Alyson’s laughter echoed in Amelia’s memory.
“The orphans you have grown so fond of go on the road before winter.”
That one found the tender place and pressed. Amelia stood abruptly as the chair scraped against the stone floor.
She turned away from him and faced the shelves. Little crocks sat in neat rows, each labeled in Edith’s blunt hand. Comfrey. Honey salve. Vinegar. Fever draught. Wound wash. Practical things. Things that knew their purpose.
Her hands shook.
“That isn’t fair,” she said again, but this time the words barely had sound.
“Nay.”
“I didn’t ask to come here.”
“I know.”
“I didn’t ask for any of this.”
“I know that too.”
“I’m trying to help.”
“You have.”
That undid her more than any accusation would have.
Walter’s voice went quieter. “You have helped more than many born to this place. That is why I am here.”
She turned back.
His face was weary, not hard. That was when she saw what the conversation was costing him.
“The only road back from such a fall,” he said, “for a man in Lord Ashcombe’s place, is a great marriage to a house above suspicion.”
The words were plain. They still struck like a slap.
Walter looked miserable but did not look away. “A royalist house, mayhap. A baron’s daughter. A widow with lands. Someone with kin and dowry and a name the crown will not question. A woman who brings alliance instead of gossip.”
“Belmaine offered that.”
“Aye.”
“You want him to marry Belmaine’s daughter?”
“I want him to keep Ashcombe.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“No,” Walter said. “It is not. But in this world, they often share a bed.”
A laugh rose in her throat, sharp and awful. She swallowed it down. Marriage as salvation, as armor, as a ledger line in a column marked survival.
She had known it. The outline of it had been there from the beginning, in Walter’s lectures and Belmaine’s oily smiles, in every glance that measured Thomas as a lord first and a man second. But knowing a thing in theory was different from having it laid on the table beside drying lavender and jars of honey, cold and practical and difficult to argue with.
Thomas needed a wife. Not because he was lonely. Not because he looked at Amelia across a fire as if she had reached into some dark place and spoken his true name. Not because he had tucked her hair beneath her wimple in a market square with Belmaine’s men watching and almost kissed her in front of eels, onions, and God.
He needed a wife because Ashcombe needed protection.
