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’Twas beautiful, like wondrous stitching without thread.”
    The complete absence of contempt from her voice confused him. She switched from angry to earnest too quickly for him to keep up. He slowed, belatedly remembering that a monk should not show undue haste.
    â€œMy fa—I mean, Lord Donagh showed me,” she added, falling in alongside him. “When I was a little girl. Sometimes he was kind to me then.”
    When she wasn’t sharpening her tongue on him, Aidan wanted to cup her in his hands like a lost bird. He shoved that feeling aside, sure it couldn’t be trusted.
    â€œHe showed you a kindness by bringing you here instead of fettering you in the stocks,” he said quietly. He did not look over, though he could feel her eyes on him.
    â€œYou know about that?”
    Aidan lifted one shoulder and dropped it.
    â€œHe did not do it for kindness. He doesn’t want me soiling his honor.”

    â€œYou’re hardly his only bastard.”
    â€œI wish you wouldn’t call me that,” she murmured, then added, more firmly, “I’m the only one caught swindling pilgrims. And my mother and uncle won’t let him give me away as a concubine, thankfully, so any value I might have had to him has been lost. I’m an embarrassment on both counts. But he cannot seem to resist my mother’s favors. Nor she his.”
    Aidan ignored the bitterness in her voice. It sprang from hazardous topics he would prefer to avoid, since they might be overheard. Instead of replying directly, he waved her around a corner and said, “Splinters of the Cross, was it not? Why did you do that?”
    â€œBecause I thought I could,” she said, casting him a world-wise glance. “The pilgrims have silver, and they’re not shy of parting with it. How else are we supposed to come by our bread? My uncle spent his youth as a slave; he can barely provide for himself. And his lordship brings gifts for my mother now and again, but there are plenty of days in between.”
    That, Aidan thought, might explain the costly fabric covering her thin body. Her mother must have struggled to feed herself and her daughter, since no man would dare to look twice at any mistress Lord Donagh saw regularly.
    â€œA share of his wealth is due you,” he said. “The judge will uphold that.”

    â€œWhen he dies,” she retorted. “Or certainly not before I marry. Until then, are my mother and I supposed to eat stones? I’m not a thief. It seemed easier to cozen the pilgrims.”
    Aidan answered only with sympathetic silence. Her position didn’t excuse her crime, but it did help explain it. And he had encountered enough silly pilgrims at the abbey to understand her disdain. Some would sin with one hand and, with the other, pay for prayers or the right to touch relics they thought would absolve them.
    â€œI want my wood fragments back,” she added firmly. “Your abbot still has them, I guess. Can you get them for me?”
    â€œI doubt it. What difference does it make?”
    She eyed him, an answer almost visible on her lips. Apparently deciding she couldn’t trust him that far, she set her jaw.
    â€œI just want them. They may not come from the Holy Land, but they’re special to me.”
    Intrigued, Aidan didn’t consider his words carefully enough. “You shouldn’t have been selling them, then.” He regretted the comment even before she threw him a narrow-eyed glare.
    â€œI will ask,” he added, shrugging. “Don’t be surprised if the answer is no.”
    He held his breath while she dumped her pot into the
stinking cesspool. They moved as quickly as they could back across the compound to replace her chamber pot. Aidan found it easier to speak to her once they’d again reached the shelter and shadows of buildings.
    â€œWould you like to see another book?” he asked, after a moment.
    The eager light in her