“That’s what you told her last time.”

“It’s a valid concern. She should be pleased that you’re stepping out with such a conscientious young apprentice, instead of one of those village oafs.” Jack offered Alexis her gloved hand.

With another sigh, Alexis took it and slid off the bed. “Those ‘village oafs,’ as you like to call them, will have houses and trades of their own one day. You’ll have a windmill.”

“A very clean windmill,” said Jack.

“They’d be able to give me children. That’s what Mother says.”

“I could give you children,” said Jack, sounding faintly affronted. “You’d have to tell me how many heads you wanted them to have, and what species you’d like them to be, but what’s the point of having all these graveyards if I can’t give you children when you ask for them?”

Alexis laughed and punched her in the shoulder, and Jack smiled, knowing that all was forgiven.

They made an odd pair, strolling across the Moors, neither of them looking like they had a care in the world. Alexis was soft where Jack was spare, the daughter of wealthy parents who made sure she never went to bed hungry, trusting her to know her own body and its needs. (And if the local vampire favored willowy girls who would die if left outside in the slightest frost, well, loosen your belt and pass the potatoes; we’ll keep our darling daughters safe at home.) Jack’s hair was tightly braided where Alexis’s was loose, and her hands were gloved where Alexis’s were bare. But those hands were joined as tightly together as any lover’s knot had ever been, and they walked in smooth, matched steps, never turning their ankles, never forcing the other to rush.

Occasionally, Jack would stop, produce a pair of bone-handled scissors from her pocket, and snip off a piece of some bush or weed. Alexis always stopped and watched indulgently as Jack made the vegetation vanish into her basket.

When they resumed, she said lightly, teasing, “You can touch every filthy plant in the world, but you can’t touch me without a bucket of boiling water on hand?”

“I don’t touch them,” said Jack. “My scissors touch them, and my gloves touch them, but I don’t touch them. I don’t touch much of anything.”

“I wish you could.”

“So do I,” said Jack, and smiled, a wry twist of a thing. “Sometimes I think about what my mother would say if she could see me now. She was the one who first told me that I should be afraid of getting dirty.”

“My mother told me the same thing,” said Alexis.