Princes of Ireland - Edward Rutherfurd [229]
Una had a chance to observe them all. Fionnuala was behaving beautifully. She was demure, serious, her head down, but looking up to smile pleasantly at Brendan from time to time. Una felt so proud of her. Brendan himself she found impressive. Dark-haired, with an early touch of grey, good-looking, he had an air of serious solidity about him that she liked immensely. He talked quietly but well. He considered before uttering an opinion. He asked thoughtful questions about the hospital. If Fionnuala could just get him for a husband, she thought, wouldn’t that be a wonderful match?
His cousin Ruairi was very different. He was taller than Brendan, longer boned. His hair was light brown and trimmed short. He had a few days’ growth of light stubble on his face, which made him seem manly, like a young warrior. He did not appear to be as heavy and serious as Brendan; but rather than ask questions as they went round the hospital, he had seemed content to listen and watch with a half smile on his face so that, after a time, one became curious about what he was thinking. Though his pale eyes sometimes seemed unfocussed, as though he was engaged in an interior dialogue with himself, Una also had a sense that he had noted everything he saw. She wondered what he had noted about herself and Fionnuala.
At first they walked as a group, side by side, along the track, talking easily. Ruairi said something about one of the hospital inmates he had observed which made them all laugh. Then they fell into two pairs, Brendan and Fionnuala walking ahead, Ruairi and Una behind.
For a while Ruairi seemed content to walk along, making the occasional chance remark. Una, who still felt a little shy, was glad to find everything so easy. When she asked him some questions about himself, however, he did begin to talk, and then he talked well.
He appeared to have been everywhere, and done everything. She was amazed that anyone of his age—he surely wasn’t twenty-five—could have done so many things, even for a short time. He told her about the horse traders and cattlemen he knew in Ulster and Munster, and some of their tricks. He described the coasts of Connacht and the islands there. He told her about his voyages with the merchants “from the time I was down in Cork.” He’d been to London and Bristol, and France, too. She asked him eagerly if he had been in Rouen. He hadn’t, but he told her a good story about a merchant from there who was caught in a shady deal.
“Does your cousin Brendan travel so much, also?” she enquired.
“Brendan?” A look she could not read crossed his face. “He prefers to stay at home and tend to his affairs.”
“And you? Do you not tend to your affairs at home?”
“I do.” He stared ahead of him as if he were thinking of something else for a moment. “But I’ve another voyage to make shortly. I’ll be going to Chester.”
For some reason Una was sorry to learn this. It seemed to her that, for all the wonders he might see upon his travels, there was something missing in the life of this fine young man with his restless soul.
“It’s by a warm fire in your own home that you should be,” she said. “At least some of the time.”
“It’s the truth,” he said. “And perhaps when I return that’s what I’ll do.”
Brendan and Fionnuala were turning round now. It seemed that they still wished to walk together, and Una was anxious to encourage this, so she quickly turned round herself so that she and Ruairi would be walking in front of them for the journey back. Ruairi talked less during the return, but she didn’t mind. Though she hardly knew him, it was strange how comfortable she felt in his company. She had never known such a feeling of ease, not even with the Palmer. And he was a good man, none better. She couldn’t account for it at all. Exchanging a few words now and then, they made their way back to the hospital; and although it was a considerable distance, she had no sense of time passing.