"I could guess that they might not think it was anyone's business but mine, except for making me seem vaguely disreputable, unless you were planning to marry me, in which case I could guess that they'd say it would be appropriate for me to stop beforehand and not start again. If you married me and it was generally known that I did that sort of thing - well, people would feel sorry for you, especially since I'm not any kind of nobility. People, your parents likely included, would think it meant that I didn't really love you. While we're on the subject of your parents' opinions on you and me and marriage, I think that from what Cearl said to me yesterday, if you do plan on marrying me he'd appreciate knowing about it well beforehand."

"I don't plan on anything, right now."

"I figured."

"But it sounds like you have plenty of room to stop-and-not-start-again if that seems best later even if you do things now?" she shrugs. "Without that making anything worse?"

"Yeah."

"Well, for now I don't mind," she shrugs. "I mean, for - reasons internal to me I don't mind. If there are awful social consequences of some kind I will probably mind."

"Okay. I'll do my best not to incur even mild to moderate social consequences," he says. "Which amounts to making sure that the people who know I'm doing that and the people who know I'm the princess's ambiguously close friend aren't the same people. - By 'ambiguously close friend' I mean that it will occur to pretty much anyone who knows how close we are as friends to think that maybe I want to marry you, even if they don't also think we're doing anything socially unapproved in the meantime. And the presence of your father's guards wherever you go is going to make it pretty easy to prove that we aren't."

"They're actually for guarding you, but Cearl made it pretty clear that they're also for - the word is 'chaperoning'. It means something like, 'watching to make sure no Things are going on where they shouldn't be'."

"There's a word for that. Wow."

He giggles.

"If people are this obsessed with Things aren't they going to think some happened before there were any guards watching us?"

"I told your father there weren't any. He seemed to believe me. I think that'll be enough for most people - even if they don't directly ask him, just the fact that he's still letting me stay under his roof is a strong sign of approval."

"This is really complicated."

"Yeah."

"It's probably premature for me to be judgmental about complicated social structures I don't understand but it seems like it may be stupidly complicated."

"I've spent some time thinking the same thing. Judgmental isn't a natural state for me, though. It is what it is."

"I guess I can imagine how it keeps being the way it is, but I'm having a hard time imagining how it would start being that way to begin with."

"I'm afraid I can't tell you that. There are some things even I don't know."

He's pretty sure it was a joke. Sure enough to giggle at it.