When his hands slid to my shoulders I believe I held my breath; and then he took hold of the edges of the blanket that had slipped and with a careful touch rewrapped me in the woollen folds, his features set in studied concentration as he crossed the blanket’s ends and tucked them under.

There was an instant just before he let me go when I felt sure he meant to say something, but in the end he only gave a nod. ‘Good night,’ he said, his measured tone the same as it had ever been.

The doorway that connected his room to my own stood partway open and I watched him cross towards it. Halfway through with his hand on the latch he turned back to say over his shoulder, ‘And Eva?’

It astonished me I had a voice at all. ‘Yes?’

‘Lock your door.’

With which advice he pulled it shut behind him, leaving me hugging the blanket around me and feeling a warmth that had nothing to do with the fire.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

‘You’re in a rare fine mood this morning.’ Fergal somehow made that seem an accusation. I had found him at the far end of the yard beside the stables, chopping firewood, and although he hadn’t asked to have my company I’d plonked myself down happily upon a nearby log to watch. He swung the axe so hard it cleaved the length of wood in one blow and stuck deep into the broad scarred stump beneath, so that he had to wrest it out again. As he straightened he glanced sideways at me, openly suspicious. ‘What’s the cause of it, I wonder?’

‘I’m just happy.’

And I was. Almost ridiculously happy, in a way that couldn’t be stamped out by anything. Not Fergal’s grumbling, nor the gnawing in my stomach that reminded me I hadn’t eaten breakfast, nor the fact the sun lay hidden by a bank of cheerless cloud. The world was beautiful this morning, because Daniel Butler liked me.

I’d replayed the moment several times since waking, to be sure, and every time I had replayed it I’d been more convinced it hadn’t been imagined. He had liked me. And he’d wanted me. And that – to use a phrase he’d used himself – was a beginning.

So this morning seemed a miracle, no matter what the weather or the moods of those around me, or the fact that Daniel wasn’t even here.

He’d gone out just after daybreak. I knew because I’d been awake myself, my own mind racing, and I’d heard him walking back and forth across the creaking floorboards in the next room, heard him twice approach the locked connecting door, then stop, and turn away again. And in the end he had gone out and down the stairs and in a little while I’d heard the sound of hoofbeats passing from the stables to the road, and they had faded up the hill and left the wind alone behind.

That same wind brushed my face now as I looked at Fergal. Jack had been asleep and snoring loudly when I’d passed his door upstairs on my way out, and at this distance from the house there wasn’t much chance of my being overheard, but still I kept my voice as quiet as I could when I asked, ‘Do you know where Daniel’s gone this morning?’

‘No.’ The axe swung down again as Fergal shot another glance my way that held more interest than the first. ‘There’s no one tells me anything these days, it seems.’

The axe stuck in the stump again and this time when he yanked it free he turned the blade and ran his thumb across a small nick in the metal, frowning.

‘Is it broken?’ I asked.

‘Sadly, no. ’Tis indestructible, this relic. It belonged to Danny’s uncle, and is doubly as cantankerous.’

I smiled at the thought of Fergal being bested by a thing as stubborn as himself, and then I thought of something else, and asked him, ‘What was Daniel’s uncle’s name? Was he a Butler, too?’

‘A Pritchard. Why?’

‘I only wondered. There aren’t many Butler graves up in the churchyard, that’s all, only Ann’s and—’ Just in time I caught myself and stopped before I gave away a bit of knowledge Fergal shouldn’t have. Not that I knew how Jack had died, or when, except that it would happen twenty years or more from now, but still …

Fergal, true to form, missed nothing. ‘Have you walked over my grave as well?’

‘Fergal.’

Setting more wood on the stump, he shrugged. ‘You needn’t fear. I’ve no great wish to know my future. No man should.’ Then a thought seemed to strike him. He glanced at me sideways. ‘Nor should anyone, I’m thinking, know what lies in store for someone else, for that would be a burden, would it not?’ His eyes met mine with understanding. ‘Take this whole rebellion, now, that Danny’s got himself involved in. If you were to know that it would fail and could not tell us so, I’m guessing that would cause you to be troubled in your mind.’

He knew already, I could see that. He knew as surely as I did that nothing would come of the venture.

‘And,’ he said, ‘if that were how you felt, I’d have to tell you not to waste your worries. Anyone with any wits at all knows well enough the Duke of Ormonde cannot carry through his plans.’ He turned his head away and calmly spat upon the ground, a gesture that I took to be a sign of his opinion of the duke. ‘And Danny knows it, too, believe me.’

‘Then why does he … ?’

‘Why does he take part in it?’ He shrugged. ‘’Tis how he’s made, and how he reasons things. To Danny, knowing that the battle will not end the way he wishes does not make it any less worthwhile to fight.’ He swung the axe with forceful certainty. ‘I’m only saying. What you know or do not know, you needn’t let it be a burden. Things will happen as they will.’ With a sweep of the axe blade he cleared the cut wood from the stump and looked round for a new length of log to be split. There was none.