Thomas didn’t look at him. “No.”
Huck blinked. “I didn’t say a word.”
“You were about to.”
“I breathe. It is one of my better habits.”
Huck’s face was ruddy from fire and drink, his tonsured hair shining faintly where the light caught it, but his eyes remained annoyingly clear. “God sees what is good.”
Thomas closed his eyes briefly. “Friar.”
“Even when men stand directly in front of it wearing the expression of a mule at a locked gate.”
“I should have let Col find the mead before you.”
“Col would have died happy and sung badly. I offer more useful service.”
Thomas drank and had to agree, the mead was very good.
“She’s useful,” he said, because useful was a safer word than the others waiting behind his teeth.
Huck sighed. “You are a man determined to use the smallest word possible for the largest thing in the room.”
“She is under my protection.”
“Aye. You have mentioned that.”
“It is the whole of it.”
“No,” Huck said mildly. “It is the door you stand in front of so no one looks through.”
Thomas’s hand tightened around the cup.
The hall rang with laughter as Col attempted some step from a country dance and nearly kicked the dog, who moved over but remained near the food. Edith cuffed Col lightly on the back of the head and told him if he broke his neck, she would not waste clean linen on the wrapping.
Amelia laughed again.
Thomas looked before he could stop himself.
She was looking back. Not for long. Only a heartbeat across the smoke and firelight, across the benches and bodies and song. But long enough that the noise in the hall seemed to dip, as if the whole world had drawn breath.
Then she looked away.
Huck made a sound beside him.
“I should send you back to your bees.”
“My bees have better manners than most men and more sense than several lords.” Huck took another sip. “But they do not provide conversation.”
Thomas didn’t answer.
Huck followed his gaze to Amelia and then, mercifully, said nothing more.
The feast thinned slowly, as good feasts did. Not all at once. A household did not surrender warmth willingly when winter was coming. First the smallest children fell asleep, heavy-headed and sticky-fingered, across laps or against dogs who accepted them as inconvenient blankets. Then mothers gathered them, wrapped them in cloaks, and stepped out into the cold yard with husbands carrying lanterns. Tenants drifted home in knots of two and three, voices softer under the stars. The old men stayed longest, because old men knew the value of fire that did not come from their own woodpile.
Edith disappeared and returned twice, each time carrying something, ordering someone, or rescuing a cup from a fool.
Walter retired early under the claim of needing to secure the rolls, though Thomas suspected he was simply offended by songs that contained inaccurate references to livestock. Hob and three of the garrison remained at the far table with Huck’s second keg, arguing quietly over whether a spear thrust from horseback was honorable if the horse was doing most of the work.
