He was waiting for Nan to silence the dog, as she ever did when it was too loud for too long. When she did not, he looked to find her eyes on him, a bright blue shock that traveled along his spine. Her look lingered just long enough for him to see something was different in her. Something had happened.

But then she looked away and he noticed the small figure just behind her, a very young girl with muddied feet and a threadbare dress. Nan gestured the girl forward and said, “This is Cecilia.”

“It’s Erma,” the child said with a sheepish look upward at Nan. “Bettie thought it too plain. She made me be Cecilia instead.” The stricken look on Nan’s face dismayed the girl, and she hastily said, “But I will be Cecilia, I don’t mind it.”

Gryff resisted a sudden and powerful urge to step forward and enfold Nan in an embrace. She looked so bewildered, like a child who had discovered she was lost in a dark wood. He bit his tongue against demanding to know what had happened, all his happiness at seeing her swallowed up in concern. But as he watched, she seemed to come to herself again. She looked down at the dog that had returned to her side, blinked, and shook her head slightly as though to clear it.

“Erma, then.” She turned back to Hal and his wife, adopting her most deferential manner. “She looks for work, and I did remember as how you are without a maidservant.”

The girl stepped forward at this and launched into a brief and practiced speech, detailing her experience in housework, her willingness to learn how to care for children, her prodigious skill in soapmaking, and her recently acquired but scant knowledge of cooking. As she spoke, Gryff noticed another, older girl standing at the edge of the street as though awaiting permission to come any closer.

After establishing the child had no family and wanted no more than room and board as payment, Hal agreed to take her on – though he insisted she would have a penny every week for her work. The girl smiled in relief, but Nan set a staying hand on her shoulder and looked to Hal’s wife. Only when she nodded did Nan seem reassured, and spoke again, her words practiced and formal.

“I go now to the priory at Broadholme,” she said, “and it’s there I’ll ask you to send her if ever ye wish her gone from your household for any reason. I hold myself responsible for her until she is grown, and I would not have her cast into the street if she does not please you.”

When Hal assured her that, if needed, he would do as she asked, she nodded and lifted her hand from the child’s shoulder. She looked so very tired. She also looked like she was preparing to leave now, this very minute.