Rose looked like a lost puppy. Caitlyn had so many things she wanted to say, so many adages about love that might or might not be helpful. But in the end she decided against trite platitudes.
"You already did the first thing. You were honest with yourself. You, Rose, Princess of Birle, have feelings for your personal knight." The brunette tried to keep a straight face, but her eyes danced with amusement.
Thankfully Rose was too wrapped up in her own turmoil to notice. "Alright, then what is the second thing?"
"The second thing you need to do is decide." Caitlyn shrugged. Her experience with love herself was limited, but she had been very observant at court. Intrigues and love were the top amusements there for the lady-in-waiting.
"Decide what?" Rose made many decisions on a daily basis, but what the other woman was proposing seemed different somehow.
"You must decide what to do with those feelings. While we cannot control the feelings that well up inside us, how we respond is within our control. So you must decide: do you want to pursue the attraction you feel or reject it." Caitlyn could not hide her intense interest in the answer.
Depending on how things went, both Rose's life and her own could change dramatically.
Rose's heart skipped a beat. Reject the feelings? Was that an option? She had seen quite a few ladies choose duty and comfort over love. But if the feelings of love were rejected, was it possible to develop those feelings for someone else?
The princess believed it must be a possibility.
It would make sense to suppress her attraction. Ethyn was her brother's friend. Maybe her feelings of affection for the man were just bleeding over from her love of her Silver. She would not want to make her dearest 'Sean' upset by ruining the mission he had given them.
Love could be very messy, and it might endanger the kingdom.
There was also her father. Rhodri seemed intent on getting her wed.
"I cannot help but feel this is all father's plot somehow. That I am being tricked into falling in love." Rose sighed. Hadn't he been just a little too happy about the green-eyed man becoming her knight? Surely she was being manipulated! "What do you think, Cait?"
"Basing your choice on other people's desires is not helpful in this instance. I have plenty of opinions, but what I think matters very little. What do you think you should do?" The lady turned the question back on her mistress.
Rose winced. It would have been much easier to argue with her friend than to state her own thoughts. 'Why does she have to be so agreeable all of a sudden? Where is the person who told me not to go to see my brother? Of course, if I had listened then....I likely wouldn't be in this predicament now.'
"I think. I think I should find out how he feels first. There is no point in pursuing anything if this...whatever it is...is one sided." Rose nodded. The safest course of action was not action at all.
Like any wise ruler, the princess needed more information before coming to a decision. Caitlyn looked in surprise at the blonde beauty beside her.
"What?" Rose could feel her cheeks burn. There was clearly something she was missing.
Composing herself Caitlyn took back up her stitching. "And how, Your Highness, do you propose to find out his feelings?"
"I...I have my ways." The blue-eyed woman defended herself poorly.
After snipping the end of her thread, Caitlyn unfastened the hoop and took the finished cloth in her hands. "Does one of those ways involve....flirting?"
Rose's eyes opened to nearly the size of her head. "What? No! Of course not! How could you ask such a thing? Why would you even think that? I..." The princess placed her hand over her mouth to stop the tide of objections. She already felt like she had protested too much.
Caitlyn pouted. "Oh, my mistake, Your Highness. Then I don't suppose you will be needing this." She lifted the handkerchief.
The stitching on it was exquisite, with a purple rose over laid with an 'R' in delicate script. Had it been larger and not in the corner of a square of cloth, the princess might have insisted that it be hung on the wall as a decoration.
But Rose's eyes glittered for a moment before she looked away. "Why would I need that?" she turned up her nose.
Caitlyn was not offended; she had seen the greedy look in the other woman's eyes. "I suppose you won't unless you want to give someone a token of your affection."
"That is so old-fashioned," Rose pretended to be offended. She had given a few handkerchiefs out over the years at tournaments, but they were ceremonial in nature and not affectionate. The idea of someone having a tangible memento of her feelings to cling to was a little too intimate for her comfort.
And yet...
Rose sighed heavily. "Fine, fine. If you will stop looking at me that way, I shall take it. But I am only doing this for you."
The princess snatched the cloth a little too eagerly and tucked it into her sash. Caitlyn decided to play along. "I appreciate your sacrifice. It does help me feel like I am doing my job when you honor traditions in such a way."
"It is my duty as a princess to uphold the ways of the past," Rose ran her fingers along her waist, still thinking about the little piece of cloth and what she might do with it. "But I must also find new traditions too, shouldn't I?"
The woman's change in tone was so sudden that Caitlyn blinked once before answering. "I think you should do what you think is best and right, regardless of tradition."
While the lady knew decorum, Caitlyn also knew from experience that what was expected and what was right were not always the same thing. When conscience and law clashed, the brunette believed that choosing what was right was more important than doing what was expected or even legal.
Thankfully she lived in a country where those instances were very few indeed. In other places, people were not so fortunate.
"Then, that settles it." Rose gave a confident nod, but then she winced. "But Cait...what if he doesn't feel the way I do?"
"Then you find someone who does," the other woman responded easily. Caitlyn felt a little false in her answer as she had been unable to do so herself when she thought Ashton had no interest. But she herself could not refute the reasoning.
"And what if I get my heart broken?" the princess went from looking confident to fragile in the blink of an eye.
"Then you will find a way to put the pieces back together and move forward. It will hurt, but you are strong enough to get through it if it happens. Who knows, a little heartbreak might do you good," Caitlyn chuckled.
If the princess longed for adventure, that was one the heart could go on without ever leaving home.
"Though, if I'm being honest, I think other people's hearts are far more likely to be broken than yours..." Caitlyn was cut off as the door flung open and Sir Ethyn was re-admitted with barely a knock. As he was now part of the princess's retinue, he did not receive any announcement of his arrival.
Because of this, the two ladies were caught off guard by his entrance. And even more so by his words. "Who's broken the princess's heart? I will make sure to break them!"
Rose went red with embarrassment, but Caitlyn, unbothered, picked up another blank handkerchief and started to attach it to her hoop.
"Really, Sir Samberg. It is not nice to eavesdrop. Especially when we were talking about you..."