Seamus rounded on him. “He is not some hedgerow thief. He is FitzUrse.”
Aingeal looked at Reginald then. One of Becket’s killers. A man already stained before he ever crossed her threshold.
He stood as before, hands empty, expression grave, as though he would accept whatever judgment came because there was no point left in resisting it.
That stillness made anger stir beneath her grief. Some wounded part of her wanted him to fight. To show some ragged edge of feeling beyond this tired, obedient composure.
Instead, he stood there and let the room speak over him as if he were no longer a man at all, but only a problem to be solved.
Brennach said, “If it were only the name, I would put him on a horse and be rid of him by dark. But it is not only the name. He stole the ring. The heraldry. He took a place in this house no man had given him honestly.” Then he looked to Aingeal, and his voice changed. “Your authority has taken the blow.”
Tomas lowered his gaze. Father Cillian folded his hands more tightly. Even Seamus’s anger quieted a fraction before the harder truth of that.
Aingeal felt the shame of it like heat under her skin.
Brennach went on. “The castle watched a false man stand at your side. The household watched you nearly wed to a lie. Every rival with ears will hear of it. Some will say you were deceived because you are young. Some because you are a woman. Some because they have long wanted a reason. The reasons matter less than the result.”
Aingeal held her face still by force. “And the result?”
Brennach did not look away. “Your rule feels more precarious today than it did yesterday.”
Rain thundered on the stones outside. Somewhere in the hallway, a draft whispered. The candle near Tomas’s elbow bent and righted itself.
Aingeal sat at her father’s table and felt, perhaps for the first time since taking his place, the full cold cost of public error. She had not merely been hurt as a woman. She had been weakened as a ruler. Those truths lay atop one another so closely now she could no longer tell where one ended and the other began. And because she still loved Reginald, she could not strike at him openly without exposing how deeply. She folded her hands once upon the table to hide their tremor. “What do you advise?” she asked.
Seamus spoke first, as expected. “Expel him. Get rid of him.”
Father Cillian said, “And if the border is tested again before dawn?”
Seamus’s jaw hardened.
Tomas answered for him. “That is the trouble. FitzUrse is dangerous to keep. He may also be dangerous to lose.”
Aingeal almost laughed at that. If ever there had been a summary of the man, that was it.
Brennach said, “He cannot remain as he was. That much is done.”
“No,” Aingeal said quietly. “He cannot.”
At last, Reginald spoke. “Let me go.”
The room turned toward him as one.
He continued, “The alliance is broken. The harm is done. Keeping me here invites further division, and if those who watch your border learn who I am before I am gone, it gives them one more reason to act.” He looked at no one but Aingeal. “I will ridebefore dusk if you wish it. Or submit to guard until first light if that eases the council’s mind.”
Aingeal looked back at him. To hear him offer departure so calmly should have relieved her. It was what he had promised once. What he had offered her privately as final mercy. Instead, it hollowed her.
Because some traitorous part of her heard only this:
He will go.
She killed that part where it stood and made herself answer as ruler. “Do not mistake surrender for absolution.”
He gave a brief nod. “Never.”
She turned instead to the council. “You have all spoken to danger,” she said. “Then hear me speak to need. The castle is weaker today than it was yesterday. That much is true. The alliance is gone. The deception has cost us. That is also true.” Her voice sharpened. “What is not yet decided is whether casting him out before our borders settle is wisdom…or wounded pride dressed as justice.”
Seamus’s expression darkened, but he held his tongue.
