She should go. Amelia knew she should. The rules here were different than her own time, and Walter’s voice lived in the back of her head now, reminding her that a closed door, a quiet passage, a hand held too long, all of it could become talk.Thomas knew it too. She could see the restraint in the line of his body, the way he kept one hand curled at his side.
“You still have straw in your hair,” he said.
“I thought you removed it.”
“That was only one piece.”
“How many are there?”
“A harvest.”
She sighed. “Wonderful.”
Before she could stop him, he reached toward her. Slowly enough that she could have stepped back. Carefully enough that she did not.
His fingers touched one escaped curl near her shoulder where her veil had shifted, and drew a piece of straw free. Then another. His knuckles brushed the side of her neck.
The breath left her in a quiet, traitorous rush as Thomas went still.
The hall noise drifted from behind them, muffled and warm. Somewhere someone laughed. A bench scraped. Edith called for Wat to wake up enough to walk or be carried like a sack of meal, and Hob grumbled.
Thomas held her gaze. “Tomorrow,” he said, voice rougher than before, “do not stand so near the blades.”
Of all the things he could have said. Amelia blinked once, then smiled despite herself. “That’s your big good-night speech?”
“I’ve more to say.” His eyes were silver as he leaned forward.
Then from the hall came Hob’s voice, far too loud. “My lord, if you are done discussing farm implements, Walter has found another problem.”
Thomas closed his eyes as Amelia bit the inside of her cheek.
“Farm implements?” she whispered.
“I shall kill him.”
“No, you need him for harvest.”
“After the harvest, then.”
She laughed, and Thomas looked at her as if the sound had struck him somewhere tender.
“Good night, Thomas,” she said softly.
His expression changed, just enough to make her heart trip.
“Good night, Amelia.”
She went before she could do something ruinous, like touch his hand or ask him to stay or tell him that for one whole day she had almost forgotten to count the distance between herself and home.
Amelia climbed the stairs with aching feet, straw in her hair, chaff in places she refused to think about, and the smell of cut rye clinging to her gown. She should have been miserable. She should have wanted nothing more than clean sheets, air conditioning, coffee, and the safety of a century that made sense.
Instead, when she lay down that night, with Edith snoring nearby and Alyson curled like a kitten on a pallet close to the wall, Amelia closed her eyes and heard the harvest song again.
Ashcombe wasn’t her home, it couldn’t be.
Home had phones, coffee, her mother, dental appointments, and a return flight waiting for a woman who had missed it by seven centuries.
As she rolled over, she didn’t feel like she had fallen, Amelia felt, impossibly, as if she had been caught.
