He looked at Thomas. “Want me to go?”
“No,” Amelia said.
Both men turned to her. She looked at Hob, and the fear in her face was threaded now with something gentler. Trust, mayhap. Or gratitude. “Please stay.”
Hob’s brows lifted. Then his face settled into stone, the way it did when arrows were flying and men were screaming and the world had narrowed to orders that meant life or death.
“Aye,” he said. “I’ll stay.”
Thomas shut the door. Not fully. Enough for privacy, not enough for scandal, though if the household had not already learned that scandal kept poor hours at Ashcombe, it was far too late to educate them now.
Amelia stood near the table but did not touch the sword. The sapphire caught the light from the narrow window and held it deep, blue, and beautiful.
“This is not the first time you’ve seen it,” Thomas said.
Amelia closed her eyes. “No,” she whispered.
“Where?”
She opened her eyes and looked at him with a grief so old it seemed impossible that he had known her only months.
“I can’t tell you yet.”
The answer was a door. This time, he did not kick it open. He set his hands flat on the table, one on either side of the sword, and leaned toward her.
“Can’t or won’t?”
Her mouth trembled. “Both.”
Hob sucked in a breath through his teeth.
Thomas kept his voice low. “You asked me to ask.”
“I know.”
“So I’m asking.”
“I know.”
“And still you won’t answer.”
Her eyes flashed then, bright with hurt. “Do you think I like this? Do you think I want there to be a whole piece of myself I can’t give you because every word sounds mad even inside my own head?”
“No.”
“Because I don’t. I hate secrets. I hate not being able to explain. I hate that the one thing I’ve been afraid of and wanting has just arrived in your solar wrapped in royal gratitude, and everyone is smiling because Ashcombe is saved, and I am happy, Thomas. I am. For you. For us. For all of them.”
Her voice broke.
“And I feel like a horrible person because part of me wants to run screaming into a pantry and never come out.”
Hob looked toward the door. “Edith would drag you out.”
A laugh escaped Amelia, cracked and small.
Thomas looked at Hob.
“What?” Hob said. “She would.”