Amelia crossed to the door and looked out into the passage. Empty. The household had gone rushing toward the hall, the yard, the thousand visible proofs that Ashcombe was orderly, loyal, and not worth seizing.
She shut the door most of the way as Walter’s eyebrows climbed.
“I haven’t kept anything from the accounts,” she said. “But I’ve been gathering something else.”
The steward’s face closed like a ledger.
“What have you done?”
“That tone suggests you already think I’ve committed a felony.”
“I do not know this felony, but by the sound of it, aye.”
Despite everything, she almost laughed. “Belmaine’s behind this. Or part of it. He’s been whispering to someone, and if Pickering’s here now, three days after Belmaine’s last little performance, that’s not by chance.”
Walter glanced toward the window, then back at her. “You have proof?”
“Not enough. I have gossip, fragments, and little pieces that don’t prove anything alone. Hob’s men heard talk on theWorcester road. Friar Huck heard something about a messenger and a sealed letter. You said last week that Belmaine’s cousin in Pershore has been spending coin like a man who expects he’s about to have much more.”
Walter paused, thinking.
So she hadn’t imagined the string. It was there.
“I need your help,” she said, softening her voice before he could wrap himself in stewardly disapproval and strangle her with propriety.
“Not because I can’t gather the pieces, but because I can’t use them. You can ask questions I can’t. You can speak to men who would wonder why a woman wants to know who’s been riding which road. And if Pickering comes back, we need more than clean accounts. We need to know who sent him and why.”
Walter stared at her for a long moment, then he shut his eyes.
“Saints preserve me from clever women with poor judgment.”
“I’m going to take that as agreement.”
“You would take a bee sting as agreement if it suited you.”
“Only if the bee seemed sincere.”
His eyes opened. “Not a word of Pershore in front of Pickering. If he asks you aught, you are a useful woman with a good hand and a better head for reckoning than is seemly.”
“That’s devastatingly flattering.”
“It was not intended to be.”
“And yet.”
Walter made a sound in his throat. “If this goes ill, it will not be you Pickering strips first. It will behim.”
The words landed like a fist. Amelia looked past him, down into the yard, where Thomas had reached the gate.
“I know,” she said.
Walter’s face softened by no more than the width of a thread. “Then bring the repair roll. And for pity’s sake, pin thosecurls back before Master Pickering thinks Ashcombe keeps a woodland sprite at the accounts.”
Amelia lifted a hand to the curl near her ear. “It has a mind of its own.”
“Aye. I’ve noticed the resemblance.”
There was no time to answer that with the dignity it deserved, so Amelia gathered the repair roll, tucked the offending curl beneath her veil, and followed him down to the hall.
