“No.”
“You heard authority in his anger because it suited what you were already willing to do.”
He held her gaze. “Yes.” That word cost him more than all the others.
Aingeal closed her eyes. When she opened them again, there was something in them that had not been there before. Knowledge. Not of the event. She had known that already in outline. But of him. Not the dark man half-hidden beneath Donal’s name. Not the murderer wrapped in old justifications.
The real man.
Violent. Loyal in dangerous ways. Honest, too late. Capable of love and self-deception in the same breath. A man only now beginning to look steadily at the cost of calling force duty, simply because force had always come easiest to his hand.
It was the most naked he had ever stood before another living soul.
Aingeal looked at him for a long time. “This is the first time,” she said, “I have heard you without a shield.”
The words struck him with more force than absolution ever could have.
He bowed his head, not to escape her gaze, but because the truth of it was too heavy to meet standing straight. He half expected her to flee, but when he looked up, she was still there.
Still wounded and still beyond his reach. But she had not turned away.
And for that one breath, it was more mercy than he deserved.
Chapter thirty-one
Reginald had told her the truth of Canterbury. Not the old, guarded telling. Not the version wrapped in loyalty, obedience, and all the language men used when they needed to keep living with themselves.
He had stripped it down until nothing stood between them but the act and the choice.
That truth moved through Aingeal like cold water. But what struck deepest was not only what he had confessed. It was the way he had said it. Without excuse. Without trying to lay the weight somewhere else. He had given her truth.
And because he had done that, something in Aingeal could no longer stay hidden behind its own old defenses. If she kept silent now, if she remained upright and cold and judged him from behind the safety of her own buried history, then she would be answering truth with cowardice.
She looked away from him and toward the candles. Her throat ached. When she spoke, her own voice sounded strange in her ears. Thinner than she expected. “I was not always afraid of marriage.”
Reginald did not move.
That, somehow, gave her courage. She kept her eyes on the nearest flame. “When I was younger, I thought what girls are taught to think. That if a man chose you above all others, it meant love. That to be wanted was a kind of blessing.” Her mouth tightened. “I learned otherwise.”
The candle flame bent in a faint draft and steadied again.
“My sister was Máire.” Pain flared beneath her ribs. “She was not older than I by much. Only enough that it mattered when we were children and did not when we were women.” Aingeal’s gaze stayed fixed on the flame. “She was prettier than I was. Or so everyone said. The sort of girl men looked at and thought themselves noble for wanting to protect.” She almost smiled. “I loved her. We fought as sisters fight. We laughed as sisters laugh. There were days I would have done anything for her and days I could not bear the sound of her voice.”
She sighed softly. “That is what sisters are.” She could feel Reginald listening with the same grave, stripped attention he had brought to his own confession. “There was a man,” she said. “Not a grand man. Not a lord worth songs. Just a man from a neighboring holding. Strong. Loose with smiles. Too ready with a sweet word to whichever girl stood nearest. The sort of man an older woman would have dismissed in a glance.”
Her fingers tightened against one another. “But we were not older women then.” She looked down at her hands. “I thought he loved me.”
The shame of it still lived within her. Not because she had been young. Because she had wanted so badly to be loved. Because she had built meaning from glances and pauses and the foolish little scraps girls were given and taught to call hope. “I thought I had seen it in the way he looked at me,” she said. “In the way he lingered when I spoke. In the small things foolish girls build futures from.”
Her voice roughened. “Then I saw him kissing Máire.”
Reginald’s breath hitched.
“In the orchard,” she said. “I had gone looking for her because she was late for the evening meal, and Father had begun asking for her. I found them instead.”
The memory returned sharply, like glass turning beneath her ribs. “He had his hand at the back of her neck. She was smiling.” Aingeal closed her eyes once. “That part has never blurred. She was smiling as if the whole world had just confirmed itself to her.”
Blood beat loud in her ears even now, just as it had then. “I do not know whether she knew I thought I loved him. Perhaps she did. Perhaps she only guessed. Perhaps he told her. I have turned that part over so many times in my mind that the edges have worn smooth.” She opened her eyes again. “It no longer matters.”
