After many miles a soft rain began to fall, and they ducked under the canopy of trees to take cover. They found a clearing, with a broad outcropping of rock and a small pool of water fed by a stream. The leaves on the branches above were so thick that the droplets barely disturbed the pool, and Nan knelt to gather water into a leather flask. He unbuckled Tiffin’s cage from his back and sat on a convenient stump to pull out the tiny loaf of dark bread that Mary had given him this morning as he said his farewell. It’s queer how quiet she’s grown to be, she had said to him with a nod toward Nan. She were the most chattering girl.

It was hard to imagine a chattering Nan, and even harder to realize that he would part ways with her soon. Their journey would end tomorrow. He should ask her everything he wanted to know now, before it was too late. He was debating whether to ask how she had learned to speak Welsh, or where she had learned her deadly skill, when she spoke.

“Why is it always me?” She was frowning down at her reflection in the pool, but glanced up at him briefly to see his confusion at her question. “There were other girls there, young and pretty. And smiling. Some small as me, too. But it’s me he come at. They always do.”

It was an earnest question. He considered telling her that he had noticed no other fair maids at all. Few men would, with Nan there. That was no kind of answer, though. He took a bite of bread and studied her troubled face in profile. He could say it was the graceful line of her brow, or the perfect proportions of every feature in itself and all of them taken together, or how her skin seemed to glow with a delicate golden light. Or her eyes, so blue and so expressive that they would inspire every bard and troubadour who ever caught sight of her to sing of her beauty.

But in the end he swallowed and gave her the crude truth she asked for.

“Your mouth.”

She turned a puzzled look to him, and he shrugged. He kept his eyes on the bread he held and spoke casually – or as casually as he could manage, when he thought of her mouth.

“God gave you the face of an angel, that stirs a man’s breast and will cause his heart to ache with the beauty of it. But your mouth is the kind that moves a man to think of naught but hot sin. That mouth in that face...” He shrugged again and looked at her. “Is an uncommon allure.”