That was so unexpected, Thomas looked at him.
Hob shrugged. “You should have. But you did not.”
“You have a point hidden somewhere beneath that beard?”
“Aye.” Hob’s gaze shifted to the hall door. “You brought her back.”
Thomas felt the words settle into him with more weight than they deserved.
You brought her back.
Not safe. Not untouched by the world. Not free of danger. But back.
He thought of Evesham and the men who had not come. Thought of Wat and Alyson in the ditch. Thought of Amelia in the market square, laughing because he asked her to.
“I did,” he said.
Hob clapped him once on the shoulder, hard enough to make a lesser man stagger. “Then call that enough for one day.”
Thomas watched as Hob led Cygnet toward the stable. He looked once more at the hall. Through the open door, he could see Amelia standing near the table with Edith, unwrapping the market goods. She had pushed her hood back, and the veil had slipped again, red curls escaping in the afternoon light. Alyson stood on tiptoe beside her, peering into the satchel. Watbounced nearby, disappointed by the lack of bandits. Edith said something that made Amelia laugh.
Relief moved through him, sharp and unwilling. Thomas turned away before she could look up and catch him watching.
He was the worst danger she had. He knew that, knew it as surely as he knew the weight of a sword and the sound a man made when the breath left him.
The terrible thing was that when danger had come to the market, Amelia had stepped into his arms as if they were safety.
And God help him, for one ruinous heartbeat, Thomas had believed it too.
AMELIA
When Walter found Amelia in the stillroom, she knew before he opened his mouth that whatever he’d come to say would be the sort of thing she couldn’t fix.
There were many kinds of conversations at Ashcombe. There were Edith conversations, which began with a command, contained at least one insult, and somehow ended with a person fed, corrected, or wrapped in dry wool.
There were Hob conversations, which wandered cheerfully from weather to murder. There were Wat and Alyson conversations, which tended to involve questions Amelia didn’t know how to answer, like whether angels had wings of feathers or gold or whether geese went to confession if they bit people.
And then there were Walter conversations.
Walter conversations arrived with account rolls, bad news, or both.
That morning, she’d been checking a tally of dried herbs against Edith’s winter stores, because apparently the household survived on grain, salt, ale, linen, and the contents of every hanging bundle in the stillroom. The chamber lay just off the kitchen passage, small, cool, and close enough to the hearths that warmth seeped through the stone without ever becomingcomfortable. Herbs hung from the rafters in bunches tied with string: sage, rue, thyme, lavender, yarrow, and plants she didn’t know, all drying, filling the air with fragrance. Shelves held little crocks of salve, rolled linen, wax cakes from Friar Huck’s bees, stoppered jugs of vinegar, honey, rosewater, and something Edith said was for coughs but smelled like it might strip paint.
Amelia sat at the worktable in a faded blue wool gown. Her sleeves were pinned back, her veil had slipped again, there was ink on the side of her hand, honey on one cuff from Alyson’s enthusiastic morning hug, and a little smear of something green on her thumb from crushing some kind of herb.
Walter stood in the doorway turning his cap in his hands as she set down the tally. Outside, beyond the stillroom’s narrow window, the day moved on. A cart creaked in the yard. Someone called for a boy to fetch water. From farther off came Alyson’s bright shriek of laughter, followed by Wat shouting, “I didn’t push her, she leapt poorly!”
Amelia kept her voice calm. “Walter?”
He was a narrow man, all bone, tendon, and disapproval held together by stubbornness and wool. His hair, what remained of it, stood in white wisps beneath the cap he was currently torturing between both hands. His brown tunic was clean but worn shiny at the elbows. His belt held a knife, keys, and a little wax tablet, the tools of a steward’s authority. His eyes were rheumy with age, but they saw more than most people wanted seen.
“I’ll speak plain, mistress,” he said. “For I’m too old to do it any other way.”
Amelia’s stomach sank. “All right,” she said carefully.
He came in and closed the door behind him. Not fully. That would have been improper, and Walter would sooner set fire to the rolls than be improper without reason. He left it crackedenough that the world outside still existed, but not enough that their words would carry.
He stood across from her at the table, the drying herbs hanging between. For a moment he seemed to be searching for the right starting place, which unnerved her. Walter usually began at the beginning, whether anyone wished him to or not, and marched forward until the matter surrendered.
