“I’m sorry, Lady Harriet.” Ignoring Harriet’s yelp, she smiled and asked, “Would you mind accompanying me for a little while?”
“Huh?”
Things moved at a frantic pace after that. Rishe asked Elsie to take care of things, requested Tully to visit again tomorrow, changed her dress, and headed outside. Dodging the head maid and her suggestions, Rishe took Harriet’s hand with a big smile on her face, then brought her to just the place she’d planned on.
The back of a horse.
“Eeeek!”
Seated behind Harriet in the saddle, Rishe held the reins with her arms around the princess and took the horse over a grassy hill.
Siting sidesaddle, Harriet gripped the pommel. Her body shook as she spluttered, “I-I’m riding on…a horse!”
“Women don’t ride horses on the western continent, do they?” Rishe asked sunnily as the horse plodded along. “I wanted to take you to the cape, but it rained this morning, you see. A carriage would get its wheels stuck in the muck, and it’s too high up, so I thought we’d take a horse.”
“W-women ride horses together on this continent?!”
“Oh, no! Even here, women don’t usually hold the reins. You’d normally ride with a man in a similar fashion as you are now, Lady Harriet. It’s hard to ride in a dress, after all,” Rishe said with a bright smile on her face.
Harriet’s mouth flapped open and closed like a fish, her ears flushed scarlet. The princess kept her grip on the saddle, but strangely, she also ceased to tremble. She sat tall in front of Rishe, her eyes darting around at the scenery.
Is Lady Harriet enjoying this too?
Rishe continued her explanation with a confident grin. She took one hand from the reins and lifted her skirt to show Harriet. “The dress I’m wearing right now has a slit in it, so I can straddle a horse. I have enough on underneath it that I don’t need to worry about it flipping open.”
“L-Lady Rishe, Princess Harriet!” The head maid was trailing behind them on foot. She clapped a hand to her forehead and exclaimed, “I thought perhaps I should let it go as a matter of diplomacy, but I’ve decided I must speak up! It’s not too late! This is far too unladylike, you two! We can ready a carriage for you, so get down from that horse immediately!”