I stared at him, warmth spreading through me at the thought of a medieval nobleman wooing me.
The Baron continued eating as though he hadn’t just made what was, for him, an outrageous joke.
“A seamstress arrives tomorrow from Oxford,” he said. “You will permit her to take measurements. My late wife, Eleanor, left instructions years ago regarding appropriate household presentation for unmarried noblewomen under my protection. Maud has located them.”
Under my protection.
The words settled strangely in my chest.
“I don’t need expensive dresses.”
“That is irrelevant.” He reached for his wine. “A woman visibly attached to this household should look attached to this household.”
There it was. Not generosity. Strategy. Protection disguised as practicality. I understood the politics.
“You expect me to remain at Thames for some time,” I said carefully.
“Based on your knowledge, I expect the kingdom to become unpleasant.”
That, apparently, was answer enough.
* * *
The seamstress arrived the following morning with two assistants, a wagon full of fabrics and trim, and the exhausted expression of a woman who had spent twenty years arguing with noblewomen about sleeve widths.
Bolts of cloth unfurled across the solar in rich waves of color. Deep blue wool soft as smoke. Forest green trimmed with silverthread. Cream linen fine enough to slip through a ring. Heavy winter velvet the color of dark wine.
I touched one length of blue fabric carefully.
Geoffrey would have chosen this one.
Aldwin would have declared all of it wasteful and then stolen the best bottle of wine in the room while the fitting was underway.
The thought struck me so suddenly I had to look away for a moment.
The seamstress, mercifully, mistook my expression for indecision and launched into an aggressive argument in favor of blue sleeves over green.
The Baron worked while I was fitted. That became the rhythm of the summer.
We worked for hours and hours each day. I had imagined the war, when it began, would announce itself somehow. Trumpets. Fires. Armies on distant hills. Instead it began as paperwork.
Letters in. Letters out. Lists of households updated in careful columns. Maps spread across the Baron’s desk with small marks added in his neat controlled hand. Reports from scouts sent in various directions on casual pretexts.
The Baron read everything aloud to me and asked my opinion. Most mornings my opinion wasI don’t know.
Most mornings he made a small mark beside the parchment that meantacceptableand continued.
He tested me at first.
Small things.
He asked what I knew of northern households and quietly sent riders to confirm my answers. He asked which monasteries along the southern road could be trusted with couriers. A week later his riders returned having found shelter exactly where I said they would.
After the fourth or fifth of these tests, he stopped testing me.
I wouldn’t say the Baron came to trust me. He, I was learning, did not trust in the ordinary sense of the word. What he did instead was shorten the distance between hearing my opinion and acting on it until the gap became indistinguishable.
I learned to ride properly in those weeks because the Baron decided I should continue what Geoffrey had begun.
