Huck sat near them, round and content, examining the bottom of his cup with the grave interest of a scholar.
Amelia had moved to the fire. She sat on the settle beside it, not in shadow exactly, but just out of the brightest light. Her cup rested on the small stool near her knee, half-full. She had loosened the pin beneath her chin, and her veil had slipped back enough that more of her hair showed, red curls escaping alongher temple and nape. The fire turned them bright at the edges. Her face had gone thoughtful.
Thomas should have gone to bed. He had a wall to inspect at dawn, a tenant dispute unresolved, Belmaine’s silence scratching at the back of his mind, and enough mead in his blood to make wisdom less likely than usual.
So what did he do? Like a dolt, he crossed the hall and sat across from her.
Amelia looked up as if she’d known he was coming.
That pleased him more than it should have.
For a moment neither spoke. The fire cracked between them, settling around a split log. Sparks lifted and vanished into the dark beams overhead. Somewhere behind him Hob made a point with one fist against the table. Someone laughed into a cup. Outside, the wind pressed cold fingers against the shutters.
Thomas rested his forearms on his knees.
“You’re cold,” he said.
It was not the beginning he had intended.
He had intended something better. Mayhap even clever, though that had been unlikely from the start.
Amelia’s eyes flickered in the candlelight. “Have I?”
“Aye.”
“I’m trying to be sensible.”
“I did not accuse you of sense.”
That almost drew a smile. Almost.
Her fingers tightened around the edge of her sleeve. “Thomas.”
His name, coming from her struck harder than it should have. She had avoided it for days, as if the word itself might betray her.
“Say it again,” he said before sense could stop him.
He should have taken it back.
“Thomas,” she said, softer this time.
He looked at the fire because if he looked at her too long, he would forget the hall, the sleeping children, the men across the room, Belmaine’s shadow, the crown’s suspicion, every wall between them, and all the reasons he had spent weeks building those walls stone by stone.
“Why?” he asked.
He heard the answer she didn’t say. Belmaine. Gossip. Walter. No kin. No proof. No past. Every danger that had been named and all the ones they both understood.
Instead she said, “You know why.”
She looked at him for a long moment, and there, in the firelight, the careful distance she had kept around herself began to fray. Not break. Amelia was made of sterner cloth than that. But fray enough for him to see what lay beneath. The fear, longing, and exhaustion, along with the love of Ashcombe, and something else.
“I don’t know what I can promise,” she said.
“Then do not promise.”
“That is unexpectedly reasonable.”
“I dislike it already.”