“She is two score. Of good health, good temperament, and, I say it as her father, pleasing enough to the eye. Her mother was a Wakefield, as you know. Loyal blood. No shadow on either side.”
“No shadow,” Thomas said.
Belmaine pretended not to hear the dryness.
“Her dower would include the Fernhill property.” He gestured beyond the walls, toward the east. “You know it. Good grazing. Good water. The pasture alone would strengthen your lower holdings, and the spring there does not fail even in a dry summer. I would also settle ten marks in coin upon the marriage, with two more at the birth of a son.”
Hob’s expression did not change.
Thomas’s did not either. Inside him, every number struck like a nail being driven into wood.
Fernhill. Good grazing. Good water. Land that touched Ashcombe’s lower field and would make the manor less vulnerable in a hard year. Ten marks in coin. Two more for ason. Alliance with a royalist neighbor whose loyalty to the crown was known, polished, and convenient. A daughter from a family with no stain of Montfort’s cause.
Belmaine was not merely offering a marriage, he was offering mortar for every crack in Ashcombe’s wall.
“My friends at court remain well placed,” Belmaine continued. “The king has a long memory, but not an endless one. A marriage well made is a bond the crown respects. A suspect house allied to a loyal one stops being suspect overnight, or near enough to make no matter. The escheator, should he come, would see order, alliance, a future properly secured.”
Thomas heard Walter’s voice in his mind.
A great marriage to a house above suspicion.
For one dark instant, Thomas wondered whether Walter had spoken to Belmaine.
No. Walter would not. He was many things, some of them aggravating enough to make saints swear, but he was loyal to Ashcombe down to the marrow.
He simply understood the same cold arithmetic Belmaine did.
“You would sleep easier,” Belmaine said softly. “We both know it.”
Thomas looked past him. The hall door stood open. Warmth moved in the shadows beyond it. Someone inside laughed, a child’s bright burst of sound. Alyson, most likely. Wat’s voice followed, indignant. Edith snapped something from the kitchen passage. Ashcombe living its threadbare little life, unaware the price of saving it had arrived wearing fur-lined gloves.
Belmaine stepped closer. “There is, of course, one small thing.”
“Of course.”
Belmaine’s smile did not move, though the warmth finally left his eyes. “The woman.”
Thomas went still. Hob did too.
“The red-haired one,” Belmaine said. “Your kinswoman, as I believe you called her.”
The wordkinswomanlanded like a coin on stone. Flat. Deliberate. A man testing whether the metal rang true.
Belmaine took silence for permission, because men like him took everything for permission until a blade persuaded them otherwise.
“I will speak plainly,” he said, “as a friend.”
“You are wearing that word thin.”
“Ashcombe.” Belmaine’s voice lowered, patient, reasonable, a father explaining rain to a child. “There are already questions.”
“There are always questions.”
“Not like these. A woman who appeared from nowhere, no kin, no husband any man has seen, no father or brother to vouch for her, no name anyone can prove. She keeps your rolls. Sits near your table. Rides with you to market.”
Thomas did not move. So Belmaine had heard of that.
“A widowed kinswoman, I was told,” Belmaine continued. “Or perhaps a wife fled from some brute, depending on which tongue is wagging. The tales shift. That is the trouble with false tales. Folk enjoy improving upon them.”