Rain battered the tavern roof hard enough to drown half the noise below it, though not even weather could silence Eastcheap entirely. Men shouted over dice games. A woman laughed somewhere near the stairs. Smoke hung thick beneath the rafters, mixing with spilled ale and wet wool and roasting meat until the whole place smelled like something half alive.

Prince Hal looked perfectly at home in it.

He lounged sideways upon the bench with one arm draped lazily over the backrest, dark curls damp from the storm outside, boots muddy clear to the knee. A silver ring flashed when he lifted his cup. Candlelight caught the sharpness of his face whenever he smiled — which was often tonight.

Mostly at her expense.

“You hold a knife,” he observed, watching across the table, “like a woman prepared to assassinate the supper rather than eat it.”

She glanced down at the utensil in her hand.

Hal’s grin widened instantly.

“There. That look again.”

“What look?”

“The one wherein you discover you have behaved strangely and attempt pretending you have not.”

Falstaff barked laughter nearby without even knowing the conversation. The old knight was deep in drink already, red-faced and booming at a pair of equally drunken merchants.

Hal lowered his voice slightly.

“You are a very suspicious creature.”

She returned attention to the bread before her.

“Aha,” he said, pointing immediately. “And secretive besides.”

The first thing she had learned about Prince Hal was that silence only encouraged him.

The second was that he noticed everything.

Three nights earlier she had accidentally referred to a serving gir.l as “okay,” earning herself ten straight minutes of fascinated questioning. Yesterday she'd forgotten herself and asked whether the tavern had “bathrooms,” a word which had nearly sent Hal into hysterics.

Now he studied her over the rim of his cup with bright, infuriating amusement.

“You speak English,” he mused, “and yet sometimes not properly.”

She ignored him.

“You dress like a peasant badly pretending to be another peasant.”

Still nothing.

“And you look at horses,” he continued thoughtfully, “with the suspicion of someone who expected them smaller.”

His eyes were sharp despite the ale. Clever eyes. Far cleverer than court gave him credit for, she was beginning to realize.

That had been her mistake.

When she'd stumbled terrified and half incoherent into London days ago wearing a rented peasant dress from a renaissance fair and speaking with all the wrong rhythms, she had thought the prince drunk enough not to notice inconsistencies.

Instead he had noticed every single one.

The strange phrases. The odd manners. The way she recoiled at chamber pots. Her ignorance of prayers everyone else knew by heart.

He had asked questions endlessly.

She had answered almost none of them.

And somehow, inexplicably, he had allowed her to remain.

Not as prisoner.

As servant.

Though “servant” poorly described whatever arrangement existed now between them.

“You still have not told me where you learned to speak so strangely,” Hal said.

“I told you. Far away.”

“Mmm.” He swirled the wine in his cup. “Very mysterious.”

“It is none of your business.”

“Oh, I think everything under my roof becomes at least partially my business.”

“Your roof?” she said flatly. “This tavern belongs to someone else.”

Hal stared at her a moment.

Then he laughed so suddenly and loudly that several men turned to look.

“You hear that?” he called toward Falstaff. “My own servant grows insolent.”

Falstaff barely lifted his head. “Then she has learned from the best.”

Hal pointed approvingly. “Precisely.”

Then, with maddening ease, he pushed another cup toward her side of the table.

“Well. Until you decide whether I am trustworthy enough for your secrets, you may at least drink my wine.”

Another pause.

“And perhaps,” he added lightly, “teach me why you say ‘okay’ as though it means something.”