Thomas ate last. He came to the shade only when Hob bodily stepped into his path and said, “My lord, if you fall into the rye I shall leave you there until dusk and tell everyone you chose to commune with the grain.”
Thomas gave him a look that would have sent a weaker man to his knees.
Hob smiled as if refreshed by it.
Amelia watched him accept bread and cheese from Edith with the same grave thanks he might have offered for a king’s ransom. There was dust in his hair, and a thin line of sweat ran from his temple down along the edge of his scar. He sat on a low flat stone where he could see the field, his scythe laid across his knees, his hand around a cup of small beer.
He looked tired. Not simply hot or worn from working, though he was both, but tired in some deeper place. The kindof tired that came from counting what could still go wrong even while everyone else celebrated what had gone right.
Amelia knew that kind of tired. She had lived with it in hotel ballrooms, in conference centers, in church basements dressed up with twinkle lights and rented linens, standing with a clipboard while the DJ lost power, the caterer misplaced the vegetarian meals, and the bride’s divorced parents discovered they had been seated at the same table. Only the stakes had changed. Nobody starved if tulips arrived in the wrong shade of blush.
Here, a bad harvest could empty cottages, a man like Thomas could swing a scythe until his hands blistered and still lose everything to rain, rent, or a neighbor with smoother manners and deeper coffers.
He must have felt her looking because his eyes lifted.
Amelia quickly became fascinated by a crumb on her sleeve.
A warm sound escaped him. Not quite a laugh. Not quite a sigh.
That day, she learned that Osbern knew the weather by the ache in his knee and the behavior of the swallows. She learned that Hob could get three sulking men back into motion by standing near them silently until shame did the work. She learned that Walter’smayhapcontained at least seventeen separate meanings, only three of which were encouraging. And she learned that small beer was not as terrible when one was thirsty enough, though Amelia still wanted coffee so badly she might have bartered a minor title for it.
She also learned that Thomas did not ask anything of his people he would not do himself.
By afternoon, his tunic was damp, his hair curling wildly at his neck, his jaw shadowed darker with stubble and dust, and there was a thin red line across one forearm where rye hadscratched him. He looked less like a lord than a man carved out of stone. He also looked, unfortunately, incredible.
Amelia carried a basket of cords past him and nearly tripped over nothing.
Thomas caught her by the elbow before she could face-plant into the stubble.
His hand was hot. Callused. Steady.
“You are tired,” he said.
“I’m fine.”
“You nearly fell over your own feet.”
“They were in the way.”
His thumb shifted slightly against her sleeve, not quite a caress, but something.
“You have done enough.”
“Don’t start.”
His brows lowered. “Start what?”
“The lordly protective thing where you decide I’m delicate and should go sit beneath a tree while everyone else works themselves into pudding.”
“Pudding?”
“Not important.”
“You are small.”
“I am aware of that too.”
“And tired.”
