Bess spun and stared into the shadows, her heart leaping in both fear and anticipation. Was it him? But who else to call her Greensleeves? 

She tucked the shawl more tightly around herself and was momentarily glad for the moonlight, or she'd look flushed. Not green any longer. She may not have been a high born lady, but she was clean, at the very least! Then again, she hadn't been tumbled about in the grasses by the stream either. 

Voice caught in her throat, she hunched her shoulders about her ears and took a step closer, bidden by his voice, by the beckoning of a pale leather glove in the silver light. He was shadowed once more and she tilted her head to look at him more closely, to see if he were what her imagination had made of him. But too far, too dark, he was delightful and ethereal still. 

And like that, as instant and clear as a dream, he laid her imaginings out before her. Oh, but the romance of the moment! The glancing lights, the rumble of his voice, the smooth gesture of one arm, a strong leg put out in a deep bow. Bess drank in the minute impressions he gave like a drowning man does air. Her eyes wild and wide, she kept so still as he spoke that she might have been on the verge of escaping, though that was so very far from wrong. She held herself as quiet as she was able to keep the trembling of the moment from making her fall to the ground. 

Her will? What was her will? Was it to be the strange and tempting [i]pique-nique[/i] or a ride upon a great horse which only a forest god might ride? A dance, as if she were some bedecked and bejeweled lady, to the constant thrum of crickets and water upon the air? Or would she wish for something more? Something greater than all of those together?

As he stood once more from his bow, she allowed her head to tilt at a slight canting to the left, dark eyes like holes in her pale face. A shift of breeze and the low-slung moon glinted off the golden chain about her neck. Her fingers played nervously with the frill of the shawl and she chewed on her lower lip as she let her mind dance. 

Had she come and he'd been naught but a man, she may have laughed him off. But he was so far more than even her dreams could have made him! “Reynard,” she whispered to herself, to him. “A fox and I am nothing but a Bess,” she said with a twist of her lips. No Greensleeves, not any longer, thought she might have longed to continue the play. In the end, she was but an inn-keeper's daughter, wasn't she? 

Or was she? The tempting taint of adventure was on the air and she, no matter her attempt to remain rooted to the ground, felt the earth falling away. She took one step and it felt as giant as if she were wearing seven-league boots. The second step was nothing compared to the first, and the next almost had her before him. As she halted on the fifth pace, she tilted her head back and looked up into his face. He, too, was pale in the moonlight, and the hand he held out to her felt like it was made of steel, encased in the most supple of leathers. Her hand was strong and she gripped his both to keep herself from falling over and to keep him from falling away. Now that she'd reached for the dream, she had little inclination to release him to anyone. 

“It sounds, lovely,” she said with a bravado born out of wild dances in dim morning lights. She had been walking a world of fairy and magics for longer than he'd given his blessing on it, so she wasn't completely immune to its heady perfumes. Her lips parted and she smiled, sudden and bright. “Take me t'your horse, ser. Best be on our way a'fore th' night's half gone.”