“Hob,” Thomas said.
“Aye, my lord.”
“Find out who Crale is. Where he slept last night. Who fed him. Who paid for his horse. Whether that bruise came from a fist or a gaoler’s hand.”
Hob’s grin held no humor. “With pleasure.”
Thomas looked at Walter. “The seal, the parish, the words. Tear them apart.”
Walter’s eyes gleamed with the terrible joy of a man given permission to murder a document. “Aye, my lord.”
Edith came down the last step. “You’ll bring her back.”
It wasn’t a question.
Thomas met her eyes. Edith had seen him as a boy with scraped knees, a youth too full of temper, a soldier riding away beneath banners, a man returning with dead boys in his memory and two orphans wrapped in his cloak. She had never softened the truth for him, didn’t soften it now.
“You let her go,” Edith said.
The words hit harder than any fist ever had. Thomas didn’t defend himself. There was no defense worth speaking.
“Aye.”
“She was looking for you to stop it.”
“I know.”
“And you didn’t.”
“I know.”
Edith stepped closer until she had to tip her head back to glare at him properly.
“Then you’d best be the man she believed you were before this day, because if Belmaine harms that girl, I’ll carve your heart out with my best kitchen knife and use it to bait rat traps.”
Hob nodded thoughtfully. “It would work.”
Wat looked up. “Could I help?”
“No,” Thomas and Edith said at once.
Alyson sniffed. “I’d help.”
“Saints defend me from bloodthirsty children,” Huck murmured.
Thomas should have laughed. Amelia would have laughed, even through her tears. She would have said something about customer service, or spreadsheets, or the legal liability of children with knives, and half the yard would have understood not a word and loved her for it anyway.
But she wasn’t there, because that bloody bastard Belmaine had her.
Thomas turned toward the gate, every part of him narrowing to a point.
At Evesham, he had learned the day was lost when the sky turned red. He had learned courage did not stop a mounted charge, and loyalty did not keep boys from dying in the mud. He had learned that a man could hold a sword and still fail everyone who had trusted him. Today had taught him something worse.
A man could love a woman, know her to be innocent, and still watch her ride away because ink and wax stood between them.
He could not ride after Amelia, not yet, but he could tear the earth open beneath the men who had taken her.
His hand closed around the hilt of his sword, not drawing it this time. Holding. Remembering. Promising.
