Hob caught Galahad’s bridle as Thomas mounted. For one breath, the old soldier’s hand was firm against the grey’s rain-slick leather. His face was grim beneath his hood, his scarred mouth drawn tight.
“Thomas.”
The use of his name cut through the rain.
Thomas looked down.
“We bring her home,” Hob said.
Thomas looked toward Belmaine’s road. For years he had believed surviving Evesham was a punishment, a debt to be paid piece by piece until there was nothing left of him but duty, bone, and the names of dead men. Then Amelia Quinn had fallen into his stables in a gown the color of the summer sky, talking of dentists, canned wine, and wearing the most ridiculous shoes. She had brought lists to his ruin, order to his fields, laughter to his hall, and warmth to places in him he had not known were frozen.
She had made him want tomorrow.
Aymon’s voice came from behind him, dry despite the pain. “If this is wooing, I begin to understand why poets drink.”
Hob barked a laugh.
Thomas almost smiled. Almost. Then he touched his heels to Galahad’s sides as the horse surged forward, powerful and eager beneath him, and Thomas rode south with Hob at his side, rain in his eyes, blood on his sleeve, the queen’s debt behind him, and no more patience.
Belmaine had taken Amelia from Ashcombe. From him. Now Thomas had the law, the proof, and the road beneath him.
The sword was merely for what came after.
AMELIA
The orchard beyond the chapel house lay in a cold tangle of wet grass, black branches, and apples gone soft with rot beneath their feet, the whole place smelling of mud, bruised fruit, and the sort of bad decisions men made when they thought no one would live long enough to contradict them.
Rain sifted down in a fine, needling mist, silvering the air and slicking Amelia’s hair where it had come loose from the wimple. The linen hung askew now, more strangled laundry than respectable head covering, and several damp red curls had escaped down her neck as if they too had decided the whole medieval modesty situation was not worth the bother.
Her cheek throbbed where Belmaine had struck her. Mud clung to the hem of her gown and sucked at her shoes with every step. The broken pottery shard pressed against the inside of her wrist, and the lump of wax Father Martin had given her sat tucked in her other sleeve like a tiny red heart, fragile and absurdly important.
Osric had one hand clamped around her arm.
The red-faced man walked on her other side with his cudgel drawn.
Belmaine followed a few paces behind, his fine cloak catching on wet brambles and his temper showing in the hard rhythm of his tread.
From the front of the manor came shouting. Then steel rang against steel, bright and vicious through the wet air.
Thomas.
The sound pulled through Amelia’s chest like a rope.
Osric jerked her forward hard enough to make her stumble. “Walk.”
“I am walking, you overgrown ham.”
He shook her once. “Quiet.”
“People keep trying that. It never takes.”
They reached the low orchard wall, mossy and slick with rain. Beyond it lay a narrow cart track churned with wheel ruts, then open meadow sloping toward a stand of ash trees whose bare branches clawed at the mist. A rider could vanish there quickly. A body could vanish there too, if no one knew where to look and the man doing the killing had enough money to make everyone else suddenly remember urgent business elsewhere.
Absolutely not.
Something inside Amelia went very calm.
Not peaceful. Not brave in any storybook way.
