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Ford chuckled. “Point me in the direction of a well or a spring.”

Grace matched his smile. “Gladly.”

* * *

Ford rubbed his hands together as he looked at the large wooden table laden with… two cups of rice, some tea, and a plate of cheese. Two small candles illuminate their sparse dinner. He grinned, looking at the food. “I am starving.”

“Well, I hope you are not expecting anything extraordinary. We will have to go to the market on the morrow. Today—” She waved her arm over the table.

He shrugged. “As far as I am concerned, you are a sorceress to be able to whip this up from whatever we had in the larder.”

“As long as we have tea, I don’t need much,” Grace said.

He needed much more than that, but the buttered rice would have to do for tonight.

They were so hungry they finished the first cup of rice quickly and silently. Luckily, there was more. As Grace offered the second serving of the rice, Ford sipped the greenish-colored tea, now less suspicious of the brew. “I am quite enjoying this tea. Where do you get it?”

Grace’s nose twitched as she settled across from him. “Smugglers.”

He raised a brow, and she laughed. “Come now, do not tell me you didn’t know the answer. The tea is too expensive in England to get it legally.”

He clicked his tongue. “Good thing I am a fugitive now. Might have arrested you for this.”

Grace laughed. “You could have tried.”

“What I meant was I have never seen tea quite like this. Although I much prefer whisky to anything else.”

She shook her head in disapproval. “Why, Mr. Gunning. Perhaps I should make you appreciate tea more. There are several types which are quite enjoyable. My mother taught me the love of different types of tea. She… She wanted me to know some of my roots, although she didn’t know much herself.”

“Your roots?” Ford promoted.

“Mhm… My grandfather was Chinese, although, as I said, I don’t know much about Chinese culture. Only what my mother taught me.”

“How did he get here?”

She looked into the distance. “He came here on some religious mission. Not to England, but to France. There he fell in love with a girl, fled his mission, and… that’s how I am here.” There was a slight bitterness to her words. He was starting to discern her easy changes in tone.

“You resent him for that,” he guessed.

Grace took a sip of tea. “I don’t know. Maybe. He did it for love, I suppose that should be forgiven. But look where it got us. He died of some kind of disease. His daughter became a courtesan, his granddaughter a whore. With my looks, I… I didn’t have much chance to have a normal life in England.”

“I’d say you managed well,” Ford noted.

Grace didn’t answer. She continued to silently eat her food.

He tipped his head toward her chest. “The cross you wear, it’s his, isn’t it?”

She paused, then her gaze fell to the jewelry in question. “Yes.”

“You blame him for your state of life. Yet you wear his cross.”

She smiled. “I blame a lot of people for a lot of things. But the fact is he is part of me. A part of my story. A part of how I came to be. And it is hard enough for me to try to relate to anything. We do not belong here. I am quite certain I don’t belong in China either. I don’t belong anywhere really. And he is the reason why. But he is also my only link to the past. So, I might as well own my past, my heritage. My mother always said I looked like him. And I’d like to think that I would have loved him had I met him.”

“What about your father?”

She shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “I don’t remember him either. I am certain I met him as a little child, but I don’t remember his face, or anything about him, except that he was wearing a signet ring on his finger. I think there was a wolf on it… In the middle, and a knight or a sword. That’s as much as I remember.”

“He was a lord.” Ford shouldn’t have been surprised. She had told him she used to have tutors. He was probably quite influential as well. It was hard to believe she’d ended up where she was now.