In the late afternoon, with the light going grey, Thomas found himself alone in the small accounts chamber. He hadn’t meant to be there.
The chamber was narrow and cold, with a little window set deep in the wall and a table that had grown familiar beneath Amelia’s hands. Her work lay before him in neat rows. Rolls tied with linen. A wax tablet covered in her quick marks. A tally of salt, lamp oil, nails, peas, winter cloth, and a dozen other small necessities by which Ashcombe survived the cold months.
The room smelled of parchment, wax, old dust, and faintly of lavender. Amelia had been here earlier. He knew it, though he could not have said how. Some trace of her lingered in the space, a brightness even her absence couldn’t quite put out.
He picked up the market tally.
Salt: two sacks paid. One pledged at Martinmas price, to be collected after All Saints if coin permits.
Lamp oil: less dear from widow with sharp eyes. Return if quality holds.
Iron nails: good. Apprentice gawks. Avoid.
Peas: insufficient. Thomas disagrees. Thomas is wrong.
He stared at that last line.
Despite everything, a laugh almost rose but failed halfway. Thomas set the tally down.
Belmaine would not leave the matter. A man like that did not go empty-handed. He had wanted Ashcombe bound bymarriage, softened by gratitude, opened by alliance. Thomas had refused. Now Belmaine would seek another way, and the obvious weapon stood beneath Thomas’s roof, with no kin, no past anyone could verify, and a cover story that had seemed useful only because desperation made men mistake cracked shields for strong ones.
The woman who had appeared from nowhere. The runaway wife. The faery. The leman.
The word sat cold in Thomas’s mind.
He hated it.
He hated that the world could take Amelia’s cleverness, kindness, questions, and clean hands, then twist them into something ugly enough to burn. He hated that Belmaine knew it. He hated that Walter knew it. He hated that Amelia likely knew it too and had begun making herself smaller because of it.
She had worn grey today. The color did not suit her. It had made her look quieter than she was, as if she had chosen the cloth because it wouldn’t draw the eye. Her hair had been covered brutally, not a single curl escaping. Amelia without one curl out of place felt like a room after all the candles had been snuffed.
The window for keeping Ashcombe safe and Amelia under his roof was narrowing, and he had no plan for it. None. The one person he would have asked to help him think was sitting at the far end of the hall not looking at him, and nothing would make him send her away.
Not for Belmaine.
Not for the crown’s suspicion.
Not for Fernhill’s grazing or ten marks or a quiet girl of twenty who made no difficulties.
Not for anything.
He had sent people away before, for their own good, and called it mercy. He had decided what was best for them andnever once asked, because asking gave people room to refuse, and he had never had much patience for refusal when danger rode hard. It had kept men alive. Mayhap.
It had also left him standing alone in a great many cold rooms. He would not do it to Amelia even though it was wise. Perhaps because it was wise.
The door creaked behind him as Thomas turned. Amelia stood in the doorway with a small bundle of tied parchment in her hands. Her grey gown was plain, the sleeves rolled back from her wrists, and her wimple remained perfect. Too perfect. Her freckles stood out against her skin, paler than usual, and there was no ink on her jaw today. No curl at her cheek. No little sign of disorder.
He missed the disorder with a ferocity that shamed him.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Walter said the tallies from the lower field were in here.”
Her voice was courteous.
Thomas leaned back against the table. “They are.”
She looked past him, found the roll she needed, and took one step into the room.
Not two. One. He hated that he noticed.