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…”
