She knew more restraint than to nip at his fingers the way she would had he been her brother. She allowed Richard to feed her the small chunk of fruit, by hand, as though she were some shy animal too innocent to know fear; and as she did, she looked up at him, face lowered, gray eyes soft and trusting. Without so much as blinking she accepted, too, his wondering praise. She'd heard it too many times to be surprised. But most of all she'd heard it from Henry, and the inadvertent reminder saddened her.

She swallowed her bit of pear and pulled her hair away from her face, twisting it into a golden rope. "I can't say I do know that," she said quietly. "But it's nice to hear."