Patience and Lacey had shared was that a man or woman who had passed their thirtieth year unwed was likely to remain so. “Set in his ways,” Patience would declare at the gossip that some graying lord had suddenly begun to court a young girl. “Spring has turned his head, but she’ll find soon enough there is no room in his life for a partner. He’s had it all his own way too long.” And so I began, very slowly, to see myself. I was often lonely. I knew that my Wit quested out for companionship. Yet that feeling and that questing were like a reflex, the twitching of a severed limb. No one, human or
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