This was where she would slip away, in the normal way of things. But they had said the prince, Rhodri, slay him. So when the more sober man switched to English and beckoned her, she came. She saw his face when she stepped into the light, her features no longer in shadow, and thought of what her lady had once said to her about beauty. That it was an asset, a power, a thing that might be wielded like a weapon.

Nan had never learned to use it that way, because the power to stir a man’s lust only frightened her. She preferred a weapon that was under her control, not subject to the whims of others.

But she looked in this man’s eyes and saw he was caught. He would let her near and tell her what she wanted to know and never even ask who she was. All because she had a face he liked.

“You are Welsh?” she asked him.

After he nodded, she feigned a shyness of his friends and he came to join her a little away from them. It was easy, except for the terrified pounding of her heart. She filled his cup with the strongest ale and made herself smile once or twice. She asked him if he knew of Rhodri, the bastard brother of the newly returned prince. She said little, and his eagerness to impress her made him talk too much.

It required less than an hour and two more servings of ale to learn everything. He and his companions were to travel to Aderinyth where Rhodri waited, their movements easily lost amid the many guests who had begun to arrive in the weeks before the wedding. They were part of a small party of mercenaries who would be paid well to aid him in his plan to slay the prince.

“I am promised enough land that I may keep a hundred sheep,” he said, leaning close.

She did not recoil, even when he put an arm over her shoulder. She only smiled and looked right in his eyes, and when he sighed and said she was so very comely, she swallowed her fear and asked him what was the village where Rhodri waited. He said the name of the place three times, because her tongue tripped in trying to pronounce it, wasn’t Welsh such a strange language? How kind of him to help her learn it.

She almost felt sorry for him when she slipped from under his arm, and she heard him lose his balance and hit the floor behind her. He would probably look for her when he was sober tomorrow, if he remembered. But she would be gone.

“What is he like, your prince?”