“Why did you make me this, lady?” A sob wrenched from her, one she had not known was waiting at the back of her throat. She pressed her fist to her mouth to stop it. “Not a kitchen girl, but no more am I a lady.”

Lady Eluned’s face had gone pale. “It would be naught but vanity and pride, for me to take credit for any part of you,” she said softly. “I but made it possible for you to choose better for yourself.”

“Better? I go to my aunt and she thinks me above her.” She could not stop the resentment that poured into the words. “I lay with a man who – I thought him a falconer to a great house and that were bad enough, because I dare not want someone so far above me.” She leaned forward into her hands, her fingernails digging at her scalp. “I am trapped between, too good for one place and not good enough for the other. I know not where I belong, lady. Will you not tell me where I belong?”

“It is yours to choose,” came the answer, calm and quiet.

A sudden fury lashed out from some hidden place within her. “Tell me!” Her hands came down, slapped hard on the table. “I cannot go back to the kitchens and I have no sister to save and I cannot have him.”

It was impossible that she was shouting at her lady. Unthinkable. And she only sat there looking old and ashen-faced, bearing it. It was infuriating.

Nan stood suddenly, the heavy chair scraping backward. She leaned forward to strike the table again just under her lady’s chin, making her flinch. Satisfaction and horror shot through Nan at the sight, because Lady Eluned did not flinch. Ever. “Tell me what I can have, lady!” she shouted. “Tell me what I should be.”

She sat still, her eyes downcast and her voice steady. “I will not.”

“You have cursed me, then.” She spat the words, shaking her head in disgust when Lady Eluned finally looked up at her. “You should have left me to die all them years ago. Better you let me die than to make me this.”

Such a look came into Lady Eluned’s face as she rose that Nan forgot, for a moment, how to breathe. There was disdain and benevolence in her, both at the same time. She was an icy fire. She was the great lady who had saved her.

“Watch your tongue, child, and the things you think to demand of me. I do not apologize for the lives I save, nor those I risk – not to kitchen girls or gentle ladies or vile brutes who would have you worse than dead. You dare call yourself cursed!” She scoffed. “What you are, you have made yourself. Do you forget the only command I have ever given you, from the day I took you from that place, the only one?”