He glanced at her in surprise. “From a place of safety? I don’t understand.”

“Well, I didn’t think the road would be this dangerous. That woman from Glassforge made it, after all. It seemed like an even trade, me for her.”

He pursed his lips and stared off down the lane to ask, even more quietly, “Were you forced?”

“No!” She blew out her breath. “I can clear Stupid Sunny of that, at least. I wanted—to tell the truth, I asked him.”

His brows went up a little, although a tension eased out of his shoulders. “Is there a problem with this, among farmers? It seems quite the thing to me. The woman invites the man to her tent. Except I suppose you don’t have tents.”

“I could have wished for a tent. A bed. Something. It was at his sister’s wedding, and we ended up out in the field behind the barn in the dark, hiding in the new wheat, which I thought could have stood to be taller. I hoped it might be romantic and wild. Instead, it was all mosquitoes and hurry and dodging his drunken friends. It hurt, which I expected, but not unbearably. I’d just thought there would be…more to it. I got what I asked for but not what I wanted.”

He rubbed his lips thoughtfully. “What did you want?”

She took a breath, thinking. As opposed to flailing, which was maybe what she had been doing back home. “I think…I wanted to know. It—what a man and a woman do—was like some kind of wall between me and being a grown-up woman, even though I was plenty old.”

“How old is plenty old?” He cocked his head curiously at her.

“Twenty,” she said defiantly.

“Oh,” he said, and though he managed to keep the amusement out of his voice, his gold eyes glinted a bit.

She would have been annoyed, but the glint was too pretty to complain about, and then there were the crow’s-feet, which framed the glint so perfectly. She waved her hands in defeat and went on, “It was like a big secret everyone knew but me. I was tired of being the youngest, and littlest, and always the child.” She sighed. “We were a bit drunk, too.”

She added after a morose silence, “He did say a girl couldn’t be got with child the first time.”

Dag’s eyebrows climbed higher. “And you believed this? A country girl?” “I said I was stupid about it. I thought maybe people were different than heifers. I thought maybe Sunny knew more than me. He could hardly know less. It’s not as if anyone talked about it. To me, I mean.” She added after a moment, “And…I’d had such a hard time nerving myself up to it, I didn’t want to stop.”