“And if you married into his family, the crown would leave you alone?”
“Mayhap.”
“But the strings would be nooses.”
Thomas looked at her.
A small smile touched her mouth without warmth. “I pay attention.”
“Aye,” he said. “You do.”
For a moment, he thought she understood him.
Saints help him, that was worse.
“I hate that he can do that,” she said.
“What?”
“Stand there smiling and make you smaller.”
No one said such things to him. No one looked at him and saw the shrinking. Not his height, not his strength, not the sword at his side. The other thing. The way Belmaine had brought court, crown, forfeiture, and Evesham into the yard and made Thomas feel once more like a man standing over men he could not save.
“He did not make me smaller,” Thomas said.
It was a poor lie.
Amelia’s eyes softened, which was worse than if she had argued.
“All right,” she said.
That was all.
Not pity. Not denial. Justall right, as if she would let him keep the lie because she knew what it cost him.
Thomas looked away first.
Across the yard, one of the younger men carrying a sack glanced over, met Thomas’s eyes, and immediately found somewhere else to be. Another man near the stable remembered, quite suddenly, that a cartwheel required urgentattention. Walter, at the far side of the yard, became deeply interested in a chicken.
Amelia watched and lifted one brow.
“For what it’s worth,” she said, “everyone seems at least a little afraid of you.”
“They are not.”
Hob, who had absolutely no reason to be close enough to hear that, made a choking sound.
Thomas turned.
Hob looked at the wall. “Dust from the mortar.”
Amelia pressed her lips together.
Thomas scowled.
The road lay empty now, dust settling behind Belmaine’s party.
“Thomas?”