The sight of Belmaine’s handprint on her cheek had carved itself into him. Even now, with her beneath his roof, with Crale’s lie broken and Pickering’s scrutiny turned toward Belmaine’s house, Thomas found himself watching the doors, listening for riders.
Counting the distance between Amelia and every man who entered the hall.
She noticed. Then again, Amelia noticed everything except the way the whole of Ashcombe had quietly remade itself around her. Or mayhap she noticed that too and pretended not to because it frightened her more than Belmaine had.
On the first day after the reckoning, she had slept until noon. On the second, she had tried to return to the accounts, only for Walter to clear his throat and say, with all the warmth of wet stone, that the figures could wait until her “wits were less bruised.”
Amelia had stared at him.
Walter had stared back.
Hob had murmured that miracles were becoming common as pigeons, and Walter had thrown a quill at him.
Now, on the third morning, Thomas had almost begun to believe they might be granted a little time.
A foolish belief.
The horn sounded from the gate.
Every voice in the hall stopped. Amelia’s cup paused halfway to her mouth. Thomas was on his feet before the echo died. Hob reached for his axe. Edith set down the porridge ladle. Walter gathered the nearest rolls to his chest. Alyson slid off the bench and pressed herself against Amelia’s side, while Wat stepped in front of both of them with a knife in one hand and a face fierce enough to shame grown men.
Thomas looked at him. “Put that down.”
“It’s not sharp.”
“That does not improve matters.”
Wat lowered it, but only a little.
Hob’s mouth twitched. “He has spirit.”
Thomas crossed the hall and stepped out into the yard.
The morning was cold and colorless, mist clinging low near the outer wall, silvering the churned mud and beading on thehorses’ manes. Four riders waited at the gate. Not Belmaine’s colors or Pickering’s sober clerks.
The lead man wore a blue cloak darkened at the hem with travel, and the badge pinned near his shoulder bore the small crowned leopard Thomas had seen once before on the packet Sir Aymon had carried against his heart.
Royal household, of the Queen’s service.
Behind him, Walter made a sound that was half relief, half terror. “My lord.”
“I see.”
“Do you?”
“Aye.”
“Then why do you look as if you might hit someone?”
“I find it useful to be prepared.”
The rider dismounted when the gate opened. He was older than Thomas first thought, his beard cut close, dark hair threaded with gray beneath a travel cap. He moved like a man accustomed to carrying messages into uncertain places and leaving with his skin intact by not giving anyone time to decide otherwise.
“Lord Ashcombe?” he called.
Thomas stepped forward. “Aye.”
The man bowed. Not deep, but properly. “From Lady Eleanor’s household, with a message and gift by command of the queen.”