"There's not your like in Virginia," I told her. "If you go to town clad like that and with that bearing, there will be talk enough. And ships come and go, and there are those besides Rolfe who have been to London."
For a moment the laughter died from her eyes and lips, but it returned. "Let them talk," she said. "What care I? And I do not think your ship captains, your traders and adventurers, do often dine with my lord bishop. This barbarous forest world and another world that I wot of are so far apart that the inhabitants of the one do not trouble those of the other. In that petty village down there I am safe enough. Besides, sir, you wear a sword."
"My sword is ever at your service, madam."
"Then I may go to Jamestown?"
"If you will it so."
With her bright eyes upon me, and with one hand softly striking a rose against her laughing lips, she extended the other hand.
"You may kiss it, if you wish, sir," she said demurely.
I knelt and kissed the white fingers, and four days later we went to Jamestown.