She was nervous. Not because what she was about to do was out of her reach or because she doubted herself or anything of that sort. No, what Niamh McNamara was worried about was her clothes. It wasn't simply the color of them (red had a way of bringing out her pale skin and her dark hair and eyes all at once so it was quite flattering, not that she noticed much) but it was also the style. To Niamh, the cloth that was draped over her body looked too sumptuous, too gaudy and it was far too long to boot.

If tripping over her own hem didn't kill her, the humiliation of seeing everyone stare at her when she truly didn't wish them to was worse. Granted, she was still far less gaudy and colorful than most of the members of the court, but she was still more colorful and gaudy than usual.

That was how she was always going to describe this moment: colorful and gaudy. To her, there were no other words fit to describe it. It tore at her heart and pride to admit it, but she was sinking to the level of a common noblewoman in order to achieve what she wanted. In this case, it was the chance of being a lady-in-waiting and collecting her own money.

Niamh was ambitious and she knew she needed funds if she was ever going to get what she wanted. Land, a title for herself, and, above all, the respect and influence that her peers claimed. She was no man and hence the ambition within herself was deadly and poisonous but nothing could stop her. She had sipped at the warm liquids of eduation, a gift mostly confined to men, and hungered for everything else that came with it. She wanted her name to go down in history as the world's first woman land owner. She wanted her fortune to be the most prominent in her children's mind when she passed to whatever happened after death and she wanted her land to be passed down to a daughter or son, whichever came first.

She wanted to defy the order of the world and put a notch in it, a slight dent, if you would. It was something that would make people pause and give her consideration. Yes, she was tiny in stature. She was tiny compared to most people standing at five feet tall, but that wouldn't matter when she showed that size didn't stop someone for reaching for the stars.

But first, she needed money.

Not the money that her father gave her monthly (when he felt like she had been good), but money that she herself worked for and owned. Her father shouldn't be able to take away the money and if he demanded she give him part of it, she would lie to his face and say the pay was less than it was. Anything that was left over after he raided her private coffers was something that she would squirrel away, spending only when necessary.

That was actually what she was nervous of. Lady Niamh failed to lie to anyone. It was a crucial fact. Her eyes failed to look at the other person's. Her face flared red as if she had stayed out in the sun too long. Often, she stuttered as she tried to lie. Basically, Lady Niamh McNamara couldn't lie her way out of a barn if she needed to. It was physically impossible for a woman whose ambitions meant she should have prepared herself for the task beforehand.

That was what she was nervous about, more than anything. She could handle people when she told the truth. But when she told a lie, it was all she could do not to give herself away with a stutter or too much blinking. Hence, she always told the truth.

She had no idea how she was going to fool her father.

With a sense of dread, Niamh knocked on the door before her. She had heard that Lady Cliona, King Aedan's eldest sister, had arrived at the Keep after her husband's unfortunate, untimely demise (but then, when was a demise not unfortunate or untimely, really?). So it was with her that Niamh tried first and foremost. She had heard that Cliona, while not exactly attractive, was a clever woman. Educated and respectable, Niamh could bear to serve a woman like that all while searching around for her own means to attain the level of respectability her mistress would have.

It was with that dread and that persistant nervousness that Niamh awaited the opening of the door to either a new beginning or a disastrous end.