Chapter 11 #3
Then she looked at Thomas. She had hated how Belmaine looked at her. That was plain enough. But more than that, Thomas realized with an odd twist beneath his ribs, she had hated how Belmaine made him stand there and endure. She had hated seeing him cornered.
No one, not since he had ridden home from Evesham, had looked angry on his behalf.
He didn’t know what to do with it. So, naturally, he scowled.
Amelia came down the steps, the tally still in her hand. “He seems awful.”
“Aye.”
Amelia’s gaze flicked to him. “He said he came to help?”
“That is how one knows to shut the gate.”
Hob laughed.
Walter did not, but Thomas suspected it was a near thing.
Amelia stopped beside him, not touching, though he felt the nearness of her as if she had laid a hand on his arm. She looked toward the road again.
“He looked at you like your home was already his.”
Thomas said nothing.
“And he looked at me like...” She stopped.
Thomas’s hand curled again.
Hob’s face hardened.
Walter, for once, did not lecture.
Amelia drew a breath and squared her shoulders. “I don’t like him.”
“You have sound judgment.”
“A compliment.”
“It was a fact.”
“Those can overlap.”
He looked at her.
A bit of ink still marked her jaw. The curl Belmaine had noticed was coming loose again, impossible and red against the white of her wimple. She smelled faintly of smoke, parchment, and the lavender Edith tucked into the linen chest.
“You should keep away from him,” he said.
“That was already my plan.”
“Make it a better one.”
Her brows rose. “A better plan than avoiding the spider?”
“Aye. Avoid the grass as well.”
Hob grunted approval. “Sound counsel.”
Walter cleared his throat. “My lord, shall I see the men back to the wall repairs?”
“Aye,” Thomas said.
Walter bowed and went, Hob following more slowly after giving Amelia a look that was almost fond and Thomas one that was far too knowing.
When they were alone enough that the yard noise covered softer words, Amelia turned to him.
“What did he really want?”
Thomas should have lied.
He wanted to. There were a dozen easy lies at hand. Court gossip. Neighborly warning. Men’s matters, which would have earned him a glare sharp enough to peel bark.
Instead he looked at the road.
“Ashcombe.”
She was quiet a beat. “Through marriage?”
He turned back to her.
Her face told him she had guessed much.
“I’ve planned enough weddings to know when a man starts talking about daughters and alliances, he isn’t really talking about love.”
“Nay.”
“And if you married into his family, the crown would leave you alone?”
“Mayhap.”
“But the strings would be nooses.”
Thomas looked at her.
A small smile touched her mouth without warmth. “I pay attention.”
“Aye,” he said. “You do.”
For a moment, he thought she understood him.
Saints help him, that was worse.
“I hate that he can do that,” she said.
“What?”
“Stand there smiling and make you smaller.”
No one said such things to him. No one looked at him and saw the shrinking.
Not his height, not his strength, not the sword at his side.
The other thing. The way Belmaine had brought court, crown, forfeiture, and Evesham into the yard and made Thomas feel once more like a man standing over men he could not save.
“He did not make me smaller,” Thomas said.
It was a poor lie.
Amelia’s eyes softened, which was worse than if she had argued.
“All right,” she said.
That was all.
Not pity. Not denial. Just all right, as if she would let him keep the lie because she knew what it cost him.
Thomas looked away first.
Across the yard, one of the younger men carrying a sack glanced over, met Thomas’s eyes, and immediately found somewhere else to be.
Another man near the stable remembered, quite suddenly, that a cartwheel required urgent attention.
Walter, at the far side of the yard, became deeply interested in a chicken.
Amelia watched and lifted one brow.
“For what it’s worth,” she said, “everyone seems at least a little afraid of you.”
“They are not.”
Hob, who had absolutely no reason to be close enough to hear that, made a choking sound.
Thomas turned.
Hob looked at the wall. “Dust from the mortar.”
Amelia pressed her lips together.
Thomas scowled.
The road lay empty now, dust settling behind Belmaine’s party.
“Thomas?”
He looked back.
“You don’t have to marry one of his daughters to save this place.”
He nearly smiled.
“You have a plan?”
“Not yet.”
“Then that is not comforting.”
“It will be.”
“Saints preserve me from your confidence.”
“There it is.”
“What?”
“You almost sounded like yourself again.”
He looked away toward the wall, where the men had begun moving stones once more, and tried very hard not to feel the warmth of her standing beside him.
“Go inside,” he said.
She obeyed, though she did it in the manner of a woman granting a favor rather than taking an order. At the top of the steps she paused and looked back.
“If Sir Roger Belmaine comes here again, I’m accidentally spilling something on him.”
“What?”
“I don’t know. Mead. Ink. A chamber pot. I’m flexible.”
Despite himself, Thomas felt the corner of his mouth move.
Amelia saw it.
The look of triumph on her face was entirely too dangerous.
“Go,” he said.
She vanished into the hall.
Thomas stood in the yard a while longer, the sun warm on his shoulders and the stink of Belmaine’s visit lingering like spoiled meat.
He did not, he told himself, care a whit how Belmaine had looked at her.
He found, as he turned toward the wall and the work waiting there, that he was gripping his sword hilt hard enough to whiten his knuckles. Finger by finger, he made himself let go.