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and help
me get the fire going hotter. There’s a
stack of it behind the cattle byre.”
    “As you wish, Princess.” He
gave her a mock bow. Except for the deep
line etched between her brows, Keefe
decided she was prettier when she was angry.
    As he rounded the corner of the byre, he
noticed some wood piled in a jumble near the midden heap. The dark
burled grain caught his eye. It was the remains of a chair. The
graceful back was intricately carved but had been shattered into
two pieces and one of the legs was broken off, leaving a jagged
stump.
    Something about the chair
jarred his mind. The smell of sawdust rose
in his nostrils. He remembered hefting the
weight of an adze and the smooth feel of polished, fine-grained
wood under his palms. He flexed his fingers and suddenly knew he
could fix that chair.
    Keefe gathered up the
pieces of wood and carried them along with
the peat back to Brenna.
    “No!” she said. “We’ll not be burning
that.”
    “Of course not.” Keefe set down the armful of
pieces and held up the sections of the back, fitting them together
and judging the best way to reunite them. “Why burn what I can
repair?”
    Brenna stopped mixing the brew with her long
wooden paddle and looked at him intently. “Can ye truly?”
    “I think so.” His mind worked feverishly,
traveling down a new, yet strangely familiar, road. Choosing and
preparing the wood, the tools, the carefully honed craft that was
both art and science—knowledge poured back into him with a rush
that left him light-headed.
    He was a carpenter. That much he could be
certain of. But what manner of carpenter washed up on a beach with
naught but a keg of ale? Questions and self-doubt assaulted him
afresh, but he shoved them aside.
    “Where can I find some woodworking
tools?”
    Brenna pointed toward a lean-to. “What tools
there be ye’ll find in the smith’s shed.” The hopeful expression on
her face faded. “I’m doubting there’s aught ye can do for the
chair. Our cooper told me ‘twas hopeless, but after ye’ve broken
your fast, I give ye leave to try.”
    ***
    Brenna pinned up the last of the light blue
linen to flap dry in the slanting sunlight. Wool took color easily
darkening to the shade of twilight just before the sky turns inky
black, but flax caught the hue of the heavens on a fine summer
morn.
    “There’s a good day’s work,” she said
approvingly as she eyed the bolts of saffron, deep green, and soft
gray undulating in the breeze.
    The scent of a rich stew wafted out of the
keep. Moira had been busy as well.
    Brenna brushed a strand of
curling hair out of her eyes and tucked it behind her ear. As she’d
worked through the morning, Keefe had crisscrossed the yard several
times, fetching different items he needed to attempt the repair of
the chair. She hadn’t seen the Northman
since she checked on him at midday.
    She knew he was still there, though. From
time to time, she’d catch snatches of the rhythmic noise she
guessed was a song. It wasn’t the most pleasant of sounds, but she
recognized it as the same tune he’d been trying to sing when she’d
happened upon him at his ablutions.
    The sound invoked the memory of seeing him in
splendid nakedness, the cool stream lapping at his hips. The
smoothness of skin pulled taut over his muscles, the water tickling
over his chest, the soft fuzz of fine hairs on his belly—
    Brenna shook herself to
ward off the vision. What was wrong with
her? She knew what men were. Especially Northmen. She’d seen the
flicker of lust in his eye when he tried to lure her into the water
with him. Brian Ui Niall’s daughter would be no man’s fool, nor his
plaything, either.
    She squared her shoulders
and marched across the yard to the smith’s
shed.
    “The man lolls in the shade
all day, singing his hea then songs and
playing at work while the rest of us toil under God’s sun,” she
muttered under her breath. “He’ll be singing a different tune when
I’m through with