Walter blinked.
Hob looked delighted. “Saved you a speech.”
Walter ignored him. “He is dangerous.”
“Aye.”
“And he has noticed Mistress Quinn.”
Thomas’s jaw tightened.
Walter saw it. The old man saw more than Thomas liked and approved of less than half.
“That,” Walter said carefully, “may prove dangerous as well.”
Hob’s good humor faded. “He forgets himself.”
Thomas looked at him.
Hob spat into the dust. “Men who were not at Blackmere often do.”
Silence followed. Not long, but long enough for the words to settle in the yard like ash. Walter looked away first, his mouth pressed thin. He had not been at Blackmere, but he had seen enough of what came home from it.
Hob had been there. He remembered the rain, the mud, the breach, the screams, and the awful press of men and horses and iron. Hob remembered dragging Thomas from a heap of bodies while Thomas fought him because there were still men beyond the line and a dead man had no business leaving his soldiers.
The ones who had been there remembered. The ones who had not spoke boldly.
Thomas turned toward the hall. Amelia stood in the shadow just inside the doorway.
He did not know how long she had been there. Long enough, by the look on her face.
She was not frightened. Not exactly. Angry, rather, with her green eyes fixed on the gate where Belmaine had vanished and her mouth gone flat in a way Thomas was coming to recognize. Itmeant she had tucked away every soft thing and brought out the steel she pretended not to own.
Then she looked at Thomas. She had hated how Belmaine looked at her. That was plain enough. But more than that, Thomas realized with an odd twist beneath his ribs, she had hated how Belmaine made him stand there and endure. She had hated seeing him cornered.
No one, not since he had ridden home from Evesham, had looked angry on his behalf.
He didn’t know what to do with it. So, naturally, he scowled.
Amelia came down the steps, the tally still in her hand. “He seems awful.”
“Aye.”
Amelia’s gaze flicked to him. “He said he came to help?”
“That is how one knows to shut the gate.”
Hob laughed.
Walter did not, but Thomas suspected it was a near thing.
Amelia stopped beside him, not touching, though he felt the nearness of her as if she had laid a hand on his arm. She looked toward the road again.
“He looked at you like your home was already his.”
Thomas said nothing.
“And he looked at me like...” She stopped.