Hob’s smile was grim. “He’s much clearer when he threatens.”
The clerk’s quill shook as he wrote on the wax tablet he had snatched from his pouch. Walter stood nearby, pale and furious.
Thomas turned back to Amelia. “I’ll come for you.”
For a heartbeat, the yard disappeared. There was only her face, white beneath the crooked wimple, and those green eyes holding his with a grief so clean it made him feel unmade.
“You’re letting them take me.”
“I’ll bring you back.”
“Those are completely different things.”
He couldn’t breathe around the truth of it.
Crale stepped toward her, gaining confidence now that the ground had shifted. “Come, wife.”
Thomas’s sword came clear of the scabbard with a sound that silenced the yard as Crale froze.
“No,” Thomas said.
Belmaine’s hand twitched. “Ashcombe.”
Thomas didn’t look away from Crale. “You will not touch her.”
Belmaine smiled thinly. “A husband may assist his wife to mount.”
“Hob,” Thomas said.
Hob moved at once and took the reins of the pale grey palfrey one of Belmaine’s men had brought forward. A side-saddle had been arranged in an approximation of care. The sight made Thomas’s stomach turn. The parchment. The witnesses. Theclerk. The horse. Even the hour, late enough that pursuit would look like rage and not law. All planned.
“Mistress,” Hob said, holding the horse steady.
Edith came down the steps with Amelia’s cloak. It was plain wool, dyed a brown that had seen better years, but Edith had brushed it clean that morning and mended the frayed edge with tiny neat stitches.
She didn’t hand the cloak to Crale or Belmaine, but walked to Amelia and settled it around her shoulders herself, tying the cord at her throat with hands that shook only once.
“You keep your wits,” Edith said.
Amelia swallowed. “I seem to have misplaced them.”
“Nay. They’re sharp enough to cut. Use them.”
“Alyson,” Wat hissed.
The little girl flew across the yard and threw herself against Amelia’s skirts, wrapping both arms tight around her. Her face crumpled into the wool.
“Don’t go,” she sobbed.
Amelia’s hand went to the child’s head. She closed her eyes as a single tear ran down her cheek.
Thomas looked away because he couldn’t look and remain standing.
Wat came too, slower, his face rigid with the effort to be a big brother. He stood before Amelia with fists clenched.
“I can stick him with my knife.”
A strangled sound came from the clerk.