Chapter 18 #3
The hall seemed to fall quiet around them, though it had been quiet all along. Beyond the shutters, rain battered the dark. The fire sank lower, the coals pulsing like a hidden heart. A drop from the new leak struck Amelia’s bowl with a soft plink.
Thomas looked at her across the dying fire with his ghosts behind his eyes and something else now in front of them. Not desire only, though it was there, dangerous and bright beneath the grief. Not gratitude. Not duty.
Recognition, perhaps. The terrible relief of being seen whole and not turned away from.
It was too hot in here. She barely resisted the urge to pull her shift away from her skin and blow down the front of it.
“Amelia,” he said, and the word was rough enough to be a warning.
She should have stood, should have climbed back to the loft while the night still had some boundary left.
Instead she whispered, “Thomas.”
The sound of his name in her mouth changed the air. He looked at her as if something inside him had finally stepped out from behind a closed door.
Then the roof timber above them groaned. Both of them looked up. There came a sound like a wet cloth tearing in half, followed by a sudden, spectacular rush of water from the roof directly onto the rushes three feet from Thomas’s boot.
Amelia jerked back. “What the hell?”
Thomas was already on his feet. “Bucket.”
“Right. Bucket. Yes. Medieval emergency response protocol.”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
She grabbed the nearest bucket, which unfortunately contained something she chose not to identify in the dark, dumped it into the rushes because priorities had shifted, and shoved it beneath the new leak. Water slapped into it with impressive force.
“That is not enough,” Thomas said.
“No kidding.”
He shot her a look.
“Sorry. Yes. More buckets.”
A sleeping dog stood, shook himself again, and fled the general area with more sense than most people.
Hob’s voice rose from somewhere near the wall. “If the roof comes down, wake me after it’s done.”
“Go back to sleep,” Thomas snapped.
“I was asleep until the sky entered the hall.”
Amelia dragged a second bowl across the floor. “Useful help, Hob. Very inspiring.”
“Mistress Quinn?”
“Yes?”
“Tell the roof I said it is a goat-brained lout.”
Despite everything, she laughed. Not because it was funny enough.
Not because she was now wet to the elbow, barefoot, and fairly certain some roof water had gone down her sleeve.
She laughed because the night had cracked open too wide, because Thomas had said her name as if it pained him, because grief had been sitting beside the fire wearing his face, because the universe had apparently decided emotional intimacy was best interrupted with structural failure.
The laugh came out half a sob.
Thomas heard that too. Of course he did. He caught the edge of the bucket as it tipped, steadied it, then looked at her.
“You are wet,” he said.
“So are you.”
“I am used to it.”
“What a tragic sentence.”
His mouth twitched. The moment was broken, but not gone.
It lingered in the air between them while they moved through the half-dark gathering bowls, shifting a bench, dragging a pallet away from the damp, and trying not to wake the entire household.
They failed. Edith appeared wrapped in a dark cloak, hair braided down her back, eyes narrowed to slits.
“What now?”
“The roof has decided to give way,” Amelia said.
Edith took in the buckets, the wet rushes, Thomas’s damp sleeves, Amelia’s dripping elbow, and the jug of wine by the hearth.
Her gaze moved from one to the other.
Amelia braced herself, but Edith only sighed. “I told Walter that patch would not hold.”
Thomas frowned. “You told me it would.”
“I told you it might, which is what women say to men when men have already decided not to hear no.”
“That is not true.”
Amelia and Edith looked at him.
Thomas looked annoyed. “’Tis not always true.”
Hob, still apparently asleep, said, “’Tis often true.”
“Hob,” Thomas said.
“I am dreaming.”
“Dream more quietly.”
Edith muttered something about witless men and wet rushes, then fetched two more bowls and ordered Amelia to stand nearer the fire before she caught her death. Amelia obeyed because Edith in the middle of the night had the energy of a general facing an invasion.
For the next quarter hour, the hall came half-awake and then slowly settled again.
A boy brought dry rushes. Martin stumbled over a bench, cursed softly, apologized to the bench, then cursed it again.
Alyson woke, saw Amelia, and asked if the rain had come inside to visit.
Wat told her no, the roof was just teasing them.
Edith told them both to sleep unless they meant to climb up and mend it themselves.
At last the worst of the leak was caught, the rushes had been turned, and the fire coaxed into a little more warmth. The household sank back into uneasy sleep, grumbling and shifting beneath blankets. The storm continued, but the roof, having made its point, seemed content for the moment.
Amelia stood near the hearth, her wet sleeve steaming faintly, loose tendrils of hair curling wildly around her face.
Thomas stood beside the table, the wine jug forgotten, his expression shuttered again but not as firmly as before.
Something had changed. The wall had gone back up, yes, because Thomas would rebuild a wall while bleeding from both hands if left unsupervised.
But now Amelia knew there was a door in it.
He picked up his cup and stared at the wine. Then, slowly, he set it down without drinking.
“Go to sleep,” he said.
It should have felt like dismissal. It didn’t.
“You too.”
“I will.”
“Liar.”
His brows rose.
She should not have said that to a medieval lord in his own hall while barefoot and wrapped in a damp cloak. She knew this. Her survival instincts had been having a difficult month.
But Thomas only looked at her, and there it was again, that almost-smile, fainter than firelight.
“I will try,” he amended.
“Better.”
A silence settled, softer than the one before.
Amelia looked toward the ladder. “Thank you for telling me.”
His face closed a little. “I should not have.”
“Yes,” she said. “You should have.”
“Amelia.”
There was warning in it. Weariness too.
She looked back at him. “I won’t tell anyone.”
“I know.”
That struck her harder than it should have.
Outside, thunder rolled farther away now, moving down the valley, leaving Ashcombe wet, battered, and still standing. The fire threw warm light across Thomas’s face. He looked like a man carved out of endurance and grief, but not a sword. Never only a sword.
“Good night, Thomas,” she said.
For a moment, he said nothing.
Then, quietly, “Good night, Amelia.”
She climbed back to the loft with her heart too loud and her sleeve still damp, aware of every creak of the ladder, every sleeping breath around her, every inch of space between propriety and disaster.
By the time she found her pallet, someone had moved it away from the leak and tucked an extra blanket at the foot.
She knew without asking who had done it.
Amelia lay down, staring into the dark while the storm moved off and the dripping hall counted the seconds beneath her.
She should have been thinking of home, of Bree, her mother, airplanes and hot showers, and coffee in paper cups.
She should have been building a plan, because that was what she did when the floor fell away.
Instead she saw Thomas by the fire, turning a cup in his scarred hands, saying the names of the dead.
She saw him look at her when she told him he was not a sword, replayed his voice saying her name.
There was no spreadsheet in the world that was going to save her from this.
Amelia closed her eyes against the dark, but the truth had already found her. Whatever waited at the end of this road, whatever sword or storm or choice the world meant to throw at her next, some part of her had crossed a line tonight without taking a single step.
And no plan she made would put her safely back on the other side. She was utterly in love with him.