Chapter 12
AMELIA
Amelia went looking for the sword not because she was brave, but because Sir Roger Belmaine had looked at Ashcombe as if the castle was already his, then looked down on Thomas as if he were some difficulty to be managed, and to top it all off, had looked at her as if she were a cow he was thinking of buying at auction.
All day long she’d tried to tell herself it was nothing. Men looked, they smiled, they even said helpful things with knives tucked in their sleeves.
None of that was new, not really. In her own century they usually wore tailored suits, had overly white teeth, waxed bodies, colored hair, and called it networking.
But Ashcombe wasn’t a hotel ballroom, and Belmaine wasn’t some handsy donor with too much cologne and a wife pretending not to notice.
Here, a man like Belmaine could do lasting damage.
He could take Ashcombe, along with the lands, title, and the people from Thomas.
It wasn’t like her own time, where it would take an act of parliament to strip a certain former royal couple of their titles.
In this time, the king could wave his hand and the deed would be done.
Not to mention, she wasn’t a guest with a return flight, a credit card, and the option of blocking a number. She was a single woman with no family and far too many questions clinging to her like burrs.
A widow, Thomas had called her.
Under my protection.
The words had warmed her when he said them, which was foolish.
Worse, they’d followed her all evening, through the hall, during supper, and even as Walter muttered over the accounts, continuing to warm her as Edith snapped instructions, and Alyson fell asleep with her cheek pressed to Amelia’s sleeve.
Under my protection.
It sounded safe. It also sounded like another weight Thomas had no business carrying.
So when the household called it a night, Amelia went looking for the sword.
She took the stub of tallow she’d saved, because apparently she was now the kind of woman who hoarded candle ends like a raccoon with a Costco membership, and crept out of the room as quietly as she could.
She made it three steps before she tripped over her own foot.
“Right,” she whispered. “Excellent. Stealthy medieval ninja. Very impressive.”
It was already raining and she had it all planned. Somewhere in the tower, surely, the sword would be waiting. It would have the same sapphire. She’d prick her finger and bleed on the blade, then she’d wake up, find a phone, and call her mom and cousin to tell them she was fine.
Amelia would hug Bree, she’d even hug her footballer husband. She’d thank every saint she’d ever heard of, including the ones she hadn’t. She’d never complain about Gaz again, even if he spent the rest of his life saying brilliant when he meant mildly acceptable.
She’d go home.
That thought nearly stopped her in the middle of the yard.
Her mother would be frantic by now. Or would she? Did time move the same way? Had Amelia been gone weeks there too, or only a few minutes? Was her phone sitting dead in some patch of wet grass near the ruined tower while her mother called and called and left messages that went nowhere?
She couldn’t think about that. Thinking about her mother was a trap door. One wrong step and she’d be at the bottom of it, broken and useless.
The tower smelled of damp stone, dust, old straw, and mice.
Not recent mice, she hoped, though she wasn’t taking a vote.
The flame on her stub of tallow trembled as she stepped inside, throwing long shadows over barrels, broken baskets, a cracked chest, and a wooden frame that looked as if it had once been part of a loom.
Something rustled.
“Please be spiders,” she whispered. “And not rats. I’m willing to negotiate with spiders.”
Amelia decided not to investigate. A woman had to have standards.
She searched the tower once quickly, heart beating so hard she could feel it in her throat. Then she searched again slowly, on her knees, holding the little flame to every shadow.
There was no sword. Some part of her knew, deep down, that she wouldn’t find it.
There was a cracked bell lying on its side like some sad, defeated turtle. There was a cracked stool, a rusted hinge, and bundles of rushes gone dry and brittle. A chest with a bit of ripped linen and no lid. There was also the same stone ledge beneath the narrow window.
Amelia stared at it so long her eyes began to burn. She knelt, and ran her hand over the stone. Nothing. No iron brackets. No old marks where an ancient sword had hung. No fat blue stone. No rusted blade waiting to fling her seven centuries in the right direction.
No way home.
The truth came quietly. That was the worst part. No thunder. No flash of lightning. No dramatic music, which frankly felt rude.
It just arrived with the rain and sat beside her on the cold floor.
The sword must not exist yet. Maybe it hadn’t been forged yet, might not for years. Decades, for all she knew.
Amelia didn’t cry.
Not quite.
It was worse than crying. This was sitting down on the cold floor while every explanation she’d been clutching since she woke in the stable came apart.
A reenactment.
A head injury.
An immersive historical experience with a really irresponsible safety team.
Any second now, a guide in a polo shirt would appear and ask if she’d gotten separated from the group.
No guide came.
No phone rang.
No car passed beyond the walls.
There was only Ashcombe in the dark, full of sleeping people who believed the year was 1265… because it was.
She was stuck for good. There wasn’t a flight to rebook. No clients to call. No calendar alerts. No plan.
For the first time in her adult life, Amelia Quinn had absolutely no idea what happened next.
The strange thing was that beneath the grief, far beneath it, in a place she didn’t want to examine too closely, there was the tiniest thread of something almost like relief.
Which was ridiculous. Possibly worse than ridiculous. Definitely proof she’d finally lost her mind.
“You’ll catch your death.”
Amelia jumped, making the flame go out.
Thomas stood in the doorway of the tower, a dark shape against the night, a lantern in one hand throwing gold across the hard lines of his face.
He wore no mail, only a dark tunic and hose, his hair mussed and wet as if he’d dragged a hand through it more than once. A few days of stubble shadowed his jaw.
