He went down the stair and into the lower passage with the clipped, controlled stride of a man being hunted by his own thoughts. He told himself he was bound for the stables. He told himself he needed air. Distance. The familiar honesty of leather and hay and horses.
He told himself many things that were true only to a lesser degree than the real one. He wanted out of these walls. How had he become trapped? He had only meant to take another name. He had not known the dead man rode toward a betrothed. Had not known the borrowed life came already tied to a woman, a castle, a people’s expectation.
Before he reached the stable yard, voices reached him from the outer court, carrying that restless edge he had heard too often in villages after fire or on roads after raids. Fear had a particular music in human throats.
Reginald slowed.
The outer court lay beyond the gate arch in a spill of torchlight and damp darkness. Mist drifted low over the packed earth. Wet wool, smoke, and frightened horses thickened the air.
A small group of villagers stood just inside the walls. Six or seven, perhaps. A bent old man twisting his cap in both hands. A woman with a child pressed hard against her skirts. Two boys at the edge of manhood trying to stand straighter than fear wouldallow. Another woman, younger, clutching a bundle too tightly for it to be only clothing.
Border folk, by the look of them.
And before them stood Aingeal. She had no cloak over her shoulders, only a dark wool gown belted close against the cold. Her hair had come loose at the temples and stirred faintly in the damp wind. She looked tired, not with the soft fatigue of comfort interrupted, but with the bone-deep weariness of someone who had been carrying too much for too long and had no luxury of setting it down.
Yet she stood straight.
Tomas was a few paces behind her with a wax tablet in one hand, listening. Brennach lingered farther back in shadow, lending his broad silence to the scene. Two guards waited by the gate.
But it was Aingeal the villagers watched.
Reginald stopped in the shelter of the arch and did not announce himself.
The old man was speaking, his voice rough with worry. “They were seen at the far meadow, my lady. Not close enough to strike, not this time, but near enough. Near enough that my daughter would not let the children sleep in the house.”
The woman with the child nodded quickly. “We saw torchlight on the ridge. Maybe two men. Maybe three. We did not wait to count.”
Aingeal listened without interrupting.
Many rulers nodded as their people spoke, hearing nothing, already shaping the answer they meant to give, eager to prove authority through certainty. Aingeal did none of that. She listened as if each word mattered. As if fear, once spoken aloud, deserved an honest answer.
“When did you leave?” she asked.
“An hour past sunset,” the younger woman said. “Soon as my husband saw the light.”
“And your homes?” Aingeal asked. “Were they left barred?”
“Aye.”
“Animals?”
“The goats are penned. The cow as well. We brought what we could carry.”
Aingeal turned her head slightly. “Tomas.”
He stepped forward at once.
“Put them in the lower chambers by the bakehouse for tonight. Near enough to the kitchen hearth that the children stay warm.” She looked back at the villagers. “Food will be brought. Dry blankets as well. In the morning, I will send men to your holdings.”
The old man shifted, swallowed. “My lady… if they mean to burn us out…”
“They will not,” Aingeal said.
The old man stared at her.
Reginald felt himself do the same.
Aingeal stepped nearer to the frightened group. Torchlight warmed one side of her face and left the other in shadow.
