Belle Marie Cygne ⚜ "Rose"

She closes her eyes again. "I don't like how this works, but it's been made clear to me that pretty girls are supposed to 'buy' themselves security and faithfulness and matrimony with the purchase price of their beauty and constancy and initial virginity. If I 'buy' less than that or 'spend' more than that - if I deviate from this pattern in any way other than perhaps growing into a lone spinster-scholar - then I stand a reasonable chance of being treated like a pariah. Certainly this could be alleviated with frequent travel, if I liked the idea of frequent travel. Certainly I could simply say that most of the people who'd treat me that way don't matter to me - but I've never had cause to test the borders of my father's affection, now, have I? And he matters. Certainly if you were not caught, no one could laugh at me - except anyone party to the borrowing arrangement, who'd have their reasons for silence likewise. If you could be sure you would not be caught. But I cannot imagine that things have gotten worse in this dimension in the past century. Perhaps you've only forgotten; perhaps the rules are simply different for men by enough that you never learned the counterpart framework."