18. Chapter Eighteen
Chapter eighteen
Reginald walked through the corridors after the evening meal.
The chapel door stood half open; a thin seam of candlelight lay across the corridor floor.
He pushed the door wider and stepped inside, wondering why he kept seeking the chapel.
What did he expect to find there? Comfort had no business waiting for him in a place like this.
étaín stood near the little side altar with her back half turned, one hand resting lightly on the worn rail as though she had come to pray and been distracted from it. Candlelight gentled her beauty into something quieter than it looked by day. What remained was intelligence.
For one heartbeat, he considered leaving. Before he could, she turned.
“Sir Donal,” she said, and smiled.
Reginald did not return it. “My lady.”
“You look surprised.”
“I’ve learned surprise is seldom useful.”
“Have you?” She tipped her head, studying him. “That sounds like a lesson won dearly.”
The candles crackled faintly in their sconces.
étaín traced one finger along the altar rail. “I hope I am not intruding on devotion.”
“I was not here for devotion.”
“No.” Her gaze slid back to him. “I did not think you were.”
Reginald remained near the door. He had no wish to be trapped deeper inside the chapel than he already was.
The room seemed too small tonight, the air too close.
He had stood in greater halls under greater danger, but there was something in étaín’s composure that unsettled him more than accusation would have.
“That was an interesting meal the other night,” she said.
“Was it?”
“Oh yes. Priests, politics, old ghosts. Excellent company for digestion.”
His jaw shifted. “Churchmen are fond of turning old blood into table talk.”
“Yes.” Her voice remained light. “Though some hear old stories more keenly than others.”
Reginald kept his face still. “Do they?”
étaín smiled again. “You tell me.”
He let the silence lengthen until it became discomfort by design.
At last, she said, “You did not seem altogether indifferent to Canterbury.”
The name moved through him like iron drawn slowly across a whetstone. Keeping his hands loose at his sides took effort. “It was history under discussion,” he said. “Most men listen when history is spoken in halls.”
“Most men do not go still as if someone has walked over their graves.”
His mouth hardened. “You are observant.”
“I am.”
A draft moved through the chapel and stirred the candle flames. One guttered, then steadied.
étaín took a step closer. “I have heard the stories, too. Not so often as priests and soldiers, perhaps, but enough. The cathedral. The archbishop.” She paused. “The four knights.”
Reginald lifted his eyes to the crucifix above the altar because it was safer than looking at her. The carved Christ wore the same patient, accusing stillness every chapel in Christendom seemed to prefer.
étaín followed his gaze. “Would you like me to pretend this is nothing?”
He looked back at her then. “What do you want from me?” The question came out rougher than he intended.
étaín did not flinch. “Truth would be refreshing.”
“Truth is expensive.”
“That depends who is buying.”
He might have laughed. He might have dismissed her, told her she had too lively an imagination and too much appetite for old scandals. Instead, he heard himself ask, “Why this?”
“Because I have eyes.”
“And because you enjoy a mystery?”
She shook her head. “No. Because I love my cousin.”
That struck harder than anything else she had said.
étaín’s gaze sharpened as if she had watched the blow land. “You are not what you pretend.”
He did not move.
She went on quietly. “I do not yet know whether you are Donal O’Raida at all. I know only that too many things in you fail to fit the man you claim to be.”
The old instinct rose at once. Deny. Deflect. Survive. It had carried him across years and borders and other men’s suspicion. “You should take care with suspicion,” he said. “It can do a great deal of harm before it becomes fact.”
“Then help me make it false.”
He gave the only answer he could. “I cannot.”
Her face changed, the brightness leaving it entirely. “Who are you?” she asked.
He said nothing.
She took another step. “I think I have heard your face described before. Years ago. In a hall where women whispered after men had done too much talking. Dark-haired. Scar at the brow. A soldier’s stillness. A temper close beneath the skin. And when Canterbury was spoken at the meal…”
He held himself still by force.
“FitzUrse,” she said.
The name seemed to strike the walls and settle into the chapel air.
Reginald did not start. Did not turn away. But something in him went motionless in a way no calm man ever could.
“God help us,” she whispered.
“No,” he said at last. “You do not know enough to use that name.”
Her eyes never left his face. “Were you there?”
“I said you do not know enough.”
“You do not deny it.”
“No.”
