“You are frightened. I understand.”
“Then you’re overqualified, because I don’t.”
His mouth tightened.
The road dipped into a narrow hollow where wet leaves clung to the mud, and the wheels of old carts had cut deep scars into the track. Somewhere beyond the hedge, water moved over stone.
Amelia fixed her eyes on every turn, every broken marker, every crossroad and distant roofline.
Left past the pollarded willow. Right where the lane narrowed by the leaning stone cross. Through the shallow ford that soaked the hem of her gown and made the palfrey toss its head.
Remember.
She had planned enough corporate retreats to know that panic loved empty space. Give panic a clipboard and a task list, and it had less room to run around screaming in your skull.
Ashcombe behind her. Belmaine ahead. She drew in a slow breath through her nose.
Horse. Mud. Wet wool. Leather. Crale’s sour anxiety. The faint sweetness of honey cake still wrapped in cloth inside her sleeve, warm from her hand. Friar Huck had given her cake for an abduction.
The thought almost made her laugh. Almost.
Crale glanced at her sleeve. “What did the friar give you?”
“A curse.”
The guard coughed again as Crale leaned away.
Excellent.
Belmaine’s manor rose out of the dull afternoon. It sat behind a timber palisade and a ditch newly cleared of brush, the gatehouse smaller than Ashcombe’s but better dressed, with fresh limewash bright on the upper timbers and iron hinges black as beetle shells. Beyond it lay a busy yard. Men crossed from stable to storehouse with brisk purpose. A boy carried a basket of turnips nearly as large as he was. A woman in a blue kirtle scattered grain for geese that hissed at the riders.
The hall stood two stories high, its lower walls of stone and upper frame jettied slightly over the yard, all dark beams and pale plaster. Smoke rose from roof vents. Shutters were openalong the solar side, and the little chapel window held a slice of weak light in its glass, cold and watchful.
Belmaine dismounted first. Crale dismounted badly, almost falling. Amelia enjoyed that more than Christian charity probably allowed.
A groom came for her horse, but before he could touch the bridle, a woman swept down the hall steps in a gown of dark green wool and a mantle lined in squirrel fur. She was broad-shouldered and handsome in a practical way. Silver threaded through her hair that was braided tight at the temples. Keys hung at her belt in a bright, heavy cluster, and she wore authority the way Edith wore an apron. Naturally, and with the implied threat that someone was about to be corrected.
“Sir Roger,” she said.
“Dame Margaret.” Belmaine inclined his head. “Our guest.”
Not prisoner. Sure. And a bear trap was a seating arrangement.
Dame Margaret’s gaze moved over Amelia, swift and measuring. Crooked wimple. Mud-splashed hem. Hands clenched in the reins. Face probably pale enough to concern ghosts.
The woman’s expression didn’t soften, exactly, but something in it shifted.
“My lady,” she said.
“Not his wife,” Amelia said at once.
Dame Margaret’s eyes flicked to Crale, then back to Amelia. “So I gather.”
Crale stiffened. “She is overwrought.”
“I’m standing right here.”
“Yes,” Dame Margaret said dryly. “We’ve all observed it.”
