Bard lay on top of his blankets, stifling in the thick air of his loft. He wished that Grethe had stayed on the mainland with Sally and Sorgen. He wished she had not laid out a pretty meal for them, and opened a bottle of mead. He wished she had not asked him for a song, and he wished she had not listened to it with her lips just parted and her fingers drifting absently along the edge of her bodice, on the tantalizing boundary between fabric and flesh. He wished above all that he were stronger, for it was a close thing most nights, and getting closer; and he was afraid of his own weakness.

But however much he might distrust his own tenuous self-discipline, he could not hear her crying out in fear at night and not go to her. He could not leave her drowning in that collapsing house, and do nothing to bring her back to safety—not even if it robbed him of a full night's sleep, and his own sanity. And if her need was for tangible reminders that she was alive and not dead, then he would hold her and kiss her and caress her, and put off thinking of the coming day when he must give her up.

So when he heard her sounds of unquiet that night, he shrugged off the beginnings of his own sluggish sleep and climbed down to her without thinking. Even in her nightmares she slept deeply, and could not be waked without considerably effort. He did now as he always did, knelt beside her and gathered her gently in his arms. She curled against him automatically, one hand moving to grip the neck of his shirt.

She shone like a pearl in the light from the open windows, a sheen of perspiration beaded on her upper lip, fine hairs sticking to her forehead. She shifted in his arms, tugging at his shirt and burrowing against him, and the movement made Bard ache and sweat.

"Wake up, Grethe," he whispered, and in the stillness his voice sounded hoarse and loud as a crow's cawing. But she did not wake, not even when he jostled her gently and whispered her name again. Their nightclothes grew damp between their heated bodies. She squirmed and moaned in his lap. What sort of nightmare was this, anyway?

"Grethe, wake up," he said again, louder this time, but still she lay damp and fragrant and restless in his arms, and he realized with a mounting sense of panic that he should not have come down to her room at all, for this could be no nightmare and it tested his very sanity to stay. He began to gently lower her back onto the sleeping mat.

But at his movement, her hand left his shirt and curled inexorably around his neck, trapping him beside her. Her moans were coming faster now, dissolving irresistibly into whimpers. He realized with a helpless shudder that her free hand was creeping up one downy thigh, and bringing her shift with it. The only honorable thing to do, he knew, would be to look away; and he did—eventually.

Wake up, please wake up, he thought desperately, but he could no longer make his mouth form the words.

Grethe's lips opened and closed soundlessly and she suddenly arched her back, her whole body stiffening, the fitful rise and fall of her chest suspended at its apex. Just as Bard was beginning to fear that she'd never breathe again, she let out a jagged gasp, and at last slumped bonelessly in his arms.

Bard sat with her, hanging onto his mind by a thread, until the flush had faded from her cheeks and her breathing returned to a deep, slow regularity. As soon as her iron grip on his neck loosened, he pushed her gingerly from his lap. She curled up on her side, her lips curved into a hint of a contented smile.

Then his self-restraint broke and he stumbled away from her, tripping down the ladder and bursting outside to dunk his whole head in the rainbarrel.

Grethe woke from the most satisfying sleep she'd had in many months, and rose and dressed with a bounce in her step. She went down the ladder and kissed Bard's Da on the cheek as he went out into the pre-dawn—and, it must be said, startling the poor old man who still had no idea why she was living in his house and sleeping in his room. She stirred up the fire and hung a fresh pot of porridge and water over it, whistling tunelessly all the while.

The porridge thickened and filled the house with its homey fragrance, streaks of pink began to crowd the sky, and Bard still wasn't up. Grethe's chest tightened in fear. Was he ill? Had he fallen from his bunk in the night and broken his neck? Overcome by foreboding, she bolted up the ladders to his loft.

He was still in bed, and breathing, and therefore alive; but he looked unwell.

"Bard," whispered Grethe urgently, shaking him by the shoulder. "Bard, wake up!"

He jerked awake so quickly he almost flung her backward off the ladder.

"What is it?" he said groggily. "Are you ill?"

"No," said Grethe, reaching out to feel his forehead. "It's morning. I'm checking to see if you're ill. I'm afraid you have a cold sweat."

"I's not sweat," he said, propping himself up on his elbows. "Just water."

"Do you mean to tell me you have a leak up here and you've not fixed it or slept somewhere else?"

