[Diarmuid's keen sense of evaluation lacks a bit — one of the great agonies of being sheltered at a monastery for all his life, really. But he does feel there's something almost foreboding about the question, as if it were perhaps something to disarm him. She's partly right in that, too; he would not harm a maiden, even if he was entirely unused to interacting with them.

Diarmuid holds the candlestick tighter, looking around for the source of the voice. He walks slow and worried, and his voice continues to sound worried, high and young and inexperienced despite his journey thus far, from Kilmannan toward Waterford, to Deerington.]

I... I would not harm anyone, maiden, not unless I am at someone's violent mercy.

[He swallows hard.]

I am Brother Diarmuid. I drank from the glass and fell shorter — as maybe did you?