The herbs swayed faintly overhead, though no wind had entered the room. Outside, a cart wheel struck a rut. Somewhere in the kitchen passage, Edith barked at someone to stop dawdling unless he meant to be boiled with the turnips.
Life went on. Rude of it, really.
Walter set his cap back on his white head. The motion made him look older than he had when he entered.
“Love him, if you must,” he said. “But be careful, for both your sakes, and for all the souls that shelter under him. He cannot afford you. No more can they.”
That was the killing blow. Not you cannot have him. She could have survived that. He cannot afford you.
Because that was the language Amelia understood. Cost. Risk. Consequence. The brutal arithmetic of survival. Notfeelings in moonlight, not longing by a fire, not the private heat of almost-touching hands over an apple on the road.
Cost.
Thomas had spent weeks scraping enough coin, grain, labor, favor, and dignity together to keep Ashcombe going. Amelia had helped count it. She had seen how little margin stood between this place and ruin. One bad report. One rumor. One public scandal. One powerful neighbor saying the right ugly thing into the right official ear.
She was a liability.
Walter bowed. Not stiffly, as he did when form required it. Deeply enough that it hurt him. His knees cracked. One hand pressed briefly to the table as he straightened.
“I wish it were otherwise,” he said.
She believed him which only made it worse.
He turned to go.
At the door, he paused, not quite looking back.
“You have been a blessing to this house, Mistress Quinn. I would not have you become the knife that opens it.”
Then he left her there among the drying herbs. The stillroom settled around her. Lavender. Sage. Vinegar. Honey. Wax. The faint smoke from the kitchen fires. The rough table beneath her hand. Her own breath, too shallow, too loud. Somewhere, the little drip beyond the wall kept time.
Plink.
Plink.
Plink.
She had crossed seven hundred years and somehow built a life out of being useful in a place that needed her. She had made lists, found missing grain, argued with Walter, teased Hob, comforted children, bullied armed men into washing their hands, and learned to drink small beer without making a faceevery time. She had stopped waking every morning certain she would find a way home if only she looked hard enough.
She had begun, God help her, to look for Thomas instead. In the yard. In the hall. At the high table. Across the lists. By the hearth. On the road.
She had begun to measure safety by the sound of his step. And Walter was right.
He was not small-minded, not cruel, not jealous of her place in the household. He had not come to shame her. He had come because he loved Thomas in the old, difficult way of men who had changed nappies, taught sums, watched boys grow into burdens, and could still remember the child inside the lord everyone else feared.
He had come because Ashcombe was not a backdrop. It was a place full of people who would bleed if she forgot the rules.
Amelia pressed both hands over her face, but didn’t cry. Not because she was strong, though people often mistook not crying for strength. She didn’t cry because if she started, she wasn’t certain she could stop before Edith found her and demanded to know who needed smiting.
There was no one to smite. That was inconvenient.
A sound at the door made her drop her hands. Alyson stood there, small and round-eyed, clutching a heel of bread in one hand and a wooden doll in the other. Her pale brown hair had come loose from its plait, and there was a smear of jam at the corner of her mouth.
“Mistress Amelia?”
Amelia inhaled. Smiled. The effort felt like lifting a cart.
“Yes, sweetheart?”
