He knows. His words make everything inside her still, as if her shifting emotions had suddenly been frozen in place. Breathing is an issue for a moment until she pushes past it, more walls raising up in response to her refuge being called out. Do you need to bake. Yes, she needs it desperately, but he knows and he would worry and there would be no solace in it, just the sensation of standing at the edge of a precipice and waiting to tumble over into it.

They are friends but this is too close. Only her handmaidens have held this closeness to her in so many years, and for him to already be edging into this space in her life... She isn't ready for it. But she can't tell him that either.

"Tea by the lake sounds lovely," is what she does tell him, wearing a soft smile because it really does, and other different circumstances she would be completely charmed by the suggestion. "The sun will rise soon."