Page 65 of The Pirate Queen

Grace sees then where she went wrong. She sees what Finn was trying to warn her about on the battlements. The messenger who brought news of her husband’s death sits to the right side of Rory O’Flaherty, licking gravy from his fingers. He takes his time, then lifts a glass of mead and tips it in her honor.

“You?” she says, taking one step forward. The twins shift with her in equal measure.

All around her, men rise to their feet. Draw their swords.

This time, when Finn takes her by the arm and pulls her backward, she doesn’t resist.

“Oh,” Rory says. “I see you’ve met my brother.”

“I knew he didn’t swim to shore,” Finn mutters.

Brother? Brother. She doesn’t even know the messenger’s name.

“Who are you?” she demands.

He hooks a thumb at Rory. Grins. “His brother.”

“What is your fecking name?”

“Careful.” He sets his mug down and holds up his hands like she’s threatened him. “That’s no way to speak to a man.”

“His name is Connor,” Rory says. “And he had the great fortune—or misfortune, if you consider his leg—to encounter a Joyce on the shores of Lough Corrib shortly after the battle ended. Was fleeing the island, wasn’t he?”

“ ’E was,” Connor says.

“Turns out he had a dagger that Connor didn’t see. So he took a twelve-inch gash to the leg. But then my brother made him talk. And he learned all about the battle for Cock’s Castle—”

“Hen’s Castle!” Murray shouts.

“And he had the good sense to ride for home with a warning. To be fair, he was trying to reach me when your men found him. It worked in my favor, though. Would have been harder to take the castle with you here, wouldn’t it? But your reputation precedes you, Gráinne. Bold. Reckless. Stupid. I’ve heard plenty. And so did your husband. Which is why Donal told me that, should anything ever happen to him, he wanted me to step forward and claim the title of chieftain. So while you were off lifting your skirts on Lough Corrib, the men of this clan voted for me as their next chieftain. As a matter of fact, we were celebrating when you barged in here with these two spectacularly ugly men of yours. Where did you find them, anyway?”

“You would hold that vote without seventy of your clansmen? You would leave them to defend a castle and deny them that right?”

“It would have taken one thousand men to change the outcome of this vote. It was unanimous in my favor.”

“Only because they were given no other option,” she says.

“I laughed at Donal when he suggested it. But he was right, wasn’t he?” Rory says. “You really think they would have chosen you instead?”

He means to humiliate her. And based on the laughter that fills the Great Hall, he succeeds. But Grace will not be laughed out of her own home, nor lose the title she has earned.

“Many of them would have.”

“You cannot be serious. Brehon Law will not allow it.”

“And what is that law anymore?” she asks. “Didn’t the English queen teach us that it can be bent to a woman’s will? Elizabeth did just that when she named Murrough as The O’Flaherty while my husband’s father yet lived. It is I who stayed here and led this clan while my husband went off and fought his useless feuds for decades. You encouraged him. And now you come to take his name as chieftain? You are no man. And no Taoiseach that I will ever recognize.”

“The vote is taken!” he screams, pounding his fist on the table, then lunging to his feet.

“Gráinne!”

When Grace turns to the old rattled voice that interrupts them, the twins shift with her—one between her and Rory, the other between her and this new threat.

Only, the woman who pushes her way through the crowd is no threat at all.

Grace has not seen Cook since she snuck by the kitchen two days ago, but when the old woman approaches the table holding a platter of freshly baked rolls, she stops short. Relief shudders through her body.

“I thought you dead,” Cook says.