The clerk turned it carefully. “It bears a parish mark. Saint Alphege’s, mayhap. I cannot swear to its truth without inquiry.”
“Yet it stands until broken,” Belmaine said.
Walter’s jaw tightened.
That meant yes.
Thomas looked at the parchment and saw the trap close, not with iron, but with ink, wax, witnesses, and the smug patience of men who had never needed to swing a blade when parchment would do.
A wife belonged to her husband. A lord could shelter a woman from cruelty for a time. He might insist on proof, demand witnesses, appeal to priest or court if kin stood ready to argue. But Amelia had no kin here. No father. No brother. No uncle with a sword, a temper, and the good manners to use both. No parish that would speak for her. No birth, no past, no clean thread tying her to any lawful place.
Only him. And Belmaine had made certain Thomas’s protection looked like lust, defiance, and disorder before the crown’s own clerk.
Thomas heard Wexford’s dying whisper as clearly as if the man stood in the yard with blood on his mouth.
If Ashcombe looks weak, they’ll take her apart stone by stone.
Belmaine hadn’t brought enough men to beat Thomas in his own bailey, which meant he’d come with something worse.
The sort of weapons a man couldn’t knock into the mud without making himself look guilty before God, king, and every gossip between Ashcombe and London.
Amelia came to his side then, and the yard seemed to shift around her. She didn’t hide behind him, but stood beside him in her brown wool gown, wimple slightly crooked, one red curl loose against her cheek, her hands shaking.
“I’ve never seen that man before today,” she said.
Crale pressed a hand to his chest. “Your fear wounds me, wife.”
“Call me that again and I’ll make you regret it.”
Several of Thomas’s men made soft, approving noises. Hob murmured, “That’s our lass.”
Belmaine’s eyes flicked sharply to him.
“Ashcombe, I understand your reluctance. The lady has been under your roof. You are fond of her. But if you deny a husband his wife in the presence of a royal clerk, after lawful attestation has been shown, the matter becomes larger than household charity.”
Larger.There it was. The blade beneath the silk. Forfeiture. Disorder. Scandal. A suspect baron keeping another man’s wife while the king’s agents had already measured Ashcombe with cold eyes.
Thomas’s hand tightened around the parchment until the edge bit into his palm.
Amelia looked at him, not only with fear, but with trust. She expected him to be the man everyone believed he was. The man who stood between danger and those under his protection. The man who had told her she was safe with him. The man he wanted, saints help him, to be.
He wanted to draw his sword. Every old, brutal instinct in him demanded it. Step forward. Take Crale’s lying tongue. Put Belmaine in the mud. Let the law sort itself out around the bodies.
Hob would follow. So would half the yard. And Ashcombe would bleed for it. Again.
Thomas looked at the clerk. “You’ll write that Mistress Amelia goes under protest.”
The clerk nodded quickly. “Aye, my lord.”
“You’ll write that I deny Crale’s claim until it is proved before proper authority.”
“Aye.”
“You’ll write that if any harm comes to her beneath Sir Roger’s roof, I’ll hold him answerable before crown, Church, and every man in England with ears enough to hear me.”
Belmaine’s mouth tightened. “There is no need for threats.”
“That wasn’t a threat.”