Hob made a rough sound behind him.
Belmaine laughed. “Still the same tongue. I’m relieved. A lesser man might have lost his humor after Evesham.”
The yard quieted.
Belmaine let his gaze travel over the place. He looked at the half-mended wall, the new timber stacked near the carpenter’s trestle, the thatch waiting, the patched stable door, and the barn whose fullness had cost Ashcombe several days of backbreaking labor and the last of Thomas’s patience.
Belmaine’s face settled into sorrow so practiced Thomas almost admired it.
“It grieves me to see the castle so hard used,” he said. “After everything. A loyal house brought so low.”
Loyal. There was a word with a dagger in its sleeve.
“We manage,” Thomas said.
“Of course. Of course you do.” Belmaine patted his arm, and Thomas briefly entertained breaking the man’s fingers.
“Ashcombe men have always been hardy. Ill-advised at times, but hardy.”
Hob shifted behind him.
Thomas didn’t look back. If he looked, Hob might take it as permission, and what Hob would do would be satisfying for three breaths and disastrous for the next three years.
“Hob,” Thomas said. “See Sir Roger’s men are given ale.”
Ale, not wine. Thomas had not yet been driven so low as to pretend this visit was welcome.
Hob’s mouth twitched. “Aye, my lord.”
Belmaine noticed. Men like him saw every crumb on a board, every crack in a wall, and every cup not filled from the better jug.
“You are kind,” Belmaine said. “Though I have not come to drain your stores. I know how dear they must be.”
Walter made a small strangled sound.
Thomas wished to make one as well, preferably with both hands around Belmaine’s throat.
“We’re hospitable enough,” Thomas said.
“One would expect no less.”
Belmaine’s gaze drifted past him and stopped.
Amelia had come out onto the steps of the hall, her head tilted up to the sun, with a tally stick in one hand and a smear of ink along her jaw. She took a step back when she noticed the strangers in the yard.
The wind caught a curl that had escaped her wimple. That glorious copper red with hints of gold. The plain navy gown Edith had found for her should have made her unremarkable, but nothing dimmed her beauty. The wool made her skin look fairer, her green eyes brighter, and the freckles across her nose stand out enough to trouble a man’s peace. The ink at her jaw looked as if she had gone to battle with the accounts and come away victorious.
She must have missed it when she washed. Thomas found it absurdly distracting.
Belmaine looked at her the way a horse trader looked at teeth, with interest, calculation, and the faint pleasure of seeing something that might yet be his.
Thomas’s hand tightened at his side. The urge to step between them came so fast that for one breath he did not move at all. Movement might have become murder, and there were too many witnesses for that.
“Well now,” Belmaine said softly. “I had not heard Ashcombe kept such company.”
Amelia lifted her chin.
Thomas knew that look. It was the look she wore when some man had underestimated her and she had decided, privately, to make him regret it.