"No, I...I fell in the canal last night." He had backed all the way against the far wall and curled his legs up under his shirt, as if afraid she might bite him. Not an unreasonable fear, in light of what he had just told her.

"And what were you doing out and about last night?" she demanded.

"Just couldn't sleep is all," he said. "Too hot."

"Well, of all the carp-headed things, Bard!" Grethe burst out. "If you're going to insist on sleeping in the stuffiest part of the house, of course you'll be too hot! I keep telling you to just sleep in my room where the windows are, there's space aplenty for it even if you do sleep on the floor. I know you want to spare my precious virginity for another six months, for some unnatural reason that you've never yet explained to my satisfaction, but if you're going to take foolish risks it will affect me too! What am I to do if you fall in at night and no one's around to fish you out? Eh, Bard, what then? Who shall I turn to if you're drowned?" She bit her lip but could not keep the tears from coming.

Bard inched forward, dropped down over the edge of the loft, and plucked Grethe neatly from the ladder. She hung in his arms, her feet dangling off the floor, and buried her face in his shirt.

"I can't lose them and you, too," she whispered. "It's almost more than I can do to let you go out on the barge, for all I know you're a good swimmer. If you fall in the canal you might hit your head and be sucked under the houses. It's happened so, before. I wish I could make you know how much I need you, Bard. I cannot do without you."

"I'm sorry, Grethe," he murmured in her hair. "Of course you're right, it was foolish of me. I won't fall in again."

"Do you promise?"

"Aye, lass. I promise." He smiled and kissed her forehead, and set her down. "I'll just dress and come down for breakfast. I'm sorry I overslept and worried you for nothing."

In August was the Flight Festival, when all and sundry turned out to feast and dance and buy and sell. Bard had shot the stag which was roasted over a huge fire for the main course. But even with the money from its sale he could not afford not to work during most of the festival, hauling wood to keep the fire high, hauling water for stewpots and dunking barrels.

But Grethe was glad of the opportunity to wear flowers in her hair, and walk through the Fairgrounds looking at what the vendors had for sale or trade. She bought a length of soft blue wool which would make a very handsome tunic for Bard; he had worn the same threadbare dirt-colored one ever since she had met him, and she had never seen him in anything else.

She bought herbs from Western traders, salt and medicinal brandy from Rhûn, and a few cooking pots from the Iron Hills, to replace Bard's rusty uneven ones. She sold all of the lavender sachets and broidered stomachers she had made in preparation for the Festival.

Grethe wandered around with her pockets full of coin and her hands full of honey rolls stuffed with dried fruit. While buying a mug of cold ale, she heard a voice at her shoulder.

"Grethe?" said Lisette uncertainly. "Is that really you?"

Grethe turned to look at the girl who had so nearly become her sister. The sight of Lisette's pretty face brought a lump into Grethe's throat, which she could not swallow down. Lisette seemed similarly struck by memories, and for a moment they just looked at each other. Then Lisette threw her arms around Grethe and hugged her tightly.

"I haven't seen you since that day you left! Grethe, whatever happened to you? You're dressed so drab! Everyone in town says you've been living under the very same roof as Mad Bard, but I wouldn't listen to them. I always defended you no matter what." Lisette linked her arm through Grethe's and steered her away from the ale tent.

"And why shouldn't I live under Bard's roof? He's my husband," said Grethe.

"But Grethe—how?" Lisette turned to her in shock. "He's not—he doesn't even have any people!"

Grethe laughed at this. "I assure you, dear Lizzie," she said, "that was the least impediment to our marrying."

"I knew he sometimes rowed you around the Lake," said Lisette, "but I'd no idea it was, hmm."

"It wasn't, really," said Grethe. "I did say, once, that I liked him better than anyone, and he hinted he felt the same. But unless something changed, what could we do about it? And then, well...something changed."

"Losing your house, you mean? D'you think you still would have married him if...if…" Lisette could not finish, but Grethe knew what she meant.

"I don't know," she said. "I hope so."

"So, how did you arrange it?" asked Lisette, shaking off her moment of sadness. "With Mama trying to foist Uncle Saul on you at every turn, and all. I'm glad you didn't marry him, anyways, no matter how much I wanted you for family. Did Bard pass you notes through the servants?"

"No," said Grethe. "I was sitting with your Mama and I happened to look out the window and see him out on the Lake. I didn't even know if he was coming for me or not, but I couldn't sit still any longer and pretend that everything was going to go back to normal. So I left. And it turned out he was coming for me, and we got married twenty minutes later."

