Wat appeared behind his sister, carrying a half-full jug with fierce dignity.
“Hob says if Lord Thomas falls over, he’s too heavy and no one will be able to drag him back to the castle.”
“That is also a compelling argument,” Amelia said.
She took the cup and crossed the stubble toward Thomas, trying not to notice the way several heads turned as she went. The whispers were still there. She felt them skim over her veil, her red hair escaping it, her strange speech, and the way she looked at their lord.
But there was less sharpness in them today. Work had a way of sanding gossip into something more practical. A woman might be odd, but if she remembered the bread, kept the children from bleeding, and prevented three arguments over water, perhaps odd could be tolerated until after the harvest.
Thomas lowered the scythe when she approached, his chest rising and falling beneath the sweat-darkened tunic. Up close, he smelled of sun, cut grain, iron, and the clean salt of hard work. A smear of dirt lay across one cheekbone. His pale eyes narrowed against the light.
“You should not be this near the blades.”
“And yet here I am, risking life and limb in the name of hydration.”
He frowned at the cup. “What?”
“Drink.”
“I am not thirsty.”
“Of course not. Men never are. They simply turn gray and fall down out of pride.”
The corner of his mouth shifted. “I have not turned gray.”
“No, but Alyson said you wouldn’t stop if she told you to, and Hob says no one wants to drag you if you fall over.”
“Hob said that?”
“With affection, I’m sure.”
Thomas looked over her shoulder.
Hob, several yards away, became intensely interested in sharpening his blade.
Thomas took the cup. Amelia felt an absurd pulse of triumph, as if she had negotiated peace between nations instead of convincing a sweaty man to drink. He drained it in three swallows and handed it back.
“More,” she said.
His brows rose.
“That wasn’t a suggestion.”
A slow, dangerous amusement moved through his eyes. “Are you ordering me, Mistress Quinn?”
Her brain provided several unhelpful responses at once, most of them involving the wordpleasein tones she didn’t need to be imagining in a field full of armed peasants.
She lifted her chin. “Yes.”
Hob made a strangled sound.
Thomas held out the cup.
She poured more from Wat’s jug, trying very hard not to smile. Thomas drank that too, his throat moving, and really there was no reason for that to be interesting. None whatsoever. Men had throats. It was a known anatomical feature.
The girl with the cheese basket giggled behind her hand.
Amelia turned. “Don’t you have somewhere to be?”