The girl fled, still giggling.
Thomas handed the cup back. “You have Edith’s manner.”
“I’m choosing to take that as a compliment.”
“It was.”
He seemed as surprised as she was.
Amelia looked away first, because if she didn’t, she might stand there in the middle of the rye field with a cup in her hand and every thought she had ever owned scattered like chaff on the wind.
Besotted.
The old-fashioned word slipped into her head as she walked away, ridiculous and entirely too dramatic for a woman with straw in her hem and sweat trickling down her spine.
She glanced back once, watching as Thomas bent to his work, the scythe flashing through the rye, his shoulders dark against the gold.
Wonderful.
She’d fallen seven centuries through time, and apparently her heart had taken one look at a strong, silent medieval lord with scars, a scowl, and terrible conversational skills and decided,Him.
AMELIA
By noon, the cool morning air had vanished so completely Amelia suspected it had been a rumor invented by dawn to lure people outdoors.
Heat pressed beneath her veil. Dust clung to the damp place at the back of her neck. Her shift itched where sweat gathered under her arms, and her left heel had already developed a blister.
By the time Edith called the first group to eat, the cut rye lay in ordered swaths behind them, neat enough that even Walter paused and looked at the field with something almost like hope.
The meal took place in shifts because the work couldn’t stop all at once. Men and women came in from the line red-faced and shining with sweat, their hands rough around cups of small beer as they found shady spots beneath the trees. Bread went from hand to hand. Cheese was sliced with little knives worn thin from use. Dried apples disappeared into the mouths of children who were not nearly as subtle as they believed.
Wat tried to trade Alyson his crust for her cheese. His sister looked at him with the cold wisdom of six years and made a face. “Nay.”
“You don’t like cheese.”
“I like it today.”
“You liked my crust yesterday.”
“Yesterday is dead.”
Amelia choked on her bread trying not to laugh.
Hob, who had come up behind her without making a sound despite being the size of a minor outbuilding, folded his arms.
“The small one has the right of it. Yesterday is dead. So is Hugh if he does not cease telling me his back pains him more than any man’s back has ached since God made Adam.”
“Hugh does seem committed to the role,” Amelia said.
Hob’s beard twitched. “You’ve a strange way with words, mistress.”
“So I’ve been told.”
“Strange can be useful.”
From Hob, that sounded like a declaration.
Amelia tucked that away carefully, like one of Edith’s dried apples saved for later.