“So is everyone.”
“You are unused to the work.”
“Yes, and tomorrow I’ll probably wake up unable to move. That is tomorrow Amelia’s problem.”
His mouth twitched. “Tomorrow Amelia?”
“She’s very responsible. I trust her completely.”
Thomas huffed, and for one impossible second she thought he might laugh. Truly laugh. The urge rose in his face, softenedhis mouth, lightened his eyes, and Amelia would have given a great deal to hear it.
Then Walter shouted from the far side of the field, “My lord!”
The moment broke.
Thomas released her arm. “Stay clear of the blades.”
“Go be lordly somewhere else.”
He looked down at her for one heartbeat too long. “As you wish.”
Then he was gone, striding across the field toward Walter, and Amelia stood there with her basket and her heart fluttering in her chest.
The rest of the day stretched golden and brutal. Clouds gathered beyond the Malverns, small at first, then dark along the undersides. Every person in the field seemed to notice at once, though no one pointed. The rhythm shifted. Scythes moved faster. Binders bent lower. Children carried water at a trot until Amelia reminded them, twice, that tripping with a full jug was not a noble sacrifice to the harvest gods, it was just a mess.
Walter fussed and fussed. “Those sheaves must stand higher. Higher, I said. They’ll not dry if you leave them sprawled like drunkards.”
Hugh muttered something about his back.
Walter rounded on him. “If your back can carry complaint, it can carry rye.”
Amelia pressed her lips together so hard they nearly disappeared.
Edith leaned near her. “Best not laugh. It encourages him.”
“Walter?”
“Hugh.”
The first distant roll of thunder moved across the hills late in the afternoon.
Every head lifted. For one breath the whole field went still, suspended beneath the sound.
Then Thomas’s voice cut clean across the field.
“Finish this row. Bind what is down. Leave nothing loose.”
No shouting or panic. Just the command, low and certain.
Amelia’s heart kicked. There was a difference between a man who liked being obeyed and one who was obeyed because people trusted him to stand steady when the sky turned black.
Saints and sneakers, he was dangerous to her heart.
The final hour became a blur of motion. Amelia’s arms no longer felt like arms but like ropes someone had attached to her shoulders. She carried two baskets, then one, then none when Edith caught sight of her face and snapped, “You’ll sit before you topple.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re the color of old flour.”
