After a few minutes, here he is, his hands behind his back. "I come bearing gifts! I can only hope this metaphor will bring a smile to your lips, for no flower can match your beauty." He bows and offers her a bouquet of... lettuce.

Yep, that's a smile on her lips, complete with a little giggle.

"Thank you, sir," she says, trying to be austere and imperious and getting horribly sabotaged by her smile. She accepts the bouquet.

And then the other hand comes out from behind his back and that one contains an actual bouquet of flowers. "Oh, my, where did that come from. Such an unexpected surprise!"

"You, that," she says, and then she takes the flowers. There's more of that pretty smile of hers. "This is ridiculous. You're ridiculous."

Her smile is so so pretty. "I hope that's a good ridiculous." He takes the lettuce back and offers her one arm. "Shall we go feed the ducks, my dear?"

"Yes, all right." She takes the offered arm and gives him, then the flowers, an amused look. Or perhaps it's 'delighted,' it might instead be delighted.

So they can walk over to the pond! It's not a nice, sunny day out, so not many people are out and about, and they're alone when they reach it.

It's very cute, actually.

"Heeeeere ducky, ducky. We have nutritionally appropriate food to illegally feed you with!" She carefully balances the flower bouquet in the hand hooked through his arm, then rips a chunk out of the lettuce bouquet to ply the ducks with.

The ducks... all swim away. "—oh, right. Animals hate vampires. I should probably stay away while you feed them."

"Ah. That's sort of a pity, but not a deal breaker. And it's less fun to feed ducks as a date if I must ditch the date to do it. Pardon me a moment." She then plucks the bouquet out of his hand and tosses the whole thing pond-wards.

"Right, ducks fed, off we go to let them eat!"

—he sporfles. "You are a delight," he says. "Yes, off we go, then, we have a whole park to explore as an excuse to spend more time together."

She beams at him. "We do! Though I've actually already been here before, so if you'd like the proper park exploration experience with me, we'll have to go somewhere else."

"Well, the exploration needn't be with the purpose of getting to know the place, but if there is somewhere you'd like to know hereabouts that you've never been to... or somewhere someone with vampiric speeds could take you to..."

"That second one's tempting, but I have no place in mind to visit. I'm open to suggestions from the someone with vampiric speeds, you'd know what places are easy to reach better than I would."

"Then I might need to carry you."

"Oh. Yes, of course that's how it would work, what else was I expecting." She hums and gives him a considering look. "And carrying me around won't make it harder for you to resist eating me, and won't potentially injure me on your perfect marble arms?"

"I can make it very comfortable. I won't go as fast as I can, that would damage you; you will otherwise be perfectly safe from me or the environment."

"Okay," she agrees, a little bashfully. "Then you may carry me away somewhere."

"If I may?" he says, offering his arms.

She glances around to confirm that there are no witnesses, then moves in front of him, where she'll be easy to scoop up. "Go ahead."

Scoop! "You ready?"

Her breath catches a little upon the scooping, but she nods.

"Yeah," she confirms, softly.

He turns in a seemingly random direction and—takes off.

He's fast. It's one thing to see him disappear, and a whole other to experience it, see the trees flashing by like nothing, knowing he's going slow so as not to hurt her.

And it doesn't hurt at all. It's very smooth sailing, all in all, she can barely feel the ups-and-downs of his feet hitting the ground, and the chilly wind on her face is exhilarating. His arms aren't soft and yielding, but they are arms, and they do adapt to her shape, cuddling her close to his nonbeating heart, and it's actually reasonably comfortable.

"Oh," she breathes, tucking herself in towards his chest. Yes, this. This was probably not a bad idea.

Her heartbeat picks up and she has just a hint of a shiver to her. Perhaps that's from the wind and her chilly carrier, but from context... it probably isn't.

They go east for a while, and there isn't anywhere to hide—they're in plain sight—but he's going fast enough that people are unlikely to think much of this, and he's running along open fields rather than streets, not even the cows have enough time to fear him.

Eventually there's something in the distance—it's blurry, she probably can't make it out—until he starts slowing down to a mere much-faster-than-cars trot, and if she looks she might see the castle.