The last tenant filed out just as the grey light shifted toward afternoon. The hall didn’t empty, not truly, because halls never emptied. Dogs slept near the hearth. Men lingered over cups. Edith ordered two girls to carry the geese to the yard before they fouled the rushes. Hob escorted the miller toward the door, one large hand on the man’s shoulder in a manner that looked friendly to anyone who did not know Hob.
Walter sat very still, staring at the totals.
Amelia ran her finger down the final column. Once. Again. A third time as he watched her shoulders.
They had been high all morning, though she had hidden it well with brisk words, sharp little jokes, and that bright competence of hers that made men forget she was frightened. Now, as her fingertip reached the bottom of the page, her shoulders came down half an inch. Only half. But Thomas saw. She had feared ruin too.
The knowledge moved through him strangely. She could have let Ashcombe be merely the place she had fallen. A hardship. A temporary shelter. A place filled with smoke, fleas, and men who needed reminding to wash. Instead she had fretted over his rents until she had not slept. She had argued with Walter until both of them were hoarse. She had learned the tenants’ names, the barns’ shortages, the larder’s weakness, the lies in Wexford’s hand.
She had made his burden hers. Thomas didn’t know what to do with that.
“You’re clear,” Amelia said quietly.
Walter lifted his head as she turned the roll toward Thomas. There was a little smudge of ink along her jaw, as if she had touched her face with the back of her hand. “You can pay the king and feed everyone through to spring.”
Walter sucked in a breath.
“Barely,” Amelia added, because she had become honest enough about Ashcombe to be cruel when needed. “If the winter’s kind and the stores hold.”
Walter was still staring at the roll. “We have enough?”
Amelia nodded. “Enough to meet the obligation, to prove the manor is being managed, and enough that if Master Pickering comes sniffing around, he’ll find the accounts in order and rents properly collected.”
“Sniffing?” Walter repeated.
“Like a hound,” Thomas said.
Walter looked pained. “My lord.”
“What? She has the right of it.”
Amelia’s mouth twitched.
Thomas looked down at the total. The numbers didn’t change. He had counted them in the dark that morning, counted them yesterday, counted them until the figures blurred, yet part of him had not believed until this moment.
Ashcombe stood. Not firm. Not safe. Not beyond reach of the crown, weather, hunger, or Belmaine. But stood.
The relief that moved through him was heavy, almost painful, like setting down a shield he had forgotten he carried. His hand curled around the edge of the table until the old wood pressed into his palm.
“You did it,” Amelia said softly.
He looked at her.
“No,” he said. “You did it.”
She shook her head at once. “I made the lists. You held the place together long enough for there to be something to count.”
For a heartbeat, they simply looked at one another across the rolls. The hall went on around them. Men talked. A bench scraped. One of the geese honked in outrage from the yard. Edith scolded someone near the screens passage. Walter pretended he was not sitting beside two people who had forgotten he existed.
Then Amelia bumped her shoulder lightly against Thomas’s.
It was nothing. A small, careless touch, the sort she gave without thinking. She nudged Wat that way when he leaned too far over her tablet. She touched Edith’s sleeve to ask a question. She tapped Hob’s arm when he said something dreadful in French and she wanted him to explain it without the children hearing. Amelia lived as if touch were ordinary, as if the body were not a battlefield on which every glance, every brush of fingers, every moment too close could become evidence.
Her shoulder touched his for less than a breath. Thomas felt it everywhere.
Amelia had already returned to the roll, unaware or pretending to be, her quill moving as she made some final mark. The curl at her temple shifted when she bent her head. The ink on her jaw looked like a small dark freckle beside the others. Her mouth moved faintly as she counted under her breath.
He wanted her.