Holder of Lightning Read Online Free PDF Page B

whatever you’d like.”
    Jenna had to stop herself from grinning, both from relief that the tiarna’s interrogation seemed to be over, and at the suggestion to go to Tara’s. Coelin had promised her a song, and she hadn’t wanted to ask, with the awful weather. But if the tiarna insisted . . .
    “Oh, no, Tiarna,” Maeve started to say automatically, then glanced back at Jenna. He smiled at her and nodded, as if they shared a secret.
    “Your daughter wants you to accept,” Mac Ard said. “And I would be honored.”
    “I don’t—” Maeve began. Jenna tightened her arms around her mother’s shoulders, and felt her sigh. “I suppose we’d also be honored,” she said.
     
    The rain had subsided to a bare, cold drizzle. Mac Ard brought his stallion out from the barn. “You want to ride him?” he asked Jenna. She nodded, mutely. He picked her up, hands around her waist, and placed her sideways astride the saddle, handing her the reins. He patted the muscular neck, glossy and as rich a brown as new-turned earth. “Be have yourself, Conhal,” he told the horse, who snorted and shook his head, bridle jingling. “That’s a special young woman you hold.”
    For a moment, Jenna wondered at that, but then Mac Ard clucked once at Conhal, and the horse started walking, startling Jenna. They moved up the lane to Tara’s, Mac Ard and Maeve walking alongside. The tiarna seemed to be paying most of his attention to Maeve, Jenna noticed. His head inclined toward her, and they talked in soft voices that Jenna couldn’t quite overhear, and he smiled and, once, he touched Maeve’s arm. Her mam smiled in return and laughed, but Jenna noticed that Maeve also moved slightly away from the tiarna after the touch.
    Jenna frowned. Her mam had never paid much attention to the other men in Ballintubber, though enough of them had certainly indicated their interest. She’d always rebuffed them—some gently, some not, but all of them firmly. But this dark man, this Mac Ard . . . He seemed to like Maeve, and he was Riocha, after all. Maeve had always told her how Niall, her da, was strong and protective and loving, and she could imagine that this Mac Ard might be the same way. . . .
    The conversation inside Tara’s stopped dead when Tiarna Mac Ard pushed open the door of the tavern so that Maeve and Jenna could enter, then, as quickly, the chatter resumed again as everyone pretended not to notice that the tiarna had brought company with him. Tara came out from behind the bar, and shooed away old man Buckles from one of the tables. “What will you have, Tiarna Mac Ard?” she asked with an eyebrows-raised glance at Maeve. Mac Ard tilted his head toward Jenna’s mam.
    “What do you recommend?” he asked.
    “Tara’s brown ale is excellent,” Maeve said. She was smiling at Mac Ard, and if she remained a careful step away from him, she also kept her gaze on him.
    “The brown ale, then,” Mac Ard said. Tara nodded her head and bustled off. Maeve sat across the table from Mac Ard; Jenna went over to where Coelin was tuning his gio tár. Ellia was there also, her arm around Coelin. He glanced up, smiling, as Jenna approached; Ellia just stared.
    “So the tiarna found you, eh?” he said. “He came up right after you left and asked where you lived.” Coelin glanced over at the table, where Mac Ard’s dark head inclined toward Maeve. Coelin lifted an eyebrow at Jenna. “Seems he likes what he found.” Ellia grinned at that, and Jenna frowned.
    “I don’t find that funny, Coelin Singer,” she said. She lifted her chin and turned to walk away.
    Coelin strummed a minor chord. “Jenna,” he said to her back. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you.” She looked over her shoulder at him, and he continued. “So what did he ask you? ‘She’s the one who was up there,’ he said to me. ‘I know this. I can feel it.’ That’s what he told me, before he even knew who you were.”
    “What did the tiarna mean by that?”