She was silent for several strides. The road dipped, and Galahad picked his way around a place where a shallow stream had crossed the track.
“Thomas.”
He looked down. Her face was tipped up toward him, pale beneath rain and weariness, the bruise a shadow against her skin. Her green eyes clear.
“You don’t get to decide that saving me only counts if you did it before you made a mistake.”
His throat closed.
She turned forward again, as if she had merely commented on the weather.
He wanted to say something worthy of her. What came out was, “I’ll do better.”
It sounded too small, mayhap it was.
But Amelia’s hand moved over his wrist, cold fingers pressing once.
“Good,” she said. “Because I’m not getting kidnapped again.”
Behind them, Friar Huck sneezed so loudly one of the clerks nearly dropped his tablet.
Hob called, “God bless you, friar, though if you shake rain over me again, I’ll feed your horse to the geese.”
“My horse has committed no sin,” Huck said.
“Give him time.”
Ashcombe’s gates appeared through the rain like a thing remembered from a dream. The old stones rose dark and wet above the road, patched in places where mortar had crumbled and Thomas had forced too few men to do too much work. Smoke lifted from the kitchen roof and was beaten low by the weather. Men stood along the wall with cloaks over their heads and bows in their hands. As the party approached, the gate opened.
The whole yard was waiting. Not in order. Ashcombe had never done order well unless Amelia or Edith bullied it into submission.
People crowded beneath the stable eaves, around the well, under the kitchen overhang, and anywhere else the rain struck less hard. Edith stood at the front with both hands planted on her hips, her apron soaked, her face worried. Wat and Alyson stood pressed to her sides, each clutching her skirts. Mald held a lantern. Perkin had a sprig of rowan tucked into his cap, because apparently fear and habit traveled together. The reeve stood near Walter’s old table, pulled out under a leather awning as if the entire bailey had become a court and the rain had been invited to give testimony.
When Galahad passed beneath the gate, Alyson broke free.
“Amelia!”
Wat followed with a word Edith would have skinned Hob for teaching him if she hadn’t been too busy running after both children.
Thomas dismounted first and lifted Amelia down. He meant to set her on her feet and let go.
His hands refused. For one heartbeat he simply held her in the rain while Ashcombe watched.
Then Alyson hit Amelia’s skirts like a small, damp arrow and wrapped both arms around her waist. Wat stopped short, his chin wobbling with the effort not to do the same. Amelia reached out with one arm and dragged to her.
“I’m fine,” she said into their wet hair.
“No, you’re not,” Alyson wailed.
“I’m mostly fine.”
“You look awful,” Wat said.
Amelia laughed, the sound catching halfway. “Thank you, sweetheart. That’s exactly the kind of thing a woman loves to hear after an abduction.”
Wat looked alarmed. “I mean in a brave way.”
Hob swung down from his horse. “That’s not better, lad.”