The cleric nodded. “Always. Such names do not easily die.”
Reginald felt the moment move through him like blood.
“FitzUrse,” the cleric said. “De Tracy. De Morville. Le Bret.”
His own name, spoken aloud in Aingeal’s hall as though it belonged to a dead man. Or worse, a tale.
No one reacted beyond mild interest. No one except Étaín.
Reginald did not look at her. The instinct not to betray himself was too old. He kept his gaze on the platter and took another bite, but he did not taste it.
He felt her attention.
At last, he lifted his eyes to the cleric. “And do they say where those men ended?”
“In stories? Everywhere. In truth, who can say?” The cleric lifted one narrow shoulder. “Men vanish after such things. Or change names. Or die in foreign service. There are always tales.”
Étaín was watching now. He could feel the sharpened stillness in her the way a man feels heat before flame.
Father Cillian stated, “There are always those who think a man may bury an act by traveling far enough.”
“And can he?” Étaín asked lightly.
Reginald looked at her then.
She sat with one elbow beside her cup, all ease and brightness to anyone who did not know how to look beneath surfaces. But her eyes were fixed on the cleric.
The cleric smiled thinly. “That depends on whether he hopes to bury the act, or himself.”
Soft laughter answered him.
Reginald did not join it.
Aingeal still had not looked at him.
That fact bit harder now, threaded as he was between two women and two dangers: Aingeal’s withdrawal hollowing him, Étaín’s attention making the room perilous.
Étaín asked, “And what do men say of FitzUrse himself?”
Father Cillian glanced at her in surprise.
The cleric was happy to continue. “That depends whether you ask monks or soldiers. To monks, he is a devil with a title. To some soldiers, a man who obeyed too readily. To others, only a blade in another man’s hand.”
The old anger stirred inside Reginald. A blade in another man’s hand. Once, that had been enough.
The king had ordered it.
But the doubt fissuring beneath that certainty would not let him rest there now. The memory of the king’s rage as speech rather than command haunted him.
Étaín’s voice came again, bright and almost careless. “And what do you think, Sir Donal? Was he devil, soldier, or merely obedient?”
The table quieted by a degree.
Reginald lifted his gaze slowly.
Her expression had not changed. A curious lady asking after old history. Nothing more. But now he understood. This was not flirtation.
She was testing him.