étaín drew in a breath and mastered herself again. When she spoke, her voice had gone very quiet. “I have not told her.”
He looked at her properly then. “Why not?”
“Because I did not want to wound her for the sake of my own unease.” Her mouth tightened. “And because if I am right, there is already enough falsehood in this castle without adding reckless accusation to it.”
He inclined his head once. étaín loved Aingeal too well to throw chaos at her feet for the sake of her own alarm.
“If I have not told her,” étaín said, “it is not because I intend to keep silent forever.”
He looked past her to the wavering candles, then back again. “What do you want from me?”
“Now?” Her hands came together more tightly. “I want to know whether my cousin is standing beside a man who means to ruin her.”
He answered without hesitation. “No.”
étaín searched his face. “If there is any honesty left in you, go now. Tonight. Before she is bound any further to your lie.”
He was silent long enough that she frowned. At last, he admitted, “I had meant to.”
étaín went still. “Had?”
He looked at the rail, the candles, anywhere but her. Then back. “Your cousin and I had an agreement.”
“What agreement?”
“I was never going to stand beside her at the altar.”
Her composure broke in disbelief. “You expect me to believe that?”
“I do not expect anything from you.” His voice had gone colder now, stripped and plain. “But it is true. She wanted me gone before there was any question of affection or trust between us. I gave her my word I would leave before the wedding.”
étaín stared at him. Then, very quietly, “Why are you still here?”
“Because leaving now would not spare her,” he said. “It would shame her.”
étaín’s brows drew together.
He went on before she could interrupt. “If Donal O’Raida vanishes from her castle in the middle of a border crisis, after sitting in council, after standing at her side before the household, after being spoken of as her intended husband, then I do not merely disappear.
I make her look deceived. Weak. Foolish.
” His jaw tightened. “Her rivals will smell it before dawn. Every man who already doubts her because she is a woman ruling alone will take it as proof.” He heard the harshness in his voice and did not soften it.
“If I flee now, I do not save her. I expose her.”
étaín said nothing.
But he saw her think it through. Aingeal’s authority always balanced on harsher terms than any man’s would be.
“And so you stay,” she said at last.
“For now.”
“Under a stranger’s name.”
His mouth hardened. “Yes.”
Her gaze sharpened again. “Do not mistake me. Understanding the danger of your leaving does not make me trust you.”
“I did not imagine it would.”
“Good.” She stepped nearer then, not with softness but with intent. “Because whatever bargain you made with Aingeal no longer belongs only to the two of you. You may have meant to leave. You may still mean to. But now there is more at stake than a broken promise and a wounded heart.”
The words found their mark too easily. Wounded heart. If étaín could see even that much, then he had been more transparent than he knew.
“When you first came,” she said, “I thought perhaps you were dangerous in the ordinary way. Proud. Secretive. Soldier-hard.” Her voice lowered. “I was wrong. You are dangerous in the way buried things are dangerous. Quiet until they split the ground.”
He almost smiled. “That is a poet’s answer.”
“No. It is a woman’s answer. Women are often the first to feel the ground moving.”
The candlelight trembled between them.
She folded her arms then, gathering herself again. “Listen to me. I have loved Aingeal all my life. I will not be careless with her. I will not throw suspicion at her feet because I enjoy scandal. But neither will I stand smiling while some old blood-soaked falsehood takes root under her roof.”
“I never meant her harm.”
“I believe that.” She said it reluctantly. “What I do not know is whether men who do not mean harm are any less capable of causing it. So hear me clearly. I am watching. And what you do next will decide whether I remain silent.”
The chapel seemed suddenly colder.
She did not threaten guards. Did not invoke priests or public disgrace. She offered something worse than immediate ruin.
Time. Time in which he might choose rightly or prove her a fool for granting him any at all. “And if I fail your measure?” he asked.
“Then I speak.” étaín lowered her arms and stepped back, reclaiming the distance between them. “For what it is worth, I think Aingeal already feels too much for this to break cleanly.”
His heart twisted in his chest, but he kept his face still.
She moved toward the door, then stopped at the threshold without turning. “Do not make me regret this.”
Then she was gone, the door shutting softly behind her.
Reginald stood alone in the chapel with the candles wavering and the saints looking on with their patient, useless calm.
étaín had not exposed him. She had done something harder. She had left the next move in his hands.
He left the chapel with her warning lodged beneath his ribs like the broken end of a blade.