Chapter 25 #2
“She is under my protection.”
“Aye. You have mentioned that.”
“It is the whole of it.”
“No,” Huck said mildly. “It is the door you stand in front of so no one looks through.”
Thomas’s hand tightened around the cup.
The hall rang with laughter as Col attempted some step from a country dance and nearly kicked the dog, who moved over but remained near the food. Edith cuffed Col lightly on the back of the head and told him if he broke his neck, she would not waste clean linen on the wrapping.
Amelia laughed again.
Thomas looked before he could stop himself.
She was looking back. Not for long. Only a heartbeat across the smoke and firelight, across the benches and bodies and song. But long enough that the noise in the hall seemed to dip, as if the whole world had drawn breath.
Then she looked away.
Huck made a sound beside him.
“I should send you back to your bees.”
“My bees have better manners than most men and more sense than several lords.” Huck took another sip. “But they do not provide conversation.”
Thomas didn’t answer.
Huck followed his gaze to Amelia and then, mercifully, said nothing more.
The feast thinned slowly, as good feasts did.
Not all at once. A household did not surrender warmth willingly when winter was coming.
First the smallest children fell asleep, heavy-headed and sticky-fingered, across laps or against dogs who accepted them as inconvenient blankets.
Then mothers gathered them, wrapped them in cloaks, and stepped out into the cold yard with husbands carrying lanterns.
Tenants drifted home in knots of two and three, voices softer under the stars.
The old men stayed longest, because old men knew the value of fire that did not come from their own woodpile.
Edith disappeared and returned twice, each time carrying something, ordering someone, or rescuing a cup from a fool.
Walter retired early under the claim of needing to secure the rolls, though Thomas suspected he was simply offended by songs that contained inaccurate references to livestock.
Hob and three of the garrison remained at the far table with Huck’s second keg, arguing quietly over whether a spear thrust from horseback was honorable if the horse was doing most of the work.
Huck sat near them, round and content, examining the bottom of his cup with the grave interest of a scholar.
Amelia had moved to the fire. She sat on the settle beside it, not in shadow exactly, but just out of the brightest light.
Her cup rested on the small stool near her knee, half-full.
She had loosened the pin beneath her chin, and her veil had slipped back enough that more of her hair showed, red curls escaping along her temple and nape.
The fire turned them bright at the edges. Her face had gone thoughtful.
Thomas should have gone to bed. He had a wall to inspect at dawn, a tenant dispute unresolved, Belmaine’s silence scratching at the back of his mind, and enough mead in his blood to make wisdom less likely than usual.
So what did he do? Like a dolt, he crossed the hall and sat across from her.
Amelia looked up as if she’d known he was coming.
That pleased him more than it should have.
For a moment neither spoke. The fire cracked between them, settling around a split log.
Sparks lifted and vanished into the dark beams overhead.
Somewhere behind him Hob made a point with one fist against the table.
Someone laughed into a cup. Outside, the wind pressed cold fingers against the shutters.
Thomas rested his forearms on his knees.
“You’re cold,” he said.
It was not the beginning he had intended.
He had intended something better. Mayhap even clever, though that had been unlikely from the start.
Amelia’s eyes flickered in the candlelight. “Have I?”
“Aye.”
“I’m trying to be sensible.”
“I did not accuse you of sense.”
That almost drew a smile. Almost.
Her fingers tightened around the edge of her sleeve. “Thomas.”
His name, coming from her struck harder than it should have. She had avoided it for days, as if the word itself might betray her.
“Say it again,” he said before sense could stop him.
He should have taken it back.
“Thomas,” she said, softer this time.
He looked at the fire because if he looked at her too long, he would forget the hall, the sleeping children, the men across the room, Belmaine’s shadow, the crown’s suspicion, every wall between them, and all the reasons he had spent weeks building those walls stone by stone.
“Why?” he asked.
He heard the answer she didn’t say. Belmaine. Gossip. Walter. No kin. No proof. No past. Every danger that had been named and all the ones they both understood.
Instead she said, “You know why.”
She looked at him for a long moment, and there, in the firelight, the careful distance she had kept around herself began to fray.
Not break. Amelia was made of sterner cloth than that.
But fray enough for him to see what lay beneath.
The fear, longing, and exhaustion, along with the love of Ashcombe, and something else.
“I don’t know what I can promise,” she said.
“Then do not promise.”
“That is unexpectedly reasonable.”
“I dislike it already.”
She smiled then. Not the public smile she had worn earlier for Col and Alyson. Not the quick little deflection she gave Walter when he grew sour over the ledgers. This one was small and private, her eyes glistening.
Thomas felt it like a hand laid over his heart.
“I can’t go back to pretending,” she said.
The words were so quiet the fire nearly took them, but Thomas heard. The whole hall might as well have vanished.
“No,” he said. “Nor can I.”
He didn’t cross the space between them, or take her hand. Nor did he kiss her, though the wanting of it rose in him so strongly he had to look at the fire to keep from moving.
They sat across from one another while the last of harvest-home settled around them, while the mead warmed their blood, the embers glowed red, and the household eased itself toward sleep.
Yet something had changed between them.
Amelia lifted her cup after a moment. “This mead is dangerous.”
Thomas picked up his own cup. “Everything is dangerous according to you. Water. Roofs. Geese.”
“Hob’s French.”
“Hob’s French is banned in three counties.”
“Only three?”
“Four, after tonight.”
From the far table, Hob said, “I heard that.”
Huck raised his cup without looking over. “His French imperils the soul.”
“My soul is sturdy,” Hob muttered.
“Your accent is not,” Amelia said.
Hob considered this, then nodded once. “True.”
The laugh that moved through the remaining men was quiet but real.
Amelia looked at Thomas, and this time she did not look away. Neither did he.
Later, when the hall had emptied nearly to silence, Amelia went to the loft.