“I do not know yet.”
“A bargain failed,” Hob said. “A man like that does not forgive a failed bargain.”
“No.”
“He’ll look for another way.”
“A weapon,” Thomas said.
Hob said nothing, which was answer enough.
Thomas turned toward the hall where Amelia stood just inside the doorway.
She had heard. Not all, mayhap. Not every word. But enough. Thomas saw it in the set of her shoulders, the pallor beneath her freckles, the way one hand gripped the doorframe as if she had needed it to stay upright and had not yet remembered to let go.
She wore a grey gown today, not the green. The color did not suit her. It made her look smaller, quieter, as if she had chosen the cloth because it would not draw the eye. Her hair was covered properly, brutally, not a single curl escaping. That more than anything struck him like a blow.
Amelia without one curl out of place felt like a room after all the candles had been snuffed.
Their eyes met across the yard. He saw the question in hers.
NotDid you refuse?
She knew he had.
NotDid you want to accept?
She feared he had.
The distance between them filled with all the things they could not say while half the household pretended not to watch.
Thomas took one step toward her.
Walter appeared behind her, pale and rigid as Amelia’s gaze flicked toward the old steward.
Then she looked back at Thomas, and something closed.
She lowered her eyes. Curtsied.
“My lord,” she said.
The words carried just far enough, then she turned and went back into the hall.
Thomas stood in the yard, feeling as though Belmaine had left a blade behind after all.
Hob exhaled through his nose. “Bloody hell.”
THOMAS
The hall was warmer than the yard and smelled of smoke, bread, onions, and the morning’s interrupted meal, all of it wrapped in that damp October fug that settled into wool, rushes, hair, bone, and probably the souls of men who had already had enough of the day.
Alyson sat near Edith, peeling an apple with such grave concentration that the tip of her tongue poked out between her teeth. Her brother stood by the table with a trencher in one hand and suspicion in both eyes, looking between Thomas and Amelia as if trying to work out why the air had gone strange. Walter moved toward the accounts with the stiff determination of a man who had decided the end of the world could be postponed if only the columns were checked in proper order.
Amelia was already seated at the far end of the table.
She had chosen the narrow spill of light beneath the shuttered window, where the grey morning slid over the rolls and made her hands look pale against the dark wood. Her quill was in her fingers. Her face was calm. Too calm. She dipped the quill, made a mark, and did not look up when Thomas entered.
It should have pleased him. Had he not spent the last two days telling himself distance was wise? Had he not warned her, like a fool and a coward, that he was the worst danger to her? Had he not stood in the yard five minutes ago and refused a bargain that might have saved Ashcombe because sending her away had become unthinkable?
