Then she sat directly in it, chortling.
Aldwin closed his eyes briefly as I laughed.
Some things at Thames had changed enormously in three years. Others remained reassuringly inevitable.
The war had ended two years earlier. Peace, uneven and fragile, had followed it slowly. The damaged western tower had finally been rebuilt before winter. Tenant families had returned to abandoned cottages.
And somehow, impossibly, I had become part of the machinery holding all of it together.
Two women crossing the courtyard waved toward me on their way from the herb gardens.
Apparently surviving a civil war while correctly predicting grain shortages permanently altered a household’s understanding of your usefulness.
Aldwin noticed the exchange and shook his head faintly. “You realize the steward fears you now.”
“He should. I introduced inventory tracking.”
“A terrifying innovation.”
“Civilization rests upon proper grain accounting.”
“I was unaware.”
“You would be if you’d ever balanced winter stores.”
Eleanor held up a dripping leaf triumphantly from the puddle.
“Excellent work,” I informed her solemnly.
Geoffrey found us there sometime later. He crossed the garden with the steady confidence of a man entirely at ease in his own home before settling beside me beneath the trees, his shoulder brushing mine.
That still startled me sometimes. Not the castle or the century. Not even the life. Just this. The unconscious certainty of belonging somewhere completely.
“You’re late,” I told him.
“I was intercepted by correspondence.”
“A likely excuse.”
“The king continues insisting upon governance.”
“How inconsiderate of him.”
Geoffrey’s mouth curved faintly.
Across the garden Eleanor had now begun attempting to transport puddle water using the structural integrity of a single leaf.
Aldwin looked deeply concerned by the engineering involved.
“Aldwin is staying for supper,” Geoffrey said.
“I assumed as much when I saw his horse.”
“There is also apparently a widow in the north.”
I turned immediately toward him.
“A widow.”