“Less beautiful?” she said, lifting an eyebrow, but there was something underneath the gibing that hurt him to hear—something naked and miserable.

“My lady points out rightly that I have made a fool of myself with my clumsy talk.” He bowed. “I should go and leave you to your work.”

“I hate my work. I sew like a farm laborer. I am more of an executioner than a chirurgeon when it comes to handcraft.”

He didn’t know what that meant, but she hadn’t agreed he should go away. He felt a surge of joy but tried to hide it. “I am sure you underestimate yourself, lady.”

She stared at him for a long moment. “I only like you when you tell the truth, Tinwright. Can you do that? If not, you may continue on you way.”

What was she asking? He swallowed—discreetly, he hoped—and said, “Only the truth then, my lady.”

“Promise?”

“On Zosim, my patron.”

“Ah, the drunkard godling—and patron of criminals, too, I believe. A good enough choice, I suppose, and certainly appropriate for any conversation with me.” She turned to the young maid beside her, who had been listening to them and watching openmouthed. “Lida, you go,” she said. “Play with the other girls.”

“But, Mistress…!”

“I will be fine. I will sit right here. Master Tinwright will protect me from any danger. It is well known that poets fear nothing. Is that not right, Master Matthias?”

Tinwright smiled. “Known only to poets, perhaps, and not to this one. But I do not think your mistress will be in any danger, child.”

Lida, who was all of eight or nine years old, frowned at being called a child, but gathered her skirts and rose from the bench, a miniature of dignity. She spoiled the effect a little by sullenly scuffing her feet all the way down the path.

“She is a good girl,” Elan said. “She came with me from home.”

“Summerfield?”

“No. My own family lives miles from the city. Our estate is called Willowburn.”

“Ah. So you are a country girl?”

She looked at him, her expression suddenly flat once more. “Do not flirt with me, Master Tinwright. I was about to ask you to sit down. Am I to regret my decision?”

He hung his head. “I meant no offense, Lady Elan. I only wondered. I was raised in the city and I’ve often wondered what it would mean to smell country air every day.”

“Really? Well, sometimes it smells wonderful, and sometimes it is just as bad as anything to be found in the worst stews of a city. If you have not spent much time around pigs, Master Tinwright, you haven’t missed a great deal.”

He laughed. She might have more wit than was fitting in a woman, but she also spoke more engagingly than most of the women he knew—or the men either, for that matter. “Point taken, my lady. I will try not to over-burnish the joys of country living.”