Chapter 39 #3
Walter cleared his throat, suddenly less pompous and more nervous than Amelia had ever seen him.
“Lord Ashcombe instructed me to prepare the petition properly. Friar Huck has agreed to witness. Dame Margaret as well, if needed, as she has sufficient standing and an alarming memory for wording.”
Dame Margaret, seated farther down the table with Joan and Edith, lifted her cup in acknowledgment.
Walter continued, eyes on the parchment because feelings in the wild made him twitch.
“Wat and Alyson have no surviving kin known to Ashcombe. Lord Ashcombe has fed, housed, and kept them since Blackmere. It would be proper to formalize their place in the household.”
Alyson, who had been trying to pry a dried cherry from a sticky lump of honey with one finger, looked up. Wat froze.
Thomas looked at Amelia.
“I should have asked before,” he said.
“What?”
“Whether you wished it.”
Amelia’s eyes burned. “Whether I wished what?”
Thomas turned toward the children. His face shifted into that stern gentleness that had first undone her weeks ago.
“If they wish,” he said, “Wat and Alyson will be ours. In name, care, and keeping.”
The hall seemed to hush around them.
Alyson’s cherry fell into her lap.
Wat stared at Thomas as if he had begun speaking in tongues. “Ours?”
Amelia was so happy she found herself at a loss for words
Thomas’s hand remained steady over hers. “Aye.”
Wat’s face went white beneath the freckles across his nose. “We’d be Ashcombes?”
“If you wish.”
Alyson slid from the bench, marched to stand before Thomas, and planted both hands on her hips in a perfect imitation of Edith.
“Would I have to stop swearing?”
Edith made a strangled sound.
Thomas considered the question with grave courtesy. “Not entirely.”
“Thomas,” Amelia whispered.
He glanced at her. “I’m negotiating.”
Alyson narrowed her eyes. “How much?”
“Less in chapel. More near Hob.”
Hob lifted his cup. “Reasonable.”
Edith threw a crust at him.
Wat stood slowly. “And me?”
Thomas’s gaze softened. “You too.”
Wat swallowed. He looked at Amelia then, panic and hope tangled so tightly in his face that she nearly cried.
“You would want us?” he asked.
Amelia opened her arms.
Both children crashed into her so hard she nearly slid off the bench. Thomas caught all three of them, because apparently that was his role in her life now, catching whatever love hurled at him.
Alyson sobbed while Wat cried silently, which was worse.
Amelia cried all over both of them.
Thomas looked suspiciously damp-eyed himself and pretended he was merely watching the fire.
Edith sniffed from across the table. “About time.”
Walter laid the parchment down with great care, blinking too often. “It will need signatures. And proper witnesses.”
“Later,” Thomas said.
Walter opened his mouth.
Amelia looked at him through her tears. “Walter.”
He closed it. “Later.”
Huck stood and lifted his cup. “To Lord Ashcombe and his lady.”
The hall answered with a roar.
“To Wat and Alyson Ashcombe,” Hob shouted.
Another roar, louder than the first.
Alyson lifted her tear-streaked face. “Do I get more cherries now?”
Thomas laughed. Actually laughed.
The sound was so rare that three men looked toward the roof as if expecting angels.
“Yes,” he said. “You get more cherries.”
Alyson turned to Wat with deep satisfaction. “Being adopted is wonderful.”
Wat wiped his face and nodded solemnly. “Aye.”
The feast went on until the candles burned low and the children drooped. Songs rose and fell. Huck’s mead made Hob philosophical, which everyone agreed was worse than when it made him loud.
Ashcombe was pardoned.
The words moved through the hall again and again, sometimes spoken aloud, sometimes only felt in the way shoulders loosened, cups lifted, and laughter came easier.
At some point, Thomas led Amelia away from the noise and into the open doorway of the hall.
The evening had turned clear. Stars shone above Ashcombe, sharp and cold, scattered over the dark like spilled salt. The yard smelled of damp earth, horses, woodsmoke, and the coming of winter. The tower stood black against the sky, silent now, its windows dark.
Amelia leaned into Thomas’s side. He wrapped his cloak around both of them. For once, no one shouted about propriety.
“You’re quiet,” he said.
“I’m happy. And sad.”
His arm tightened. “Aye.”
“And terrified.”
“That too?”
“Marriage, motherhood, medieval plumbing, possible future royal politics, winter, Walter’s paperwork. There’s a lot happening.”
“I’ll stand with you.”
She looked up at him.
He did not say he would fix it all or that there would be no fear. He did not offer a pretty lie and call it comfort.
“I know,” she said.
Amelia pressed one hand to her chest and thought of her mother in a ruined tower seven centuries away, clutching a satin purse and loving a daughter she could no longer reach.
“I hope she knows,” Amelia whispered.
Thomas’s voice was low. “What?”
“That I was loved here too.”
He turned her in his arms.
“She will.”
Amelia wanted to ask how he knew. Wanted to press the fragile place until certainty came out. But some things could not be proved. They could only be held.
So she nodded.
Behind them, Alyson’s sleepy voice rose from inside the hall. “Where’s Amelia?”
“Lady Amelia,” Walter corrected.
Alyson groaned. “That’s too many syllables.”
Thomas’s mouth curved against Amelia’s hair.
Wat said, “She’s with Thomas.”
“Lord Ashcombe,” Walter corrected again.
Hob laughed. “Give up, old man. You’ll not reorder the house tonight.”
“I can try,” Walter said.
“You always do.”
Amelia smiled through sudden tears.
Thomas bent and kissed her, slow and soft, with the hall glowing behind them and the cold stars above. When he lifted his head, Amelia rested her palm against his chest, over the steady beat of his heart.
“I love you,” she said.
His breath caught, as if the words still had the power to surprise him.
“I love you,” he answered.
Together, they went back into the hall, where their children waited, where friends argued and laughed beneath smoke-blackened rafters, and where the life Amelia had chosen opened before her, not safe, not simple, but hers.
And when the door closed behind them, Ashcombe held.