“He’ll come back,” she said quietly, so as not to wake the clerks. “Pickering.”
Thomas did not look surprised. “Aye.”
“The accounts are solid, but he wasn’t pleased. He was surprised. A man like that needs another visit to be sure his surprise was right.”
His gaze lifted to hers. “You expected this.”
“I planned for it. That’s not quite the same thing.”
“You are nearly ready,” he said.
“Almost,” she said. “Give us a few more days.”
Us.
The word slipped out before she could stop it.
His hand curled once around the arm of the chair, the only sign that he’d registered it too.
“You should sleep,” he said.
“That seems to be everyone’s favorite instruction.”
“Then mayhap you should obey it.”
“I’ll consider adding it to the list.”
He looked down at the dying fire. The last glow edged his profile in bronze and shadow, making him look both older and younger than he was. A lord under suspicion. A soldier who had survived so much. A man who had kissed her once and then locked himself behind duty because he thought restraint was the only gift he could safely give.
Amelia’s fingers tightened around the mending basket. “Good night, Thomas.”
His eyes closed for the briefest moment, then he opened them and looked at her.
“Good night, Amelia.”
No mistress, no wall between them. Just her name, roughened by smoke and all the things he wouldn’t say.
She went to bed before she did something foolish. Behind her, the hall settled into sleep, but Ashcombe didn’t feel quiet. It felt watchful.
Outside, beyond the gate and the fields and the road slick with autumn mud, Belmaine had set something moving. Pickering had come, measured, and found less weakness than he’d been promised. He would return. Men like that always did, with cleaner questions and sharper knives.
Amelia climbed the stairs with Edith’s basket on her arm, the smell of lavender, ash, and ink clinging to her sleeves.
She thought about Belmaine’s secrets, not quite complete, about Master Pickering’s careful eyes, about Walter sayingus.
Mostly, though, she thought about Thomas sitting alone in the firelight, his hand curling when she had used that same small word.
Us.
Such a tiny word. A word a person could build a life around before she noticed the foundation had already been laid.
THOMAS
Trouble rode in just after breakfast. Thomas saw it from the yard, where he was pretending to inspect the repair to the stable roof and not, under any circumstance, watching for Amelia to come out of the hall.
He had made a poor job of both. The roof repair was sound enough. The new thatch lay thick and tight, pegged cleanly beneath the eaves. A few bundles still waited near the wall, smelling of straw, damp weather, and honest labor. The boy on the ladder had more courage than sense and kept leaning too far to one side, while Hob stood below with both arms folded and the expression of a man prepared to catch the lad only after giving him a lecture on stupidity during the fall.
Ashcombe was awake, smoke rising from the kitchens. Somewhere Edith was scolding someone with enough force to scrape soot from the rafters. Wat was hauling a pail too heavy for him while Alyson marched at his heels, giving directions no one had asked for. Men moved through the yard with tools, sacks, and the weary purpose of a household that had survived one inspection and knew another blade still hung overhead.
