"Nothing."
"All right."She clicks her tongue to communicate with her horse.
"You're not going to insist that I tell you?"I respond.
"You'll tell me if you want to," she says."If you don't, that's your business."
I let out a frustrated sigh."He thinks that Mama is using the meeting about suitors to send him a message about thinking above his station.But that's ridiculous."
"Is it?"
I glance at her before looking straight ahead.I'm a competent rider, but nowhere near as confident in the saddle as my siblings are.
Veronica sighs."I don't think he's wrong.You can be rather stubborn."
"And you can't?"
"Mama's not trying to matchmake me," she points out."I'm sure next year when she does decide that's what she'll be doing, I'll have my own share of stubborn moments."
"What's Mama got to be annoyed at you about?"I mutter.
"That I flirt too much.That I might accidentally lead on some ladies?That there are some potential candidates who things might be a little awkward with..."
"Have you truly slept with that many members of the nobility?"
She snorts in a very unprincess-like fashion."Of course not.I'm very discerning about who I take to bed.But there are some people I've rejected, and others that I share a former paramour in common with.It can cause a little bit of awkwardness.But that's a non-existent problem when we're talking about you."
"I'm not stubborn," I protest.
"All right, then you're set in your ways."
"That's a wordier way of saying the same thing."
"Precisely," Veronica responds as she turns her horse down a side path that will take us on one of the trails around the castle grounds.Thankfully, if we stay within them, we don't need a guard trailing behind us, though I'm sure the guards stationed on our path will be aware to look for us.
"You truly think that Mama is trying to send a message to Nate?"
"I think it's possible," she responds."She's reminding him that his chance of marrying you is so small, he might as well not even try."
I stare ahead of us at the treeline and listen to the rhythmic thud of the horses' hooves against the ground as I think about her words.I don't want them to be true."It seems cruel and unnecessary."
"Not to Mama," Veronica points out."She has no idea how seriously you feel about Nate.As far as she's concerned, this could just be a dalliance that'll be over in a year."
"You don't think that?"
"No," she says softly.
"I don't think Nate is trying to marry above his station," I say."I'm not even thinking about marriage."
"You are," Veronica points out."And he will have done."
"What?"
"I'm not saying that he's going to expect you to get married next week or anything, but he'll have thought about what it means to be in love with you.What he'll have to give up, and the rumours he'll have to face.He's already dealt with plenty of them about the two of you."
"Yes, he said.In the papers."
"Think how much worse they're going to be if the two of you start openly courting.He'll be the commoner courting the second princess, no matter what the truth of it is.People won't know or understand that you've been friends since before you truly realised what it meant to be a princess.They'll say that he's seduced his way into your bed."
