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It was early that day, the sun had barely peeked over the windowsill and sneaked into the tiny room when her blanket was pulled off of her in a swift motion. The sudden coldness made her shiver and curl up to a ball to prevent her body heat from escaping more than necessary. The windows were being opened, more coldness swept into the room along with the noises of the outside; mostly birds but also the chatting of servants that had woken before Rowan, tables and chairs were being dragged through the doors right beneath Rowan's window.

A rough hand slapped her cheek in a 'wake up you fool' manner. Rowan groaned and turned away, but she opened her eyes and sat up slowly. She was well aware that if she didn't the next slap wouldn't be a 'wake up' slap anymore, but a hard one. "I'm up", she growled as she rubbed her hands over her face.

"Get out of bed or it will be you scrubbing the floors! You have ten minutes!" The woman left with just that. Rowan shook her head to prevent herself from lying down again and fall back asleep. She swung her feet over the edge of the hard bed and stretched her back and arms.

Eight minutes later she was washed with a sponge and ice cold water, her body was in clothes, her hair was brushed as best as she could with that useless brush of hers and she had managed to turn it into a decent hairdo. Rowan leaned out of the window and enjoyed the breeze on her face for a moment.

"Hey pretty lady." The voice made Rowan smile and her eyes dropped to the ground. A young man of twenty-three years with short messy brown hair and a line of dirt on his chin grinned up at her. "Are you looking down on all of us again?", he teased her with the most charming smile she had seen any man manage to pull off.

"I was hoping you would have figured out how to wash the dirt from last week off of your skin by now", she talked back to him. "Right there." She moved her finger over her own chin to demonstrate the position of the dirt.

His arm moved over his chin but the dirt stayed. "They made me clean out the shack", he explained and a smirk appeared on his thin lips. "Isn't that your job, little missy?"

Rowan raised her eyebrows at him challenging. "Because I am a woman?"

"No", he put on that charming half-smile as if to make his words even smoother. "Because you're Rowan."

"Oh you wait til I get down there!" She yelled down at him with a laugh in her voice, but yet some seriousness that made it clear that she would very much kick his ass in their next secret session of dueling with sticks. Not that she believed they'd have any time to duel during the Courting Season.

A loud bang on the door and both the man and Rowan jumped. "Coming!", she yelled at the closed door and could hear how feet left from in front of her door. She shot the man below her window another look and he pulled a jokingly worried face, she chuckled at him, shook her head and closed the windows.

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You could have thought that the perfect setting, the perfectly clean floors and tables, the neatly planned out time schedule to finish everything just in time was enough to make this a rather relaxed day of work. After all the only thing that still needed to be prepared was the food and beverages for the guests. But it was far from that. As if the servants didn't spent all day the past three days cleaning every inch of the building - inside and outside - twice, they did it again a third time today with the very strict eyes of the Madam following their process. Rowan was lucky enough to not be cleaning today, she was directly pushed into the kitchen and had been sweating from the heat and the work. After hours of standing in the kitchen, chopping up vegetables, the Madam pulled her away from there, harshly told her to wash herself up real quick and then threw her into the big room where the guests would arrive in a couple of hours to arrange napkins correctly with a bunch of other women.

She was just folding up her 34th napkin when a woman approached her, she had forgotten her name. "I saw you this morning." Rowan looked at her with no interest as she continued to fold the napkins neatly. "You and him. You should be careful. The Madam wouldn't like this."

Rowan's eyebrows twitched but she prevented them from raising at the servant. "Are you talking about Evan? There is nothing going on with Evan and I." The woman shot her a look, but Rowan knew before she even said anything that the woman wouldn't believe her. "Trust me, you can have him." She left the table and left the woman looking after her outraged.

An hour later the Madam forced everyone out of the neatly clean room so they wouldn't destroy anything before the event started. She only kept Rowan behind and told her to fold a certain few napkins again, apparently they weren't folded in the exact size the others were. Rowan was smarter than to complain or try and argue. So she stood behind and started to redo the napkins the Madam had pointed her to.

