“Oh,” she whispered.
A long pause followed.
“Oh no.”
Behind him, Perkin made a noise like a dying goose.
“She come out of the air, my lord.”
Thomas didn’t look away from the woman.
“What?”
“Out of nothing,” Perkin insisted. “There was a light and a clap like thunder and then she were just there.”
The youngest boy crossed himself.
“She’s a faery.”
The woman stared at him. The boy stared back. A horse snorted. For one absurd moment nobody spoke. Then the woman pointed.
“Did he just say faery?”
Perkin crossed himself again.
Thomas closed his eyes briefly as his head started aching again.
Exactly what the morning required.
“Hold your tongue, Perkin.”
“But my lord?—”
“Hold it.”
The boy snapped his mouth shut.
When Thomas looked back at the woman, he found her watching him with wide, frightened eyes.
That was the thing that caught him. Not the gown made of liquid silk. Not the strange speech. Not even the absurd shoes.
Fear. Real fear. Not the practiced fluttering of ladies accustomed to being rescued. Not tears summoned for effect. This was bone-deep bewilderment.
Against his better judgment, something in him softened. Women did not fall from the sky. He knew that.
Yet the crushed straw beneath her suggested a hard landing, and there was no door save the one behind him, no place for her to hide, no explanation that satisfied either reason or experience.
The sensible part of him wanted answers while the tired part wanted his horse.
The part that still remembered how frightened people looked after a battle wanted a blanket, a chair, and something warm to drink.
Thomas disliked that third part.
“Get up,” he said.
The words came out gruffer than intended.
She didn’t move. Instead she scrambled backward until her shoulders struck the stall boards, those ridiculous shoes skidding uselessly in the straw.