"This is so sudden… I admit that going back to Earth was on my mind, but maybe in eight years' time… Not even when you were supposed to go… And certainly not this soon."
"Well… things have changed very quickly," Alan answered.
"Yes. But it's not these things," Joseph replied, alluding clearly to Roxanne and her sisters, "that have propitiated the rush."
The statement hung in the air like a question.
But it remained unanswered. At least for the time being, in the dining room. The two men would surely talk it over later in private.
That night, Roxanne's nocturnal walk was on her own. When she'd gotten outside the street lamps' field of light, towards the hill, she heard someone knock on the inn's door. Hidden in the darkness, she stopped to look. It wasn't any of the guests that had dined with them that evening.
Adelle opened without delay and the man went inside with her, grabbing her backside.
Roxanne focused her attention on how much dirt the hem of her dress collected. It didn't matter. She'd already washed the one she'd worn in the morning and it was hanging out to dry. The following day, she'd once again have only one dirty dress, which was her aim. She couldn't realize, of course, the enviable climate they enjoyed. Like the beginning of a Mediterranean summer, when the washing hung out already dries easily, but the days are still cool enough.
Soon, however, she had no option but to redirect her thoughts to what had happened - not just tonight, but since the kiss on the hill.
She sat down on the same spot - the grass was flattened from her previous excursions - and recalled the sensations she'd experienced having Alan so close to her. They had been a revelation. A revelation of her true feelings towards Joseph, whom she couldn't stop thinking about while the kiss had lasted. Would things in life, in life outside the castle, always be like that? Would she have to become so involved to find out what she really wanted? She reflected on this for a while. No. She wasn't the only protagonist of or responsible for this affective condition. On the one hand, Joseph was earning her fondness, protecting her, taking risks for her, making whatever was between them - on his side, it was probably friendship or a putative brotherly sense of responsibility - grow constantly every day.
On the other hand, Alan's behavior reminded her more and more of her own father, as Lorraine had briefly but aptly described him. Able to light the spark of love, but able thereinafter to sustain it? To not make her feel much lonelier than before meeting him? She felt close to her mother - to the first one, to the one that had carried her in her womb and had died loving her before even actually laying eyes on her - for the first time. She seemed to be preventing an emotion that could end up hurting her badly thanks to the knowledge of her terrible experience. Her mother had left her a legacy of premature calluses on her heart, which she was now beginning to see the fruits of, and she was glad.