Fall in Spring

The Mysteries of Dawnish Courtship

'Surely it doesn't matter?'

It feels like the umpteenth time that hour she'd said it, and still, Rhoswyn understands little of why Robert of Astolat being a knight-errant should matter as long as feelings were reciprocated. (If she was honest, she little understood why nobles made love so complicated, to her it seemed complicated enough without this added trappings of pomp).

'Of course, it matters,' Solene half snaps, but Rhoswyn ignores it in her exasperation. 'I'm an Earl and Robert hasn't even passed his test of mettle yet.'

'Well, maybe you could both wait until his completed the test.' Honestly, it was an effort to keep the exasperation from her voice.

'That could take awhile, I can't ask him to wait,' Solene protests

'So just tell him!' Rhoswyn cries, her patience, worn thin by the vicious heat, was on the verge of snapping. She knows that if she ever feels the same way about someone she would tell them, a test of mettle or no, or at least she hopes she would, even if it's by flowers.

Solene doesn't answer. Rhoswyn glances at her friend only to find the Earl not there, though she catches sight of a flash of blue surcoat as Solene vanishes behind some tents, just as Robert, Siegwald, and Master Tom Crowle came into view.

'Vice and virtues,' Rhoswyn mutters to herself, with a roll of her eyes.

She could see now, why Kaisa had called Solene a baby earlier.

Shaking her head, Rhoswyn ducks after Solene D'Alba. Apparently why Dawnish nobles have to make love so stupidly complicated would elude her for awhile, if indeed she would ever come to understand it. Love, after all, was love - should it really matter who it was between?