Chapter 6 #2
A woman who said such things here in medieval England likely did not last long.
She knew it as surely as she knew there were no planes in the sky.
Thomas seemed to understood enough to move. He took the cup from the cart and handed it to a passing boy without looking away from her.
“Walk with me,” he said.
“I don’t think my legs can move.”
She laughed once, a small cracked sound that frightened her more than tears would have. Thomas stepped closer, not touching her, but near enough. He placed himself between her and the busiest part of the bailey with such quiet certainty that it took her a moment to understand what he was doing.
Shielding her.
Not from swords or weather or runaway carts. From eyes, from questions, and from herself
“Walk with me,” he said again, lower this time. “Before you tell everyone about your teeth.”
“My dentist,” she said faintly.
“Aye. Him as well.”
She shouldn’t have found that funny. Nothing about any of this was funny. But the small beer was making the edges of the morning shimmer, and terror had a strange way of opening little trapdoors in the mind. A giggle rose in her throat. She swallowed it. It came out anyway, shaky and mortifying.
Thomas gave her a look that said he had now added unpredictable laughter to his growing list of concerns.
“I’m fine,” she said.
“You are not.”
“No, but I’m saying it because it feels like I should.”
He simply offered her his arm. Not his hand.
His arm. Courtly, awkward, stiff with restraint, as if he had never once in his life considered escorting a woman who had just accused him of being hot in a muddy yard before breakfast. Amelia looked at that arm, at the worn leather bracer, the strong forearm, the scar across two knuckles, and knew in a distant, inconvenient part of herself that she would remember this moment for as long as she lived.
However long that turned out to be.
She put her hand on his arm. The linen of his sleeve was damp beneath her fingers, rough and warm from his skin.
He walked slowly, matching his stride to hers, and said nothing as he led her away from the cart, away from the staring men, and away from the tower that had broken the last of her denial.
The bailey opened toward a quieter corner near the stables, where the smell of hay and horse was stronger than the smoke. A chestnut warhorse lifted its head over the half-door and watched them with dark, thoughtful eyes.
“Your horse is judging me,” Amelia said.
“He judges everyone.”
“I would too if I had cheekbones like that.”
Thomas looked down at her.
“I meant the horse,” she said quickly.
“Of course.”
“I did.”
“Aye.”
“You are enjoying this far too much for a man who never smiles.”
“I am not enjoying it.”
“Your face almost did something.”
“My face does many things.”
“Not so far.”
This time he did smile, barely, and it was so quick she might have imagined it if her whole body hadn’t gone hot.
Then the smile faded. He stopped near the stable wall, where fewer people could see them, though Amelia sensed the whole yard was pretending very hard not to listen.
Thomas turned to face her, and the concern in his eyes was worse than suspicion.
Suspicion she could fight. Concern had corners she might cut herself on.
“You are frightened.”
It wasn’t a question.
Amelia looked down at her muddy hem, her borrowed shoes, and her hand resting on his arm as if it belonged there. Her knuckle ached beneath the dried cut. The air smelled of hay, rain, leather and horse. Somewhere nearby a child laughed, then was hushed.
“I’m gathering information,” she said.
“Is that what you call it?”
“Yes.”
“And when you have gathered it?”
“I’ll make a plan.”
His gaze held hers. “And if no plan can mend whatever ails you?”
The question struck too close. She pulled her hand from his arm and wrapped both arms around herself, the wool blanket bunching beneath her fingers. “Then I’ll make another one.”
He was silent so long she thought he might press her about the sword, the dentist, the flight, all the impossible scraps she had spilled at his feet like broken glass. Instead, he looked toward the tower and then back at her.
“You have addled your wits so we will forget talk of dentists, and falling through time itself.”
That nearly undid her. Not because it solved anything.
It solved nothing. She was still stranded in a century where breakfast could intoxicate her and women who fell out of nowhere were called faery women instead of missing persons.
She had no phone, no money, no way home, and no explanation that wouldn’t end with her locked up, prayed over, or worse.
But Thomas, who had every reason to demand answers, was not demanding them. She didn’t even care that he thought she was clueless.
Amelia took a breath that trembled going in and steadied, a little, going out.
“Thank you,” she said.
He inclined his head once, as if gratitude made him uncomfortable and he wished to be done with it quickly.
“Come inside. Edith will have food. You will eat before you drink anything else.”
She wanted to argue but the stable tilted as she found herself looking past him to the tower.
The words formed inside her, clear and terrible.
I fell through time.
She didn’t say them, nor would she. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
But she knew. Heaven help her, she knew. Somehow that old sword and the storm had carried her out of every plan she’d ever made and dropped her over seven centuries in the wrong direction.
The worst part, the part that would trouble her later when she lay awake beneath a sheep-smelling blanket listening to a castle older than her country breathe around her, wasn’t the terror.
The terror made sense. The grief made sense.
Even the ridiculous, fizzing urge to laugh at the thought of Bree trying to explain to her mom made sense in a cracked sort of way.
The worst part was when Thomas stepped beside her and guided her back toward the hall, his body angled between her and the yard, his voice gruff and low as he told a gawking boy to get back to his work, the floor that had dropped out from beneath Amelia did not feel, for one treacherous heartbeat, entirely like falling.
It felt the smallest bit like being caught.