Giles coughed into his beer cup and muttered something incoherent after he had recovered his breath. In the flickering firelight it was difficult to tell, but it wasn't too difficult to imagine his cheeks reddening. But whatever he felt at Mialla's teasing was banished by mention of her past. "Lucky that they let you live?"<br/><br/>"Who would kill a child just because she was born on the wrong side of the bed?" Marian echoed his sentiment. "That's just evil."<br/><br/>"A family must be very poor to be bothered that much by an extra mouth to feed, or very high-ranking, to be bothered enugh for murder by ... an irregularity in their bloodline," Giles reasoned, now that he had recovered from his surprise. "And you don't strike me as a poor man's daughter. A farmgirl would have been in tune with the weather and not to been surprised by it."