Delivery (tag: Rowan)
This was probably very foolish. It was a bad idea. Bad enough that he’d not told anyone where he was going today. Just as he’d offered no explanation as to why he’d needed a basket. That had garnered him some very strange looks from his footmen, but Robin was used to simply staring down such looks. Though he knew that he wouldn’t get away with it if his mother asked, as she was the one that taught him that trick.
However, she didn’t ask. Nor did his groom question him when he mounted Felix to take him for a ride with a basket slung over his arm. Then again, his groom had seen him ride off with far stranger things, and Robin was no stranger to rumors about his behavior. There were certain things that simply couldn’t be helped.
Which worked to his advantage when he chose to do things like this. Deliberate decisions that took him outside the norm. It happened very, very rarely. Robin was careful to keep things as close to the way they had been before The Incident as he could. It was not only to keep others from talking, but also because it helped him feel more secure about being back. In fact, everything about his meeting with Miss Rowan was outside his usual norms, and surprisingly, he was just fine with that.
Robin was no longer a trusting sort of person, not since he had met The Girl. But there was something different about this girl, something that set her apart from all the usual females that were paraded in front of him. And he didn’t think it was simply because of her station, that she was not of royal birth or of the aristocracy. It was a little more than that. The prince had the feeling Rowan would be as she was, whatever her upbringing.
A theory, he admitted, that he would have no way of proving. So he was simply going to enjoy her company as it was. And he was going to stop questioning it, because really, this was the first time Robin had felt the urge to spend time with anybody outside of his family since returning home after The Incident. He was pleased to employ Mr. Wolfe and was looking forward to a debate. He would have given a job to that strange, jumpy man he’d found in the stables. But making a new friend? He hadn’t done that.
Until now.
So while it was probably very foolish, Robin could not regret the decision that brought him to this point. And it was with a light heart that he made the journey from the castle to the crossroads near the spot he’d first met Rowan. Just past the crossroads was what she’d told him. So he urged Felix forward, looking for a home that looked like it would belong to the young lady. There was a small cottage up ahead, and he had to think that was what the one she’d meant. Robin smiled as he approached.