Pickering studied her for a long moment.
“Then for purposes of my record,” Pickering said, “Mistress Amelia Quinn was falsely claimed by Edmund Crale, unlawfully removed from Ashcombe, and restored under protection before witnesses. Her widowhood, or lack thereof, is not a matter I can determine tonight.”
Amelia blinked.
Thomas understood. Not cleared entirely but free from Crale.
Huck’s smile spread slowly beneath his beard. “God works in footnotes.”
Pickering gave him a pained look. “God may. I do not.”
Amelia breathed in carefully, as if air itself had become something precious and breakable. “Thank you, Master Pickering.”
“Do not thank me. I have merely written what the evidence will bear.”
“That’s possibly my favorite kind of miracle.”
Pickering seemed unsure whether he had been complimented.
Pickering and Aymon were given chambers, though Aymon objected until Huck threatened to dose him with something involving valerian and old monastery wine. Walter carried the packets to the solar for safekeeping. Hob took the first watch because he was not yet done glaring at the world, and glaring was best done in the rain with a weapon or three.
Thomas walked Amelia to the stair without touching her, though heaven help him, he wanted to.
The want of her had become a living thing beneath his skin, a creature with claws and teeth and far too much memory. He wanted to take her hand, her face, her whole trembling, stubborn self and hold on until the memory of Belmaine riding away with her let him go. He wanted to bury his face in her hairand breathe in until the scene at the orchard stopped replaying itself behind his eyes.
She stopped in the corridor outside the sleeping loft. Alyson had already been carried up by Edith, limp with exhaustion, her small face pressed against Edith’s shoulder. Wat had followed, looking back every few steps as if Amelia might vanish if he stopped watching. The hall had emptied by degrees, leaving shadows, banked fire, and the smell of rain, smoke, wet wool, honey, pottage, and ink.
Amelia turned to him.
“You brought the law with you,” she said.
“I brought Walter. Close enough.”
A smile touched her mouth. “He was magnificent.”
“He’ll be unbearable.”
“He earned it.”
Thomas looked at the bruise on her cheek. Cleaned now. Treated. No longer red with fresh insult, but darkening, blooming beneath the skin in a shadow his hand itched to erase and his sword hand longed to avenge.
“I’m sorry.”
Her smile faded. “I know.”
“No.” His voice came out rough. “You don’t. Not all of it.”
He could face armed men. He could face Pickering. Hell, he could stand in a hall and hear every charge that might have ruined Ashcombe. Yet looking at Amelia and telling her the truth of his own failing felt like stepping unarmored into a field already lost.
“I believed you,” he said. “When you said you didn’t know him. I believed you.”
Her eyes shone in the low firelight.
“But I still let them take you.”
“You had to.”
“I chose to.”
