what to do.”

They watch Gráinne in silence as Murray figures out how to answer. He surrenders in the end, but it costs him. “We do our job. We guard her.”

Gutty watches her cry. He crouches in the tall grass near the beach as their new Bean an Tí sobs quietly into her hands. Her body shakes in a low, constant shudder, like she’s cold. And he knows that feeling, doesn’t he? Knows what it’s like to be left outside when everyone else has a warm bed. It makes him sad. It makes him like her, for some reason. He cries a lot too. Every so often, she swipes the tears from her cheeks, then growls and swipes at her face, trying to make them stop. But they don’t. She cries and cries and cries until she is wrung out. And then she stands on the damp sand a while longer.

The boy slips away again, back to the castle, past those two guards with the same face, and into the kitchen.

“I think she’s hungry,” he tells Cook.

“Who?”

“The new Bean an Tí.”

“Ah, take up a tray, then, won’t you?”

Cook loads a tray with hot toast and fresh butter. Oatcakes. Boiled eggs. A glass of milk. Gutty runs it up the stairs and into the privy chamber and leaves it on the low table before the hearth; then he stokes the fire and adds a turve of peat. He’s out again, quiet as a ghost before Gráinne enters the chamber a few moments later.

She is hungry. And tired. They arrived late last night after a long day at sea. Grace wanted to stay on deck during the trip, but her husband had banished her to the cabin. She should have slept during the voyage because she certainly didn’t get a moment once O’Flaherty saw that big feather bed. Grace glares at the bed, then away. She sees the tray then. Someone has brought her breakfast.

What a normal thing, the ritual of a meal, even if she has no one to share it with. Grace eats and drinks and feels better by the time she licks the crumbs from her fingers. She closes her eyes and reaches out for the Sense, listening. But there is only a calm, deep quiet.

Grace sighs.

“So this is it, then?” she says quietly. “This is the life that I have been given?”

Mother, 1583

“Ego Te Expectabo”

Grace is fifty-three years old

She lays her head in the crook of Richard’s arm. No matter that the sun is bright and high this April morning. Or that Rockfleet is buzzing with visitors who have come to see The MacWilliam. She is still in her leine, still in bed. Soaking up his warmth while she can. Grace has done this before, would be happy to never relive these moments. Only now, she has taken her mother’s place, and the role of widow looms large in her mind once again. This time, it hurts.

“I am dying,” Richard tells her.