“Nay, I did not know how then, and would not have dared. I would never have dared. I was no more than a timid mouse.” The laughter faded from her face as she looked down at the turnip she now held. “A mouse that he wanted, that’s what I was, and there was naught to stop him having me. But he did not, in the end. Not in that way.”

Gryff opened his mouth to ask how she had been spared rape, but he found he could not say the words. She saw his curiosity, though, and returned her attention to the turnip. Her knife began to cut away the peel in one slow, long strip.

“I was all over terror, every minute, until he reached for me. But each time he pulled me close, the fear died in me. It were like a miracle, though I prayed no saints to intercede. I only...” She paused, looking hard at her turnip. “When his breath fell on me, I would think – let him do what he will, for it won’t be worse than what he done to poor Oliver, left to die and rot on the floor. And the thought would stop my trembling, and that ruined his sport.” Now she pulled the long curl of peel free and held it in her hand. A look of wry amusement came over her face. “It were a good lesson I learned: a woman without fear is like a winter wind on a stiff cock. For a man like him, anyway. If I looked him in the eye and did not cringe, it withered him without fail. And lucky for me it did.”

She cut the peeled turnip to pieces, dropped it in the pot, and picked up the other. All the while, his mind raced. A great lord, cruel and lecherous. Name after name passed through his mind, all men he would have thought too chivalrous for acts so vile. But then, chivalry was reserved for ladies, not their servants. Indeed her lack of outrage, as though her story were the most common of tales, seemed to mock his assumptions. If he asked her to name her tormentor, would he find it was someone he had called friend?

“How came you to be free of him?” he asked, because that was an easier question.

Her hand paused. She looked into the fire and seemed to glow. “A great lady saved me.” There was reverence in her voice. “I tell you true, it was only her goodness that saved me, for I was not worthy of her regard.”

“Who–”