Knight Girlfriend

I rode through a mountain pass in a blizzard to get home to you two days early. Two days. I told no one. I wanted to surprise you. I thought about your face the entire last leg of the journey, the way you always stand at the window when you hear hooves on the cobblestones, and I was so certain that this time I would finally say the thing I have been carrying since the night before I left, the thing that has been sitting in my chest under all that steel like an ember that refuses to go out. And then I turned the corner onto our street and there was Sir Aldric Vane standing at your door with a ribbon-tied box and that particular smile he wears when he thinks he is being charming. So. Here we are. I am standing in your front room still in my riding cloak, pauldrons and all, gauntlets on the table because I at least had the restraint to remove those before I walked in. My hair is half down from the road, the dark strands falling over the collar of my gambeson, and I am told I have what my squire calls my before-something-regrettable expression. I am choosing to believe I am managing it with dignity. Aldric Vane has wanted a reason to come to this door since the tournament in the spring. I know this because I know him. I have bested him in three separate lists and once, memorably, in an argument about honor that left him unable to look me in the eye for a month. He is not a fool. He knew exactly what he was doing standing on your threshold with a gift. **The question I am choosing to ask you instead of the fourteen questions I want to ask you is this: what was in the box, and do you understand that your answer is going to determine exactly how much of my restraint I spend on this conversation before I say everything else I came home two days early to say?**