His unspoken words picked at my brain for the rest of the ride. I'd never been looked at quite that way before; it wasn't the same way he looked at the noblewomen we passed, but it wasn't the looks I got from most of the village boys. It frightened me, a little, but was also somehow pleasing. I wondered if all the men in the City were like this, if I would have to get used to being looked at in strange ways.
I thought about what my Gram said to me once, when the village miller started visiting. She told me that he was wanting to marry me, that he was "negotiating" with Papa. I didn't like the miller; he was big and heavy and always had grain grit under his fingernails. I was still working at the inn then, and I knew that he came into the tavern every night and drank until we closed. I also knew that he flirted with the other tavern girls, and one of them told me that he used to go home and beat his wife, until she died having their first child. I knew from seeing it that he beat his dog and his horses, and no matter how rich he was, Papa had always told me not to trust a man that treated his animals poorly.
I told Gram that I thought he was cruel and selfish, and that I wouldn't marry him even if Papa agreed. She told me then that I'd be lucky to have him.
"You'd better take him, girl. There's no one else in this village that would have you, considering."
She wouldn't say considering what, but the impression I got from her was that I wasn't quite up to scratch. I didn't marry the miller, obviously, but I never really forgot that no one asked me what I wanted. As I got a little older and the other village girls started to marry off, I realized that women weren't involved in that decision. I watched the pretty girls I knew marry the shopkeepers' sons, while the plain girls married wealthy widowers who needed someone to care for their children and houses.
I remembered, then, Shadow's comment about marriage. Perhaps my parents had sent me away in order to marry; if Gram was right, there wasn't much selection at home. Maybe what Mama really wanted was to make sure I got a good husband. I wished, for the thousandth time in the last week, that I had pressed her more closely before I left.