A Fairy Tale-Part 2

Some months had passed since the princess first met her second knight.  With every conversation, every argument, every challenging debate, they grew closer and closer together.  As they daily conversed, the princess and the knight discovered the many things they had in common...both liking the same music, reading the same books, thinking about the same ideas.  Slowly the princess began to open up more and more of her heart to this wonderfully charming knight who had captured her fancy and given her more than almost any other friend ever had.  When the days were long and her maids were snippy and her work of being a princess grew intolerably dull, she could run to him for comfort or entertainment.  When she wanted to debate a new idea, she could always find a willing partner in her knight.  When her heart was heavy with sorrow over her lack of a prince, she could come to him and he would comfort her and encourage her with affectionate words and assurances of her true worth.  Though the knight often talked of a fair maiden back in his home town, the princess never felt pushed aside or unwanted in his presence.  To her, they were the closest of friends, and nothing more.  Or at least that was what she told herself every time she gazed into his dazzling chocolate eyes or heard his thrilling laugh.  Every time he told her how beautiful she was, or how much God had blessed her with talent and wisdom, she reminded herself that theirs was merely the deepest and truest of friendships.  

  But one day, all that changed.  One night as the princess and the knight were discussing, the princess heard a voice calling to her from outside her window.  To her dismay, it was the voice of a neighboring nobleman who was seeking for her hand in marriage.  Though the nobleman was eligable and kind, she viewed him merely as a friend and had no further interest in him.  Panicked, the princess looked desperately around for a means of escape, but it was too late.  The nobleman had already seen her at her window.  

As the nobleman came riding up to the fair princess's window, he was surprised to find another knight already beneath her window, serenading her with a lovesong.  The princess gazed down adoringly at the knight, the love for him evident in her eyes.  When the song was done, the knight turned around and rather nonchalantly informed him that he was too late.  The princess had already given her heart away to him.  Reluctantly, with many a backward glance, the nobleman rode away.  As soon as he was out of earshot, the princess and the knight burst out laughing, sure that their playacting had rescued the princess once again from an unwanted suitor.  

Though few men now sought the princesses's hand, tired of the constant rejection, the princess and the knight still kept up the act of being in love.  But as they continued to pretend that they were deeply in love, it gradually ceased to be a game for the princess.  Try as she would, her heart kept slipping further and further out of her grasp and into the hands of her knight.  Yes, she had now come to regard him truly as her own.  But did he love her?  Afraid of another rejection, the princess kept her true feelings for her knight hidden.  But soon the day would come when she could no longer keep silent.  

To be continued...