“So it’s been a few days,” Tulip said. “Are you as disgusted by the suitors as I was after my first season?”

Tulip and Freya walked behind the two elder ladies while those two chatted.

“I mean they’re fine,” Freya said, “Why… what happened during yours?”

“Captain stinking Bell is what happened.”

“Ahh.” Freya imagined a great many things going wrong with that match.

“No Miru— There I was an informant. Enter the most beautiful rabbit Lieutenant of the scouts—do you know about this? He bought his commission to gain that position, waiting for the old scout commander to step down. He then reformed the scouts against a lot of the assembly’s lords' and ladies' advice. The claw of the regiment gave him the leeway, just enough rope to go and hang himself. He goes and makes the scouts a central part of the recent war efforts and he gets a medal for heroism and all that, what was a young coalition mouse to do?”

“You fell for him?”

“So hard it was like being dropped by a bird.”

Tulip’s whiskers extended up with excitement. She began speaking faster.

“The whole season I followed him around like I was a lost chicken, and he was you. I had to work collecting intelligence for him. Then after weeks of him saying yes to dances and me expecting something, anything, the heartless rabbit goes and doesn’t even propose. He doesn’t even deign to propose to any other debutante either, so it’s not like he found someone else.”

Freya paused, her ears perking up.

“He could have been trying to keep it professional,” Freya said.

“I couldn’t understand. I wasn’t ready to see that. Not back then. But now…?”

Freya nodded, searching Tulip’s eyes. “If he had married someone else…?”

“Then at least I would understand. But when he didn’t at least say something about it to me—all the while we were working together… It felt like he was saying, ‘Oh Tulip your work is great and I respect you, but I would rather be single forever than deign to entertain you as a wife.’”

Freya's jaw dropped. “I’m sure that he never meant it that way. Raven only knows his heart.”

“Probably Inurajg only knows the rabbit's heart at this point.”

Freya flashed a wan smile to Tulip.

“But I’m over it now. I’ve accepted my spinsterhood.”

Freya's face must have set something off.

“I’m fine! Okay! I would rather be alone than with the wrong person. If one of these lordlings wants me in their life, they have to meet me where I’m at. Too many of them are wary… to be with me? For me to marry, I think I want what my mother had.”

Freya placed her jaw back into place as the ladies in front of them arrived at the carriages

“Anyway don’t tell anyone, especially Holly, what I just told you,” Tulip said. “I have made my peace with that rabbit and we have a good working relationship now. And now that I’ve given you a secret that you will keep for life, I hope that you can understand why I don’t talk about him much. To him, yes. About him, only to a trusted few.”

Tulip's eyes also lent a certain credence to perhaps she wanted a friendship, and part of that was keeping secrets.

“I should hope,” Freya said, “for his sake, especially if you intend to become his new boss when Lady Raina retires.”

“That’s when I get to enact my seventeen-point revenge plan,” Tulip said, smoothing her paws together.

“You’re not serious about that, are you?”

“I could be, you’ll just have to wait…”

Freya considered that perhaps a woodland creature would have to be slightly off their rocker to be interested in such a rabbit, at least knowing what she knew now. If he was so wrapped up in his career, perhaps that was good for the ladies.