The messenger laughed and that seemed to give everyone permission to be ridiculous.
The chest was carried into the hall with the reverence usually reserved for relics and pies. Walter walked beside it muttering about counts, seals, storage, and armed watch. Hob assigned two men to guard it and then stood too close himself, as if the chest might grow legs and stroll off to Belmaine’s house. Huck suggested a blessing and a feast in the same sentence, which proved again that he understood efficient ministry.
Edith took command. Within moments, the household moved like a kicked anthill.
Bread appeared. Cheese. Apples. Onions. Ale. The last of the good smoked ham Edith had claimed did not exist. Someone found the dried cherries. Someone else found a second jug of mead Huck insisted had been waiting for an occasion of “appropriate spiritual magnitude.” The rushes were changed. Candles lit. Tables dragged into place.
Ashcombe did not prepare a feast. Ashcombe exploded into one. By late afternoon, the hall glowed.
Smoke curled beneath the rafters. Dogs skulked hopefully under the tables. Someone struck up a song, then another. The hall filled with voices, laughter, cups striking wood, childrendarting where they’d been told not to dart, and the rich, bodily relief of people who had lived long enough to celebrate.
Amelia sat beside Thomas at the high table. Beside her betrothed. The thought fluttered every time she touched it.
Thomas Ashcombe, who had looked like a wall with a sword the first day she met him, now sat with one hand resting openly over hers on the bench between them. He still looked formidable. The blue tunic did nothing to soften the width of his shoulders, the scar at his jaw, or the pale watchfulness of his eyes. But there was something new in him, a looseness, a warmth that surfaced whenever Alyson climbed halfway over Hob to demand more honeyed apples or Walter accidentally complimented Amelia and looked personally betrayed by his own tongue.
“You look happy,” Amelia said softly.
Thomas looked down at their joined hands. “I am.”
He leaned close enough that the warmth of him brushed her shoulder. “I find myself thinking about how a man survives wanting his betrothed during a feast.”
Heat rushed up Amelia’s neck.
Hob, unfortunately seated near enough to hear with the ears of a battlefield scout and the morals of a raccoon, grinned into his cup.
Amelia pointed at him. “No.”
“I said nothing.”
“You thought loudly.”
Walter chose that moment to approach with a folded parchment.
“No,” Amelia said.
Walter stopped. “You don’t know what this is.”
“It’s parchment. During a celebration. Therefore no.”
“It concerns the children.”
Walter cleared his throat, suddenly less pompous and more nervous than Amelia had ever seen him.
“Lord Ashcombe instructed me to prepare the petition properly. Friar Huck has agreed to witness. Dame Margaret as well, if needed, as she has sufficient standing and an alarming memory for wording.”
Dame Margaret, seated farther down the table with Joan and Edith, lifted her cup in acknowledgment.
Walter continued, eyes on the parchment because feelings in the wild made him twitch.
“Wat and Alyson have no surviving kin known to Ashcombe. Lord Ashcombe has fed, housed, and kept them since Blackmere. It would be proper to formalize their place in the household.”
Alyson, who had been trying to pry a dried cherry from a sticky lump of honey with one finger, looked up. Wat froze.
Thomas looked at Amelia.
“I should have asked before,” he said.
“What?”