"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.