Of course he looked like that at midnight in the rain. Couldn’t the man look mildly unfortunate just once? It would be helpful.
He didn’t ask what she was doing. Thomas looked at the tallow, her bare feet, the cold floor, and whatever was on her face, which she suspected was a great deal.
With a nod to himself, he came inside and crouched a careful arm’s length away, setting the lantern between them on the stone bench.
“I came for the sword,” she said.
There didn’t seem to be any point lying. Not to him. He’d never believed her lies anyway.
“It’s not here.” Her voice cracked.
“There’s no sword in this tower.”
“No,” she said. “I’m getting that.”
Somewhere outside, a dog turned over and gave a heavy sigh, as if disappointed in both of them.
“That first day,” Thomas said at last.
His voice was rough, and he didn’t look at her. He looked at the flame instead.
“You’re the worst liar I’ve ever met.”
She opened her mouth, then shut it, because unfortunately there was evidence.
Thomas looked back at the flame. “You grieve like someone who’s lost everything.”
Her throat closed.
“Thomas.”
“Here is what I know.” He said it plainly, like a soldier laying out ground before a fight. “You’ve nowhere to go. No kin that you admit to. The nuns would take one look at your ability to do sums, your strange words, and that hair, and call you worse than a faery.”
“My hair has done nothing to deserve this slander.”
“It draws notice.”
She rolled her eyes. “It’s hair.”
“It’s red and copper with hints of gold and the curls don’t wish to stay put.”
He gave her a look.
She might have smiled if her heart hadn’t been sitting somewhere near her knees.
Thomas drew a breath. “I’ve a castle that’s falling down around me, a barn fuller than it would’ve been without you, a steward’s chair sitting empty, and too few souls I can trust at my back.”
He took a breath.
“Stay,” he said.
Amelia went very still.
“Be under my roof and my protection, and no man here will touch you or question you while you’re mine to guard. I’ll not ask if you’ve run from a cruel husband or household as long as you do not lie to me.”
She stared at him.
He shifted, scowling at the lantern as if it had failed him somehow.
“It’s a poor offer,” he said. “A cold castle that comes with a lord with a target on his back.”
A laugh came out of her, surprised and entirely against her will.
“And a hole in the roof,” she said.
“And a hole in the roof,” he agreed gravely.
The laugh faded. The ache didn’t.
Amelia looked at him, this enormous, grieving, gruff man crouched in a dusty tower, offering her the only thing he had. A place to stand. He said it as if it were nothing. As if it wasn’t, just then, the entire world.
She thought of her apartment back home, neat and quiet and organized within an inch of its life. The calendar app that remembered her birthday. The empty place beside her name on Bree’s wedding card. The life she’d made so safe that nothing in it could surprise her, or touch her, or ask too much.
Except now the impossible had happened, and here, in the dark, someone was asking.
She looked down at her bare toes, which were filthy, chilly, and possibly never going to forgive her for no more lovely pedicures with pretty colors.
“Okay,” Amelia said as her voice cracked straight down the middle. “Okay. I’ll stay.”
Something in his face changed. Not much. But the hard line of his mouth eased, and the breath he let out sounded as if he’d been holding it too long.
“Aye,” he said. “Good.”
“Was that relief?”
“Nay.”
“Because it sounded like relief.”
“It wasn’t.”
“Fine. Very stern. Very lordly.”
“You’re shivering.”
“I’m sitting barefoot on a dirty stone floor.”
He frowned. “You should’ve worn your shoes.”
“I was trying to sneak.”
For a moment he only looked at her. Then, to her astonishment, he huffed something close to a laugh and rose.
“Come,” he said. “Before Edith wakes and skins us both.”
Amelia blinked up at him. “Edith would skin you?”
“She’d start with you. I’d be next for letting you wander in the rain at night.”
He held out his hand.
She looked at it.
Large. Scarred. Callused. A soldier’s hand. A lord’s hand. A man’s hand, offered without demand.
She put her fingers in his. His palm closed around hers, warm and rough, and he hauled her to her feet as if she weighed no more than Alyson’s rag doll. She wobbled at once because her feet had gone half numb.
Thomas caught her by the elbow.
“Steady.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re swaying.”
He released her as soon as she was steady, but not before she felt the strength of him, the carefulness. It was unsettling, how gentle such a dangerous man could be.
He looked at her feet and muttered something that sounded unflattering.
“I heard that,” she said.
“You were meant to.”
He bent, picked up the tallow stub, then took the lantern in one hand and gestured toward the door with the other.
“Walk close. There are several loose stones in the yard.”
Amelia did as she was told, mostly because her toes had lost the will to argue.
Outside, the night had deepened. The yard lay silvered after the rain and a thin slice of moon shone through a break in the clouds. Somewhere in the stable, a horse stamped. The air smelled of damp earth, straw, smoke, and the coming autumn.
Thomas walked beside her, not touching, but near enough that she could feel his warmth.
She told herself she’d said yes because there was no way home. Amelia was a planner. She liked facts, clear choices, and bullet points.
Fact one: the sword wasn’t there.
Fact two: she didn’t have anywhere else to go.
Fact three: Thomas Ashcombe had offered her shelter.
Those were all true, but they weren’t the whole truth. The rest of the truth walked beside her through the cold yard, carrying a lantern, scowling at shadows, and pretending that offering her a place in his household was merely practical.
Amelia had failed to plan for many things lately. A vanished sword, a missing century, and a castle full of people who were starting to matter to her.
But Thomas? He was going to be the most dangerous thing she’d ever failed to plan for.