Chapter 20 #2
No one was there. No market, no Belmaine’s men, no Walter’s stiff-backed disapproval, no household listening behind cups. Only the road, animals, wind, and the dead man’s cross.
He could have taken it. Instead he pulled away and picked up the apple by its stem.
“You may have it,” he said.
Her eyes dropped, then lifted again. “Gallant.”
“It is only an apple.”
“Of course.”
The ease thinned.
He felt it happen and did not know how to stop it without making matters worse.
They mounted again. The road home climbed gently through fields and hedges, the pack mule slower now. Amelia’s arms came around him once more, but the laughter from the morning did not return so quickly.
Thomas had done that. Good, he told himself.
Better. The word tasted like ashes.
As Ashcombe’s tower came into view, square against the pale afternoon sky, Amelia spoke quietly.
“Thank you.”
He knew what she meant and wished he did not.
“For what?”
“For covering for me. Again.”
The gates stood ahead, open to the yard. Smoke rose from the hall roof. A boy ran along the wall walk and vanished. The castle looked poor, patched, stubborn, and too much like home.
Amelia’s arms tightened around him just slightly.
“In the market,” she said. “With Belmaine’s men. And the charm woman. And all of it.”
Thomas should have said, You are welcome.
He should have said, Take more care.
He should have said nothing at all.
Instead he felt the memory of her in his arms, the almost-kiss in the square, her fingers curling into his on the road, her laughter behind his shoulder, and panic rose like a shield slammed into place.
“Do not thank me,” he said, more roughly than he meant.
She went quiet.
He hated himself before he finished. “I am the worst danger, mistress. You’d do well to remember it.”
Cygnet’s hooves struck the packed earth before the gate.
A moment passed, then she said, carefully, “Is that what you think?”
He did not answer. Because every truth in him had become a knot he could not cut without drawing blood.
They rode beneath the gatehouse and into Ashcombe’s yard.
Hob came forward to take the mule. Wat ran up to ask if there had been bandits.
Alyson asked for apples before remembering manners and asking if there had been apples.
Edith appeared in the hall doorway, took one look at Amelia’s face, and then at Thomas’s, and her eyes narrowed with the precision of a drawn knife.
Thomas dismounted, helping Amelia down because not helping would draw notice, and because touching her one more time seemed both punishment and necessity.
She did not look at him when her feet touched the ground.
She thanked Cygnet instead, stroking the mare’s neck with a hand that was steadier than Thomas deserved.
“You rode well,” he said.
It was too little. Too late. Coward’s coin.
Amelia looked at him then. Her face was composed, but her eyes were not. They were green and hurt and far too knowing.
“Careful,” she said softly. “That almost sounded like praise.”
He had said those words to her once in the solar, when the accounts had first begun making sense beneath her hands. Hearing them returned to him now should have amused him.
It did not.
Before he could answer, she turned and went to Edith, already opening the satchel and speaking of salt, cloth, nails, and the price of peas as if nothing at all had happened on the road.
Thomas stood beside Cygnet with the reins in his hand and watched her go.
Hob came to stand beside him. For once, the man said nothing. Thomas would have preferred mockery. He could answer mockery. He could snarl at it, bat it aside, survive it.
At last Hob took the reins from him. “Market went well?”
Thomas looked toward the hall, where Amelia had disappeared into warmth, work, and women who would see too much.
“We got what we needed.”
Hob grunted. “That was not what I asked.”
Thomas turned on him. Hob looked back, broad and weathered and impossible to frighten after all these years. There was no laughter in his face now. Only old loyalty and older grief.
Thomas looked away first. “The road is not safe,” he said.
“Nay,” Hob said. “Roads seldom are.”
“She does not know how men look for weakness.”
“She learns.”
“Not quick enough.”
“No one does, at first.”
Thomas’s jaw worked. “I should have sent you.”
“Aye.”
That was so unexpected, Thomas looked at him.
Hob shrugged. “You should have. But you did not.”
“You have a point hidden somewhere beneath that beard?”
“Aye.” Hob’s gaze shifted to the hall door. “You brought her back.”
Thomas felt the words settle into him with more weight than they deserved.
You brought her back.
Not safe. Not untouched by the world. Not free of danger. But back.
He thought of Evesham and the men who had not come. Thought of Wat and Alyson in the ditch. Thought of Amelia in the market square, laughing because he asked her to.
“I did,” he said.
Hob clapped him once on the shoulder, hard enough to make a lesser man stagger. “Then call that enough for one day.”
Thomas watched as Hob led Cygnet toward the stable.
He looked once more at the hall. Through the open door, he could see Amelia standing near the table with Edith, unwrapping the market goods.
She had pushed her hood back, and the veil had slipped again, red curls escaping in the afternoon light.
Alyson stood on tiptoe beside her, peering into the satchel.
Wat bounced nearby, disappointed by the lack of bandits.
Edith said something that made Amelia laugh.
Relief moved through him, sharp and unwilling. Thomas turned away before she could look up and catch him watching.
He was the worst danger she had. He knew that, knew it as surely as he knew the weight of a sword and the sound a man made when the breath left him.
The terrible thing was that when danger had come to the market, Amelia had stepped into his arms as if they were safety.
And God help him, for one ruinous heartbeat, Thomas had believed it too.