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thought
you’d be out looking for Ysenda with the rest of us.”
    Nora
swatted at the woman. “Don’t be telling her about the eyes.”
    Una
laughed. “She should be right proud of those eyes.”
    Maggie
reached up, to feel, but there was no color in the touch. “Two black eyes?”
    “Aye,”
someone else cooed. “You’re a grand lass.”
    She
was not so grand, certainly didn’t feel grand.  If only they would sit at the
table but where was Talorc.  Voices floated past.  She didn’t listen, just
scanned the hall until she saw him, across the room with the lad from the
courtyard. 
    The
one who had spoken to him when Ysenda was found. Senoiad.
    Only
now, despite the clouding pain, she saw that Seonaid was not a lad with a
lasses name.  Seonaid was a willowy, windswept woman and so close to Bold the
curve of her breast touched his arm.
    Stunned,
Maggie wondered how she figured it out for the woman’s kirtle was no kirtle at
all but a tunic that ended above the knee. She wore hose, like a man and a sword
hung from her hip, a dagger tucked into her belt and a knife was strapped to
her ankle.
    There
was just enough curve of the breast and the angle of her cheek bone to make a
difference.
    Though
easily of an age with Talorc, which gave her ten years on Maggie, there was no
covering upon the woman’s head, just a thick dark braid that had fallen over
one shoulder.
    The
woman tilted her face to laugh at something Talorc said. His smile, wide with
pleasure, spoke of a familiarity rich in years.
    Do ya’ think he lived there with no woman in his bed?
    A
dart, thrown to make her mother worry and fret and stop the handfasting. Nothing
real, back then.
    I
am an imposter, in another woman's place. A simple lass in an extravagant home.
    Talorc
thought her to be a woman who inspired victory. But she was nothing other than
flesh and blood, often foolish, always stubborn.
    He
wanted her for his clan, her clan, and the power of the two together. He wanted
her for breeding stock, to bear sturdy sons with the blood from two lines of
warriors.
    He
wanted her because of overblown tales told around a campfire.
    There
was no reality to his wanting. He didn't know who she, Maggie, was. But he had
known who this woman was, the actuality of her. She was not an illusion. She
was not a false image. She was just a woman Talorc knew well.
    An
imagined fear turned to piercing hurt that cramped the heart. A reality.  The
second one to hit that day.
    Maggie
glanced back at the woman, the second person that night to reveal a hint of
sorrow as Bold now talked to Bruce.  As if she felt Maggie’s gaze this woman,
Seonaid, met it. Her eyes violet as the small flower, dark and intense.
    "Don't
you fret about Seonaid."  Una startled Maggie by wrapping an arm around her
shoulders. "The Bold never thought to marry the lass." 
    Lizbeth
gave Una a sharp elbow to the side, adding, "It's you he watches, as
though you might disappear in a waft of smoke."
    She
looked back, to find him watching her.  But he hadn’t been earlier.  She
doubted he even remembered she was there.
    Deidre
hurried over to Maggie, as did half a dozen others.
    "It
doesn’t matter anyway."  Deidre stroked her hand. “When the handfast is
over, you will be leaving him behind.”
    You’ll be leaving… He never thought to marry Seonaid, words echoed with a thousand different conclusions.
 
    Odd
perhaps, in a lad’s clothes, but the woman was beautiful and graceful, with
dark black hair, and mysterious eyes.
    Maggie
looked down at her own self. Too much of her own self, all hip and bosom.
    "Did
she have reason to think he would?  Marry her that is." 
    "You
needn't worry." Eilinor patted Maggie's shoulder.
    "I
wasn't." Which was true, she hadn't until now. She needed to know. "Did
she have reason to think he would?  Marry her that is."
    They
all looked to each other.
    Ingrid
broke the silence with a haughty flip of her own braid.  “Seonaid is nothing
more than a woman