Just about fifteen minutes into the redoing of the napkins, the musicians took their place on the little stage. They started rehearsing a very last time, soft music to play in the background while the attendants could talk, music to dance to later on, music to waltz to.

Rowan hadn't noticed when she had started but at some point she was swaying and the next moment she dropped the napkin she held in hands onto the floor and carried her body over the 'dance floor', her arms up as if to hold onto an invisible dancing partner. Her feet flew over the floor as she continued to waltz with herself to the music the band was providing. Her eyes were closed and if she only imagined hard enough she could pretend to be elsewhere, not stuck here, dancing with her princess back in the palace when all was peaceful still.

[i]Smack[/i]. A hard slap had landed onto the woman's face, sounding so loud in the big empty room even with the music playing, and Rowan had gasped loudly. She held onto her burning cheek, hair hanging in her face. The Madam yelled at her for dancing once again, all that swirling and twirling was not appropriate for a woman like her, she grabbed Rowan by the arm harshly and pushed her away, telling her to leave before she was receiving 'another one of these'.

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Rowan sat on the stairs outside of the kitchen that lead to a small, dirty courtyard. Evan came through the heavy wooden door into the back and sat on the stairs next to Rowan, he held an ice cold cloth to her cheek. Rowan made a disgusted face and pushed his arm away.

"It will show if you don't treat it", he said. "Do you want to be stuck cleaning the servant restroom's floor?" She rolled her eyes at that but took the cloth to put it onto her burning cheek. He was right. If the hand would show on her cheek she wouldn't be allowed anywhere near the attendants, which usually meant cleaning somewhere on all fours. "What did you do this time?", he wanted to know. There was no judgement in his voice and she was thankful for that part of his personality.

"I danced again, Evan", she replied and her eyes showed a spark. A spark that her friend loved to see. It made her glow, like a faraway star on the pitch dark ceiling of earth. "I danced and I felt like I could fly." Her eyes got dreamy and a smile appeared on her lips. "I couldn't help it, Evan. I would dance all night if I could."

He smiled and stood up. "And you will." Then he went back through the door that lead to the kitchen. Evan never worked in the kitchen, but he walked through it under the stern eyes of the others nevertheless. Rowan pouted for no reason in particular and held the cold cloth to her cheek.

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Night had just begun. The stars were shining in the dark. It was raining outside, but Rowan didn't mind. She was scheduled to be inside and stay right in this room until further notice. She was lucky that the Madam didn't put her on some other duty after having her caught dancing earlier.

The room got more crowded with each person and Rowan was swirling around in the dresses the lady servants were forced to wear and offered drinks, picked up used napkins to secretly replace with perfectly folded new ones and made sure no glasses were left standing around. The music was playing softly in the background. No one had danced yet. She wasn't even sure if a dance was scheduled for today. She doubted that anyone attending here would be man or woman enough to actually start a dance on their own, being the first ones on the dance floor, asking someone to partner up with them for one dance. She didn't understand why people weren't intrigued to dance.

Not surprising to her, most people have ignored her and haven't even cared to give her a single look when they took an offered drink from her silver plate. Also not surprising to her, two men have eyed her and gave her their typical flirting behavior with servants. The 'You are pretty and I wanna look your body up and down and you better appreciate that I am even turning one eye towards you, I am being nice to you here, complimenting you in a very sexist way, you better know I am better than you and you should fall on your knees for me' kinda way.

She just walked away from the third man that thought he could look at her breasts and not hide it, because clearly she would appreciate it from a duke. The amusing thing was that she almost enjoyed having their attention and it irked her to lean closer and whisper to them that she was into women and watch their face change once they grasped what she was saying. Tell them all the things she wanted to do with a lady, maybe their lady of choice.

She moved over the floor smoothly to a blonde woman standing by the window side, looking out on the garden. "May I offer the lady a refreshment?", she looked at the woman and held out the silver plate a little on which the drinks sat. They were supposed to know who their guests were, but Rowan had no idea who most of these faces belonged to, had never heard of their names before. She didn't know much about politics or the people who were responsible for them. So she wasn't aware of the fact that the woman was Duchess Philomena Ceswick. She knew it was someone high ranked, of course. That she was here to find someone to get married to.