One of the perks of being a wicked Baron is that I can indulge my eye for the ladies. I have Mistress Isolde's permission in this, for she knows that when I stop looking, I've either found something or (more likely) I'm dead. When Mistress Siobhan Breoghan was resident in Meridies, she was one of the ladies I frequently cast an admiring eye on.
At the first Bridge Too Far event in Seleone, Isolde and I happened to spy Siobhan crossing the other side of the list field. Isolde wished to talk to Siobhan, Laurel's business no doubt, but was not having any luck getting her attention. Finally, I called out (though not loud enough that Siobhan could actually hear me),
"Yo! Cutie!"
At this point, Mistress Isolde looked at me rather incredulously and asked,
"Yo! Cutie?" "You're right," I replied, "Yo! Mistress Cutie!"
As I said, I pitched my voice so Siobhan couldn't hear, and I'm sure you will note, it is only after the good Mistress has safely moved to Ansteorra that I'm telling this tale.
In a similar vein, shortly after she and Baron Gordon Blackwolf had moved to Axemoor, Squire Esteban Tomas de Santin took to calling Baroness Antonia Martin de Castille, "Sweet Hips". I have no idea how this epithet came about, but Santos played no favorites; he also called Isolde, "Cute Hips".
Before you start playing the name game with your fellow Seleonese, I should like to point out that one should take care what one calls another Gentle, even in a spirit of jocularity; it can have unforeseen repercussions. Take for example this tale, told to me about Rhiannon of the Isles.
One evening, when Lady Rhiannon was Seneschal of the Kingdom of Meridies, she traveled to the shire meeting of a nearby group. She had been advised by the group that shire meetings were dissolving into acrimonious exchanges of accusations and recriminations and fist-fights were beginning to break out in the parking lot afterwards. The group was, in short, on the verge of civil war and the only recourse seemed to be to call in the Kingdom Seneschal in to arbitrate on the matter.
After she arrived, Rhiannon proceeded to try to get to the bottom of the trouble. Working backwards from the most recent incidents, she traced the discord back to its source. It seems that at a shire event some months earlier, one of the shire members, who was non-armigerous, called a Lady of the shire, "Toots." The Lady took umbrage at this lack of respect from a non-armiger and that's what started the row.
When Rhiannon heard this, her reaction was immediate:
"Toots? Toots! Let me tell you something, Toots..."
Rhiannon then proceeded to read the whole shire the riot act about wasting the Kingdom Seneschal’s time with a problem that should have been handled at the outset in just five minutes time. It is tales like this and Cake Pans (Vintage Tale #9) that make me realize what an "interesting" job the Kingdom Seneschal has.
It was for these reasons that when Daphne of Colchester became Kingdom Seneschal I wished her, "No cake pans."