“Nay.”
“Because it sounded like relief.”
“It wasn’t.”
“Fine. Very stern. Very lordly.”
“You’re shivering.”
“I’m sitting barefoot on a dirty stone floor.”
He frowned. “You should’ve worn your shoes.”
“I was trying to sneak.”
For a moment he only looked at her. Then, to her astonishment, he huffed something close to a laugh and rose.
“Come,” he said. “Before Edith wakes and skins us both.”
Amelia blinked up at him. “Edith would skin you?”
“She’d start with you. I’d be next for letting you wander in the rain at night.”
He held out his hand.
She looked at it.
Large. Scarred. Callused. A soldier’s hand. A lord’s hand. A man’s hand, offered without demand.
She put her fingers in his. His palm closed around hers, warm and rough, and he hauled her to her feet as if she weighed no more than Alyson’s rag doll. She wobbled at once because her feet had gone half numb.
Thomas caught her by the elbow.
“Steady.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re swaying.”
He released her as soon as she was steady, but not before she felt the strength of him, the carefulness. It was unsettling, how gentle such a dangerous man could be.
He looked at her feet and muttered something that sounded unflattering.
“I heard that,” she said.
“You were meant to.”
He bent, picked up the tallow stub, then took the lantern in one hand and gestured toward the door with the other.
“Walk close. There are several loose stones in the yard.”
Amelia did as she was told, mostly because her toes had lost the will to argue.
Outside, the night had deepened. The yard lay silvered after the rain and a thin slice of moon shone through a break in the clouds. Somewhere in the stable, a horse stamped. The air smelled of damp earth, straw, smoke, and the coming autumn.
Thomas walked beside her, not touching, but near enough that she could feel his warmth.
She told herself she’d said yes because there was no way home. Amelia was a planner. She liked facts, clear choices, and bullet points.