If she had already begun the retreat, perhaps it cost him nothing to let it finish. The thought lasted the space of a heartbeat. Thomas stepped on it hard.
“No,” he said.
Belmaine blinked. Just once. “I beg your pardon?”
“No.”
The word was not diplomatic or careful. Not the answer Walter would have crafted with cautious phrases, delays, and doors left cracked for future advantage.
It was a sword stroke.
Belmaine’s eyes narrowed. “Perhaps you misunderstand me.”
“I understand.”
“Then you cannot have thought it through.”
“I have.”
“You refuse Fernhill?”
“I refuse the condition.”
Belmaine smiled slightly. “Conditions are the bones of bargains.”
“And some bargains rot from the bones outward.”
Hob made a low approving sound. Belmaine ignored him. His gaze fixed on Thomas, assessing, recalculating. “A woman of unknown birth is not worth the forfeiture of Ashcombe.”
Thomas’s temper stirred, slow and black.
“No.”
Belmaine looked almost relieved.
Thomas continued. “No woman beneath my roof is coin for you to weigh.”
The relief vanished.
For one moment Belmaine’s face showed itself. Not the polished neighbor. Not the friend with courtly connections. Not the father offering a daughter with good grazing attached. Something colder. Hungrier. A man who had stretched out a hand and found the fruit still out of reach.
Then the smile returned. It was not warm nor was it meant to be.
“You are a stubborn man.”
“Aye.”
“Stubborn men often mistake pride for honor.”
“Men with offers often mistake hunger for friendship.”
Belmaine’s jaw tightened. “I had hoped reason would serve.”
“You hoped fear would.”
Belmaine’s eyes went flat.
The yard had grown quiet. Too quiet. Thomas did not turn, but he knew folk had paused in their work. A boy near the stable. One of Edith’s girls by the kitchen door. Perhaps Walter at the hall entrance, drawn by the scent of disaster as surely as hounds by cooking meat.