With the fire started, Silke rolled back on her heels and stared at the flickering flames. The Kaspers had several servants whose duties were exclusively tending the estate lands. For some of them they had mundane tasks that were typical of a nobleman's home: cultivating a flower garden, maintaining a vegetable patch for fresh produce, trimming overgrown hedges, and the like. Others had more uncommon responsibilities that included pruning and re-clearing the paths through the forest, tracking the predator population of the woods, gathering medicinal herbs that grew in the thickets, or cleaning and provisioning the cabin. Firewood was regularly chopped to fuel the cabin's hearth, neatly stacked both beside it and in a storage closet towards the rear of the tiny house.

Shivering as a chill passed through her, she pulled the ribbons and pins out of her hair, and shook the long lockets free. While she wasn't quite certain what (if anything) she wanted to do about her clothes, she could at least do something about her hair, which was so long and thick it seemed to have absorbed a gallon of rain from their short jaunt to the cabin. Standing and walking to the kitchen, she leaned over the sink as she squeezed and wrung the water out of her hair until it was merely damp as opposing to sopping wet. Satisfied at the difference it made, she made her way back to the hearth and sat as close was as safe, enjoying the warmth that was beginning to spread from the fire.

The more she thought about it, the more she realized how unlikely it was that she'd find any fresh, dry clothing in the cabin suitable for her to change into. She wasn't opposed to wearing men's attire. Despite how carefully she curated her image for the courts, she didn't particularly care about looking pretty. With Galt she felt more invested in looking beautiful to [i]him[/i], though she wouldn't admit as much to herself, but she doubted that he'd suddenly reject her if he caught her wearing breeches. The real issue was the dimensions. All the garments in the closets were tailored to be roughly similar to the size of her male relatives, and thus none of the pants would accommodate the curvature of her hips.

"I'm glad you were able to find something," she said with the tiniest hint of envy. In the future she'd have to pay one of the groundskeepers to hide a spare set of clothing for her in one of the many nooks of the cabin. "We keep a lot of extra blankets here," she admitted as he moved to join her beside the fireplace. "In the winters it can be bitterly cold, even with all the hearths lit, and our most elderly guests will complain if they don't have twice as many covers during the night." There were some younger, healthier critics as well that she was convinced simply wanted extra linens to have more than their companions, as if it was a way to passive-aggressively assert themselves.

"Thank you," she said with sincere, earnest gratitude as he draped the blanket over her. Silke wrapped it more snugly around her right shoulder, leaving space on her left if he wanted to join her beneath its soft, fluffy comfort. She didn't need the cushion he set on the floor, as she was an accomplished rider with great endurance for the saddle, but she remained silent; if she pointed out she wasn't sore at all, it might injure his pride. Closing her eyes, a contented sigh escaped her lips. Though she was a touch cold, she was suddenly tired from her long day, and the cozy spot before the heart made a nap incredibly tempting.

His question distracted her, and she blinked her eyes back open, stealing a glance at him. It was easy to forget how much of her life he knew nothing about. Of course, she was similarly ignorant of his life experiences, as they had all but lived in entirely different worlds before he was granted the title of count for saving a duke's life so valiantly. "I came here with my brother Alistair," Silke stated in a gentle tone, cognizant of the fact he didn't know about her deceased sibling. "There were three of us. Vincent is the eldest, Alistair was the second son, and I was the youngest. Even when we were young, Vincent was always paranoid about letting me do things with them, that I'd get hurt because I'm a girl," she recalled with a fond smile. "Alistair would bring me along anyway, or we'd go on adventures on our own. We'd play here often since it didn't get much use and it took more time for the adults to find us to stop our mischief."

"Do you have any siblings? Or did you grow up with anyone close to you like a sibling?" she inquired.