Chapter 23 #2
She looked at him then. Whatever answer she had prepared deserted her. He saw the truth before she spoke, the pain. Her eyes were bright, furious with herself, green as wet leaves after rain.
“No,” she said.
A poor lie. He almost smiled, and would have if the matter had not been tearing something open in him.
“You are a better steward than liar.”
“Good. I’m not supposed to be lying.”
“Then do not.”
Her fingers tightened around the parchment. “You can’t afford scandal.”
The words were Walter’s. Or might as well have been.
Thomas’s jaw hardened. “I can afford less than I’d like.”
“This isn’t a joke.”
“No,” he said. “It is not.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
“Then you know I’m right.”
“I know you’re frightened.”
Her chin lifted. “That’s not an argument.”
“It wasn’t meant as one.”
“Good, because it’s a terrible argument. I am frightened. I’d be an idiot not to be frightened. I have no papers, no family, and a wardrobe that’s itchy. I’m also not wrong.”
Against his will, his mouth twitched. “Itchy?”
“It’s a technical term.”
“I shall inform Edith.”
“Please don’t. She’ll tell me wool builds character, and I already have all the character I can safely manage before supper.”
There she was. Only a glimpse. A small flash of the woman who had once informed him that eating off trenchers was a health code violation, then tried to explain health codes to Hob, who had listened with the solemn horror of a man hearing of a French invasion.
Then she looked back toward the hall, and the moment shuttered.
“Belmaine is using me,” she said. “Or he will.”
“Aye.”
“You said no because he made the bargain about me.”
“I said no because it was no bargain worth having.”
“That sounds noble.”
“It was anger, mostly.”
“That sounds more like you.”
This time the smile did reach him, brief and rough. “You wound me.”
“I’ve seen you repair a cart wheel, terrify a tax collector, and make three grown men stop arguing over a goat by looking at them. I think you’ll survive.”
“I was not terrifying the escheator.”
“You absolutely were.”
“He arrived terrified. I merely maintained conditions.”
A reluctant laugh escaped her, and it was so much like light spilling through a cracked door that Thomas nearly forgot himself and reached for it.
For her.
Amelia’s fingers smoothed over the tied parchment. “What happens now?”
The question was plain. Practical. The sort of question she asked when she had already begun building the bones of a plan, even if she did not know it yet.
Thomas wished he had a better answer. “Belmaine will look for another weakness.”
“Me.”
“Aye.”
“And if he finds one?”
“I stop him.”
“That’s not a plan.”
“No.”
She gave him the faintest look. “That was almost honest.”
“It was entirely honest.”
“It was incomplete.”
“Mayhap I was hoping you would not notice.”
“Thomas.”
“I have no plan,” he said, and the words cost more than he expected. “Not yet. But I am not sending you away.”
Her face changed. Not enough for most men to catch, but Thomas had been watching her too closely for too long. Relief came first, small and dangerous. Then grief. Then fear, because relief itself had become a thing she couldn’t trust.
“You should,” she whispered.
He shook his head.
“It would be safer.”
“For whom?”
“For Ashcombe.”
“No.”
“For you.”
“No.”
“For me.”
His temper stirred, not hot, but deep. “Do not make yourself a bundle to be moved for convenience.”
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
“I am trying to be practical.”
“So was Belmaine.”
She stared at him, lips parted, and he could see the moment the words struck too close.
Thomas regretted it at once. “Amelia.”
“No,” she said, quiet now. Too quiet. “No, you’re right.”
“I was not.”
“You were.” She looked down at the parchment in her hands. “That’s the awful part. I was standing there listening to him offer you safety in exchange for making me disappear, and some part of me thought, well, at least that’s efficient.”
“Do not.”
She laughed once. It was a broken little sound with no humor in it. “You see? I’m excellent in a crisis. Give me a disaster and I’ll organize the napkins around it.”
“Amelia.”
She looked up.
He wanted to tell her she was not the price of Ashcombe. Not a problem to be solved. Not a neat column in anyone’s account. He wanted to say all of it plainly, but the hall was too close, and Thomas had never been good at laying tenderness out where others might see it trampled.
So he said what he could. “No woman beneath my roof is coin for another man to weigh.”
Her eyes brightened.
“Especially not one who writes treason about peas in my market tallies,” he added.
She blinked. “That was not treason.”
“You wrote that I was wrong.”
“You were wrong.”
“About peas?”
“Objectively.”
“I have commanded men in battle.”
“Were there peas involved?”
“No.”
“Then your experience is irrelevant.”
A laugh escaped him, rough and brief, and something eased between them, not mended, but loosened.
Then Walter’s voice rose in the hall. “Mistress Amelia? The lower field tally, if you have not misplaced it into some system only the saints understand.”
Amelia closed her eyes for one small moment. “That man has the emotional range of a locked cupboard.”
“He is loyal.”
“Cupboards can be loyal?”
“And useful.”
“Also musty.”
Thomas’s mouth twitched again. “Do not let him hear you.”
“I’m trying to be distant and proper, not suicidal.”