“I have rights.”
“You have ale in your beard.”
The guard’s mouth twitched.
Crale went scarlet.
Dame Margaret stepped aside. “Out.”
“This is an outrage.”
“It will become a louder one if I call Sir Roger.”
Crale hesitated. There. Not husbandly authority. Fear of Belmaine.
Amelia tucked that away.
Crale leaned toward her, voice low enough that only she and Dame Margaret could hear.
“You’ll wish you’d been kinder to me.”
Amelia met his eyes. “Men keep saying things like that to me, and yet here I am, still unimpressed.”
Dame Margaret pointed down the corridor. “Out.”
He went as the guard followed, looking as if he’d rather be assigned to the geese.
Dame Margaret shut the door and turned to Amelia. “Are you hurt?”
“No.”
“Truly?”
“Yes.”
The woman studied her. “You’re shaking.”
“It’s the adrenaline.”
“The what?”
“Righteous fury. With side effects.”
Dame Margaret crossed to the table, took the cup gently from Amelia’s hand, and set it down. “You cannot provoke him.”
“I didn’t invite him in for ale and conversation.”
“No. But he’ll use any wound to claim you’re disordered.”
Amelia laughed once, hard. “He stormed into a locked room and grabbed me, but my tone is the legal issue?”
Dame Margaret’s mouth pressed flat. For one breath, the woman looked tired. Not stern. Not practical. Tired in the bones.
“I did not say it was just.”
“No,” Amelia said quietly. “You didn’t.”
They stood in that ugly little truth together. Then Dame Margaret went to the hearth and picked up the iron poker as Amelia tensed.
