One night, when I came to her, I found her with her hair bound back all in red ribbons and graceful silver earrings shaped like willow leaves dangling against her bare neck. Clad as she was in her simple white nightgown, the sight of her took my breath away. Later, during a quieter moment when we had breath for speaking, I complimented her on the earrings. Artlessly, she told me that when Prince Regal had last come to buy candles of her, he had gifted her with them, for he said he was so pleased with what she created that he scarcely felt he paid her what such finely scented candles were worth. She smiled proudly as she told me this, her fingers toying with my warrior’s queue while her own hair and ribbons tangled wildly upon the pillows. I do not know what she saw in my face, but it widened her eyes and she drew back from me:
“You will take gifts from Regal?” I asked her coldly. “You will not accept from me coin that I have honestly earned, but you take jewelry from that … “
I teetered on the edge of treason, but could find no word to express what I thought of him.
Molly’s eyes narrowed, and it was my turn to draw back. “What should I have said to him? `No, sir, I cannot accept your largesse, until you marry me’? There is not between Regal and me what there is between us. This was a perquisite from a customer, such as is often given to a skilled craftsman. Why did you think he gave them to me? In exchange for my favors?”
We stared at one another, and after a time I managed to speak what she was almost willing to accept as an apology. But then I made the mistake of suggesting that perhaps he had given them to her solely because he knew it would vex me. And then she wanted to know how Regal might know what was between us; and did I think her work so poor that a largesse such as the earrings was not due her? Suffice to say that we mended our quarrels as well as we could in the short time we had left together. But a mended pot is never as sound as a whole one, and I returned to the ship as lonely as if I had had no time at all with her.