At first Samantha was confused. Stay here with him? How? With him in a house? Live with him? Marry him? The implications all ran through her head and she blushed furiously.<br/><br/>“Faren, I love you. I know that much but this is sudden for me. Stay here with you? There would be much for you to do before you had a house, perhaps I could work for Nimue. If Maric is building a mansion, he will need help with the gardens. That is my speciality. Perhaps we could approach Lord Maric to see if he would be willing to allow me to work for my room and board while you procure us a small place where eventually we could live as a married couple. The Church would frown upon us cohabitating as fornicators. I would not wish to confess weekly to the priest that I had had carnal knowledge of a man not my husband.” She hastily explained.<br/><br/>Samantha was stuttering by the time she got to the carnal knowledge part of her sentence. Mother Mary! She couldn’t believe she had been so wickedly bold. It must be the time she had spent with Nimue. She was a bad influence for circumspect speech.<br/><br/>“Would you live close to Lord Maric? Perhaps on his land? Would you continue your allegiance to him or would you become a vagabond hired arm and leave me for months on end to wonder if you were safe?”<br/><br/>Samantha felt as if she were standing outside her body watching herself be stupid, but she couldn’t seem to stop herself.<br/><br/>“I wouldn’t wish to live at the Tor, although Lord Varatt lives on those grounds so he can frequently visit the Lady Vivianne, but I know they would encourage me for my knowledge of plants. I would be afraid the priest would excommunicate me for blasphemy were I to take up lodging with the Lady of the Lake.”<br/><br/>Samantha was proud of herself for not saying that the Lord Varatt lived on the grounds so he could frequently visit the Lady Vivianne’s bed. But that was true as well. Did all the adults in the world seek pleasure of the flesh, except her? She would have thought that men and women as old as Varatt and Vivianne would have long ceased that. Samantha grew warm thinking of them wrapped in naked pleasure in the Lady’s bed.<br/><br/>“I’m sorry,” she said when she realized that Faren had spoken, “Please repeat that. I’m not sure I heard you right.”