“On the other hand, I was one more mouth to feed when my father could not feed the children he had, and by that, I mean they were literally starving, in the dead of winter.” It was her turn to make a sour face. “I likely would have died anyway, and possibly my mother and more of my siblings with me.”

Fox shook his head. “We would never permit a child to starve. The parents, perhaps, if they were too lazy to hunt, fish, or grow food, but never a child.”

Giselle sighed. “Yes, but you live in very small tribes, when you compare your tribe to a whole city. You’ve seen what cities are like. People often do not even know one another, and they have few bonds. There is no place to grow food, even if there were no laws about hunting, there is nothing to hunt. If one wants food, one must earn it with labor. But there are more unskilled hands than there are jobs to be done. My father was one of those sets of unskilled hands.”

Fox frowned. “Surely, there must have been somewhere he could have gone if his children were starving.”

She thought about telling him about workhouses—and that you could starve there, too—but decided that was getting too complicated.

“Well, really, although he didn’t know it, my father did me a great favor,” she pointed out. “And . . . instead of dying of hunger, I was taken by someone who, I think, loved me more than either of my parents ever would or could have, given that they had eight other children.” Her voice softened at that last. “I called her Mother until the day she died. She truly was my mother in every possible way.”

Fox was silent for a while. “Then, perhaps it was for the best, after all.” He sat there, deep in thought, while Kellermann brought another group by and she answered questions.

“Well,” he said when they were gone, “I think your story of how you and I met is a good one. It is very much the sort of thing I would have done, I believe. How did you learn to shoot so well?”

She felt her stomach clench up, even after all these years. Too much to want to tell Fox anything about the attack by that horrible young man. “To explain that, I will have to begin with something else. The Bruderschaft, which I should tell you about anyway, since we are in their lands and one or more of them might turn up here.”

By the time she got done explaining about the Brotherhood of the Foresters, and how two of their number had taught her to shoot and fight, they had been interrupted several times by more people touring the camps, had made a mad dash to get their supper eaten, and it was time for the second performance.