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Mary covered a yawn with her thimble. She began to suspect the mistress of telling this particular tale for Mary's benefit, more than Hetta's.

'Now, what Huw and Bet didn't know,' said Mrs. Jones, her voice going deeper and livelier, 'was that all the while it was the Little People that were helping her spin.'

Mary's mouth twisted. She might have known. This place was riddled with superstition. Countryfolk couldn't tell the stuff of their dreams from real life. 'Do these fairies ever help anyone to sew, then?' she murmured through the pins in her mouth.

'Never that I heard of, only to spin,' said Mrs. Jones with a quick smile that showed the gap in her front teeth. Did she know Mary was poking fun at her? Her voice reverted to the dramatic as she turned back to the child. 'Now, Elin was in the habit of carrying a sharp little knife in case the Little People ever tried to take her away with them.'

Hetta nodded soberly.

'But one day she forgot her little knife.'

The child sucked in her breath.

'That evening she didn't come back from the stream,' whispered Mrs. Jones dramatically, 'not the evening after, nor the one after that. All that winter Huw and Bet waited for their maid, but she never came home.'

Hetta pressed closer on the black curve of her mother's hooped skirt.

'Now the next spring,' Mrs. Jones went on softly, 'as soon as it thawed, Bet went down to the stream to look for the girl.'

As if she would, thought Mary sceptically. As if she'd take the trouble.

'Bet looked up and down, that day, and went back the next day, and the one after that. And at last when she was walking along the bank she fell down into a great cavern under the water, and who do you think she found there?'

A broad grin split Hetta's face. 'Elin. Was she—'

Her mother put a finger to the child's mouth. 'But no matter how hard Bet tried, she couldn't save the girl and bring her home.'

Hetta chewed on her upper lip.

'Elin was now wife to an evil fairyman, see, and she'd had his baby, and she could never come back to the mortal world no more.'

There was no sound but the crackle of the flames.

'What a fool of a girl,' remarked Mary at last, 'to forget her little knife.'

Mrs. Jones gave her a sorrowful smile. 'It could happen to the best of us.'

Hetta was still lost in thought. 'And were Huw and Bet left all alone then?'

Mrs. Jones was about to answer when Mary butted in sardonically. 'Not at all. They went to the next hiring fair and got themselves a more sensible maid.'

Daffy cleared his throat, startling them all; he'd seemed asleep. 'You don't know the story,' he told Mary gruffly. 'So why don't you just hold your damned tongue?'

Mary stared across the room. In the shadows his expression was unreadable. She stuck her needle through a double fold of linen. 'I'll go to my bed, so,' she said stiffly, getting to her feet and dropping the darning on the pile.

Mrs. Jones came back from putting the child in her cot and found Daffy still staring into the dying fire. He nibbled at a callus on the side of his thumb. It wasn't like him to cause unpleasantness; she'd always thought of him as an easy-natured fellow. She could see the girl had got under his skin.

A prickly burr on the outside, was Su Rhys's daughter, but that was only her armour. So much would be obvious to anyone who looked into those dark, searching eyes. A bare fifteen, and lost her mother as fast and brutally as a baby abandoned in a gutter! Mrs. Jones didn't like to dwell on it. When she thought of her friend Su's life in London, she shuddered. She thanked her Maker for giving her a husband she could rely on through all trials, and a solid trade, and a house to raise her daughter in, and maybe even a son to come.

She picked up her darning as she sat down across from the manservant. It would be easier to say nothing, and safer, but sometimes it seemed to Mrs. Jones that she'd spent her whole life choosing the easy and the safe, and saying nothing.

But it was Daffy