Tomas broke the silence first. “We are not here to repeat what is already known,” he said. “The southern alliance is gone. The false identity is proven. Reginald FitzUrse remains within this castle by my lady’s leave alone.”
Seamus pushed off the wall at once. “Then let us be done with it and send him out. Or lock him up, if we mean fitting punishment for deception.”
Reginald did not argue. He had no right to.
Brennach glanced toward Aingeal, then back to the room. “That is one answer.”
“It is the best answer,” Seamus insisted.
“No,” Father Cillian murmured. “Only the easiest.”
Seamus turned on him. “He came here under a dead man’s name and lied to this castle.”
“Yes.”
“He stood beside Lady Aingeal as bridegroom and ally.”
The priest looked once at Reginald, then back to Seamus. “And when the lower holding burned, he rode out and saved what he could.”
Seamus’s jaw flexed. “One does not cancel the other.”
“No,” Brennach said. “It does not.” The words landed with grim fairness.
Reginald kept his gaze ahead. The old instinct to step in, to shape a room, to offer some more useful version of himself, had gone quiet at last. He would not defend what he had done. Not here. Not under Aingeal’s roof. Not before the men who had watched her stand beneath his lie and still keep command.
Tomas said, “If we speak only of guilt, the answer is simple. Cast him out. If we speak of the border, the answer is not simple at all.”
“That is sentiment,” Seamus snapped.
“No,” Tomas said. “It is arithmetic.”
That almost drew a grim sound from Brennach. Almost.
Tomas went on. “The O’Raida alliance is dead. Fintan’s holding proved yesterday what our enemies think of that. They smelled weakness and tested it. They will do so again. Harder next time. FitzUrse knows our roads, our men, our weak points, the ground they will come across. He is the best field commander we have.” His gaze shifted to Reginald and stayed there, cool and measuring. “That is danger if we keep him. It is also danger if we throw him away.”
“Then use him,” Seamus said. “Use him for service. Not marriage.”
Reginald did not look at Aingeal. He could not. The thought of her as another man’s was unthinkable, and yet once that had been the plan’s final mercy: leave before vows. Leave before he dragged her farther into falsehood. Leave before she could want anything of him that truth would destroy.
That had been before the kisses, before the wall, before she had looked at him as if he mattered too much to lose cleanly.
Brennach turned toward Aingeal. “My lady.”
She stood very still. “He is no longer O’Raida,” she said. “The alliance is gone. No word spoken in this room will bring it back. The southern lands are lost to us as a marriage bond. The lie cost us that.” Her gaze touched Reginald once and moved on. “And it cost more besides.”
Her voice did not shake. That hurt him more than if it had.
She went on. “You all know the public damage. You know what men will say beyond these walls. That I was deceived. That my household was fooled. That a false man stood at my side andI did not see him clearly enough, soon enough.” She lifted her chin. “I do not need those truths explained to me. I am no fool.”
Seamus lowered his eyes first. Tomas looked down at the table. Even Brennach’s face altered, though not into softness.
Aingeal let the silence settle before she spoke again. “But you will hear this truth as well. When Fintan’s holding burned, Reginald FitzUrse did not flee.”
Now, Reginald looked at her.
She was not looking at him. She was looking at the council. “He could have taken horse and vanished in the confusion. No one in this room can honestly deny it. Instead, he rode under my order and under his own name. He fought for our people. He saved a child from fire. He helped hold the line when the enemy believed us weakest.”
“That does not make him innocent,” Seamus said.
