He saw the battle in her face. The instinct to protect a secret.
Ask me, she had said after the reckoning.
So he did.
“Why does that sword frighten you?”
Her throat moved. For a moment he thought she might answer.
Then Walter appeared at Thomas’s shoulder with the letter clutched in both hands and the expression of a man about to combust from contained information.
“My lord,” Walter said. “This must be secured in the coffer and copied at once. The implications are considerable.”
Thomas did not take his eyes from Amelia. “Later.”
Walter blinked. “Later?”
“Aye.”
“But the queen’s seal?—”
“Will remain sealed to the page for another hour.”
Walter looked as if Thomas had suggested they store holy relics in a pigsty.
Amelia seized the interruption like a drowning woman grabbing a floating plank.
“Walter’s right. The queen’s favor is important. Ashcombe matters.”
“So do you,” Thomas said.
Walter made a strangled sound.
Amelia’s eyes widened.
Thomas had not meant to say it before Walter and a mule with opinions. He had not meant to say it at all. Words kept escaping him lately, which was an unsettling habit and likely Amelia’s fault.
Her face softened, then folded in on itself. That frightened him more than the swaying had.
“I know,” she said quietly.
Thomas reached for her hand, and when she took his, her fingers were chilled.
“Solar,” he said. “Now.”
They crossed the yard together, and Thomas felt every eye pretend not to watch.
Walter came with them until Edith caught his sleeve.
“Let them be,” she said.
“This concerns Ashcombe.”
“So does breathing, and yet you manage not to supervise every breath in the yard.”
THOMAS
The solar was dim after the yard, the fire banked low, the air smelling of wax, old parchment, damp wool, and ink. Hob stood beside the table with the sword laid before him on its cloth. His hands rested at his sides, but his expression had lost all of its rough humor.
