She watched him work until the sun sank behind the mountains, and she went from standing in his doorway to brushing dust and soot off a bench and sitting right there. In the forge. A novel experience, certainly. But not half so novel as the experience of huddling around scraps of parchment and scrawling numbers. Working sums. She'd even labelled a few boxes for him -- nailing paper to wood, and marking in plain letters the contents of each. Sansa promised to test him on their meanings another day.

At one point, she had calmly put herself to work sorting tong pairs. Broken and unbroken; little and big; dirty and clean. Her palms had gone black with iron debris and soot from the forge's fire, picked up off all the little implements she didn't know how to name. And when she'd asked Gendry for something to wipe it all away, she'd had to touch his fingers just to take an offered rag.

Not long after that, she dutifully excused herself from his company. The hour grew late. The skeleton guard in the courtyard wanted to retire, too. As usual, she slept little. But unlike usual, she hadn't been able to focus on her needlework. Too often, she sat back and replayed the afternoon in her mind. And that brief touch.

He felt warm.