“You were meant to,” Edith said.
Alyson giggled into her cup of watered ale. Wat tried not to and failed.
The trestle tables had been set up near the hearth in the hall. Smoke curled toward the smoke hole in lazy, badly managed ribbons. Rushlights burned in their brackets, throwing gold over the stone walls and shadows beneath the benches. Supper had been pottage thickened with peas, barley bread, a wedge of hard cheese that could have been used in minor construction, and roasted onions sweet enough to make the whole hall smell warmer than it was.
Everyone drank small beer except Amelia, who had her usual water.
Edith sat beside her with a basket of mending, broad and immovable in dark wool, her white coif pinned so tightly it looked as if it had personal opinions. Her sleeves were rolled to the elbow. Her hands moved through the cloth with a speed that suggested she could sew a straight hem, dress a wound, and disembowel a fool before breakfast if properly provoked.
Amelia loved her like an aunt which was also inconvenient.
Edith glanced toward the high table, then back to Amelia. “You’ll give yourself a headache holding your neck that stiff.”
Amelia stabbed the needle through the linen again.
Edith sighed. “Child.”
That was worse than a scolding.
Amelia kept her eyes on the cloth. “Please don’t.”
“I haven’t said anything.”
“You’re about to.”
“I am always about to. It gives me purpose.”
Despite herself, Amelia smiled.
Edith did not. Her gaze had gone sharp in that quiet way of hers, the way it did when she had seen the bruise beneath the sleeve, the fear behind the joke, the truth one had carefully set in a corner and thrown a blanket over.
“You heard what Belmaine offered,” Edith said.
Amelia’s fingers stopped. The hall kept moving. Wat and Alyson bickered softly over a crust. Walter argued with one of the reeves about whether a number had been copied correctly. Hob sat near the hearth, pretending not to listen to everything. Thomas stood by the far table with his back half turned, speaking to a mason, one hand braced on the wood, his cloak still damp at the hem from the yard.
Amelia made herself breathe. “I heard enough.”
“Enough is plenty with a man like that.”
“Yes.”
“He wanted you gone.”
Amelia looked down at the linen. The stitches blurred for a moment. “Yes.”
“Thomas said no.”
“I heard that too.”
“And now you’ve decided the best way to thank him is to act as if he’s got the sweating sickness.”
Amelia’s head snapped up. “I have not.”
Edith raised both brows.
“I am being careful.”
“You’re being cold.”
