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"Am I not right?" asked Linduial.
Eodwine smiled, just enough for the girl to see in the light of the lantern they washed the cutlery by. He looked at the piece of hog lard in his hand that he had been using to scratch the cutlery clean. Pungent stuff. He would have to get Frodides more. She would wonder how he got through so much in just one short night.
"Start from where you are," Eodwine murmured absently. "Yes, of course; that is always true, I suppose." She was saying something deeper than that. She sought reassurance, naturally, especially in the face of such difficult goings on as she had had to endure this day. It was no more business of Eodwine's than she chose to make it, what she was fleeing from or what she hoped for. Yet she was opening her heart, at least in a small way. Ah, the ways folk do things, say things. It was a small test, not only of reassurance in the wisdom she had spoken, but of the trust she was hoping to place in him, this unknown lord, newly made, no doubt she had found out by now, of a newly wrought Emnet. How am I to reassure her without overstepping her unspoken question?
"I have a thought," Eodwine said at length, "that maybe it would be good for me to send a letter to your father along with your own, telling him who I am, and giving what bond I may at distance. To put his mind at rest. What think you of that?"
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