"Oh, Grethe, that's the most romantic thing I've ever heard," sighed Lisette. "You must come and have tea with me and the girls. I'm sure they've all missed you terribly, and they're all dying of curiosity ever since you disappeared."

"All right." Grethe had never much liked tea circles, but she felt a strange kinship with the brightly-dressed young ladies who made room for her at a table laid with dainty things to eat. They had so few worries; they still went to parties and cotillions, and flirted and looked over their beaux, and wore a new dress every month. Grethe's dress, though clean, looked very homespun beside theirs. Yet until less than a year ago she had been one of them, as cosseted as the richest debutante at the table, with prospects as bright as the sun.

The girls welcomed her back into the fold with shrieks of joyful surprise. On some of their faces the joy was more real than on others, but the surprise was genuine wherever she looked. She wondered why that should be—it was common knowledge that she at least had not drowned when her house collapsed, so they all must know she was alive somewhere—until the third time she saw a girl's eyes drop down to her flat abdomen and then dart back up at her face in astonishment.

Grethe sipped tea and nibbled pastries, and answered her old friends' questions and ignored their curious glances. Many of them responded as Lisette had done, but a few looked quite tart when she described the mastersmen dragging her bridegroom away.

"Brawling in taverns," sniffed Elise Looffen, as if Bard's arrest over the beating of Cidery Pummas confirmed everything she had ever thought or suspected of him. "No offense, dear, but I'm glad he was arrested. Maybe next time he won't act like a wild animal."

"You wouldn't think that if a man had been fighting over you," said Lisette loyally. "He was defending her honor. Isn't that right, Grethe dearest?"

Grethe nodded, then shrugged. "I wasn't there for it," she admitted, "though that does seem the sort of thing he'd do."

Elise gave her a triumphant look. "But as you say, you weren't there for it. Anyway, whoever you might have been made to marry, we all know you're really one of us. But honestly, Grethe, couldn't you have gotten it annulled when nothing came of it?"

"When nothing came of what?" asked Grethe. All the girls looked from her to Elise uneasily.

"Well, you're clearly not with child now," said Elise, nibbling a muffin.

"Your figure's better than it ever was!" interjected Hilda Berdasdutter, as if to lighten the insult.

"Whoever said I was with child?" asked Grethe, pretending to find it funny.

"And really, Grethe," Elise went on, ignoring her, "this sort of thing could have been hushed up if you'd only been sensible. I'm sure it has been before. And now it's all come to nothing."

"There was never anything for it to come to," said Grethe. "I was never pregnant."

"Well, thank goodness for small miracles," said Elise.

"Elise, you're being rude," said Lisette. "We can't all have our first choice." Her voice broke a little on the last word.

"But Bard was my first choice," murmured Grethe.

"I don't see why," said Elise. Hilda smacked her on the arm to shut her up, and even Elise's friends seemed to feel she had gone too far.

"You don't have to," said Grethe shortly. "You're not married to him. And as for all those rumors, why, I've met rich men a hundred times more lecherous than Bard. Having money doesn't automatically make you virtuous, and having no money doesn't make you a villain."

"No money? Mad Bard hasn't got anything," said Elise nastily.

"He's got me," said Grethe standing up so quickly her chair fell back. Lisette stood too, and followed Grethe out of the tent.

"She's just beastly," Lisette said. "And I think she's been drinking."

"I know what Elise is like," said Grethe. "It's easier for her to say things like that to me now, because everyone thinks I'm a fallen woman; but I'm sure she would have thought them in any case. You needn't try to explain."

"I don't think you're a fallen woman," objected Lisette.

"Everyone thinks I married him because I had to. And perhaps everyone's right, for once: I did have to marry him, or be miserable forever. And I'll tell you another thing, if Bard just wore nicer clothes and had a little money, Elise would be trying to catch his eye. Everyone would."

"Elise has tried to catch his eye," muttered Lisette. "He didn't even notice. Why else do you think she's so sore?"

Grethe turned to her in astonishment. "But…"

"Oh, my dearest," said Lisette, laughing and threading her arm through Grethe's. "Mad he may be, but I can hardly think of a woman in town who hasn't worked up a lather imagining him creeping into her room at night with a knife in his teeth. D'you think we haven't noticed those hands of his?"

Grethe could only sputter.

A/N: Thanks for reading and reviewing! I hope you're all enjoying it!