Even while she was glad Bea was not a timid little thing, she was loud and brash in a way that grated on Nan’s nerves. Her man Fergus arrived, and though Nan had known worse men by far, she could find nothing pleasing about him. His wit was slow and stupid, and he stank as though he’d not washed in a month. Even had he not looked over Nan with lascivious eyes when her sister’s back was turned, she would have thought him unworthy of Bea. Yet her sister clearly loved him well.

Most disagreeable of all were the little things Bea said from time to time that made Nan feel an unaccountable shame. When asked, she described the comfits she had tasted for the first and only time at Morency last year – only to have Bea sniff and say, “Well, it’s a fair fine life you lead.” And Nan thought to tell her sister about her best friend at Morency, but when she said Robin was the son of a minor lord, Bea asked if she had any friends who were not gentry.

Nan turned her face down at this, hoping to hide how her sister’s resentful tone wounded her. It was not envy of her life, she thought, but just a different flavor of the same sentiment she had felt from Aunt Mary. She had no words for it, but she knew it was a way of letting her know that she was not like them. That she did not belong in their world, at least not for longer than a visit.

But where did she belong, if not with the last of her family? Unbidden, the Welshman came to her mind, and the way he talked of his home. It was lost forever because even if he stood on the same soil again, too much had changed. The home he remembered – the place and people and feeling – was gone, and he was doomed to long for something that he could never have again.

As evening came on, the house became busy with the comings and goings of customers. Bea must attend to business now, and she called for the little black-haired girl to take Nan to a room for the night. “It ain’t as grand as you are used to, I’m sure,” she said, again with that faintly hostile air, “but it’s away from grunting and the sweating, and there’s enough room to stretch your legs out.”

There wasn’t room for much more than that, but Nan was glad of this small space where she could close the door against the sounds of the brothel. Because she could not sleep, she thought over the long day, amazed that it had begun in the home of the friendly falconer.