I gave a nod of understanding, looking down.

‘But,’ Claire continued, ‘all of that amounts to nothing, if you love him.’

As I raised my head, she met me with a smile.

‘Believe me, Eva dear, if I was able to adapt, there’s hope for anyone.’

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

I heard the voices speaking low to one another from the wall behind my bed.

‘You’ll need my help, I’m thinking.’

‘I’ve enough men aboard the Sally.’ Daniel’s voice.

I drifted in that drowsy plane between sleep and full consciousness, not wanting to wake up and lose the moment.

Daniel said, ‘I cannot take you.’

‘So then take Jack.’

‘And waste the whole night arguing which one of us will take the helm? I thank you, no. Nor can I send Jack in my place,’ he went on, as though cutting off an argument, ‘because the message clearly states it must be me.’

A pause, then, ‘For one woman,’ Fergal said, ‘she can create uncommon difficulties.’

‘I rather think you put it in her nature when you made her an O’Cleary.’

They were talking about me, I realised. And their voices were very distinct, not as muffled as they’d been before with the distance of time in between us.

Rising to awareness like a diver pushing upwards from the depths, I brushed aside the clinging fog of sleep and forced my heavy eyelids open.

It was morning, fully light, and I was lying on the linens of the big four-poster tester bed, and though the doorway to the corridor was closed, the one connecting Daniel’s room to mine was open. Fergal stood square in it with his back to me.

I blinked for a moment, adjusting, and tried to remember.

I’d fallen asleep in my own bed last night. I’d been reading. I’d started Jack’s memoir, but after ten pages or so of his exploits I’d started to drift, and then …

‘I pledged her my protection,’ Daniel said, and from his voice I judged that he was standing just the other side of Fergal, in his room. ‘I’ll not feel easy in my mind unless I know that you are here to guard her if she should return.’

Which would have been my cue to say something, had not another male voice spoken up before I had the chance to. From the next room, Jack’s voice asked, ‘Return from where?’

I hadn’t heard his footsteps in the corridor, or heard the door of Daniel’s room swing open, but from Fergal’s quick reaction I could only guess that Jack had somehow caught them by surprise.

‘I was about to say,’ said Daniel quietly, ‘should she return to health.’

In my doorway Fergal shifted so he blocked the view more solidly, his shoulder all but welded to the door frame.

Jack used a phrase I’d never heard, but it must have been rude because his brother told him, ‘Mind your tongue. We have a woman in the house.’

‘Do we, now?’ The floorboards creaked as Jack stepped forwards, and I looked round frantically to find a blanket, anything to cover my modern pyjamas, as he went on, ‘These past days you have sent me twice on errands to do nothing of importance, and in all that time I’ve neither glimpsed nor heard your sister, Fergal. And yet both of you keep telling me she’s here, and only ill.’

‘And what would either of us have to gain by saying so, were it not true?’ asked Daniel.

Jack came closer still. ‘You see, I cannot tell you, and that troubles me. It troubles me as much as does the memory of her voice.’

The only blanket I could see lay folded out of reach across the clothes-press, so instead I scrambled underneath the sheets and pulled them to my chin. The sound, though slight, caught Fergal’s ear. He turned to look towards the bed as Jack asked, ‘How is she this morning, then?’

My gaze stayed locked with Fergal’s as I marvelled once again at his ability to show no outward sign of his reactions when he wanted to conceal what he was thinking. His expression hadn’t changed, though he did wait a moment before telling Jack, ‘She is asleep.’

I took the hint and closed my eyes.

‘She is a quiet sleeper,’ Jack remarked.

‘See for yourself, then, if you’ll not believe us.’ Fergal must have stepped aside because the floorboards creaked much closer to the bed, and in the pause that followed I tried hard to concentrate on breathing lightly, evenly.

After what seemed an eternity Jack broke the silence and whispered contritely, ‘I’m sorry, I—’

‘Call me a liar again,’ Fergal said, ‘and you’ll wish that you hadn’t. Now out with you. Both of you. Give her some peace.’

I felt someone’s fingertips trace lightly over my cheek, maybe brushing a stray bit of hair aside, and I knew whose touch it was even before Fergal said, ‘Danny, both of you. Out.’

Daniel said, close above me, ‘I think she looks better this morning.’

‘She does, ay,’ said Fergal. ‘I’d not be surprised to see her up and about by the afternoon. But now she needs her rest, so out.’

He left no room for argument, not with that tone.

The light touch left my face and I heard both the brothers retreat through the next room and, trading muffled arguments, start down the stairs. Fergal crossed to shut the connecting door firmly behind them.

I opened my eyes as he turned round to face me, his own dark eyes crinkling with laughter. ‘I have to confess,’ he said, low, ‘I’m beginning to think that you may be a witch after all, for you do have the devil’s own luck with your timing.’