Sansa has seen Highgarden at its best advantage only once before, during the days before of her and Willas' wedding, and so it takes her breath away when she sees the full extent of the preparations for Prince Aegon's arrival – Leonette, apparently, feels the same.
"Garlan and I were married at Cider Hall," she explains as they walk through the kitchen garden with Lady Alerie and Arya, baskets of fresh peaches hanging from their arms. "Your wedding was the first Highgarden celebration I was ever truly present for – I was tending my mother when Margaery married Renly Barathon, and aside from that, there has never been a time of true celebration that I was a member of the family for."
"I only wish that it were a more joyous occasion that were your second celebration, Sansa," Lady Alerie says, shaking her head. "Ah, this well be uncomfortable for us all, particularly if Prince Aegon behaves inappropriately towards you again."
Sansa and Leonette both stop, stunned by that.
"I-"
"Willas and Garlan did not say a word," Lady Alerie assures them, "but I know my sons well enough to understand when they dislike a man, and to understand why they dislike him." Then she grins. "And Marian tells me a great deal more about Willas than he would like, although you are never to tell him that."
Sansa wonders what else Marian has told Lady Alerie, and decides to ask later.
"Why are we gathering peaches?" Arya asks, hefting her basket – filled to overflowing – higher towards her elbow. "Aren't there servants for this?"
"A special mark of respect," Lady Alerie explains, "for particularly esteemed guests – peaches are a speciality of ours, dear, and for guests who we particularly need to impress, we present peaches picked by members of the family."
"As our husbands are in council, organising the war, it has fallen to us," Leonette adds. "Besides, we've picked enough that there will be more than enough for all of us, and Highgarden peaches really are as good as everyone says they are."
Sansa takes Arya's hand, worrying that her sister might object further, but instead, Arya shrugs.
"Makes sense," she says, surprising Sansa. "But what do you mean, Lady Alerie, that the prince was inappropriate towards Sansa?"
Willas swings himself down the stairs at Garlan's side, wondering how he didn't notice his arms strengthening to the point where it didn't ache to crutch up and down the stairs anymore.
"Are you quite certain that you can behave yourself with the prince?" Garlan asks quietly, his voice and their steps echoing off the walls. "You won't be able to balance well enough to hold him by the throat this time."
"I didn't hold him by the throat last time, either," Willas points out. "I held him by the front of his doublet. Utterly different."
Garlan only shakes his head and catches Willas' elbow when his crutches slip on the polished floor.
"Yes, well," Garlan offers. "Be glad Father is unaware of that. I can't see him being as amused by it as I was, hmm?"
"I imagine his reaction would be closer to Sansa's," Willas admits. "She was unimpressed by what she politely termed my theatrics."
The click of Willas' crutches and boot are louder by far than the soft thud of Garlan's boots, but not loud enough to drown out the steady thump of Father's feet following them down from his solar.
"You left something behind you, lad," he calls down to Willas, and Willas rolls his eyes at the sight of Sansa's Blossom gamboling down the steps at Father's feet. "She trails you near as faithfully as she does her mistress, it seems."
Willas bends down to scratch between Blossom's oversized ears, and he shakes his head in amazement.
"She trails whichever one of us is inside," he corrects Father. "And if we are both inside, she blatantly prefers Sansa to me."
"I should hope so," Garlan huffs, sweeping Blossom up and pressing a kiss to her head – a pet for the family as much as for Sansa, Willas thinks with a smile – before grinning to Father. "She was Sansa's gift, after all. Willas is just jealous."
Willas almost sticks his tongue out at Garlan for that poorly-hidden jape, but then he might have to explain why he did so to Father and it's truly not worth it.
"Put the dog down, little brother," he chides instead, and Garlan snickers a laugh before setting Blossom back down, where she proceeds to do nothing more than make a nuisance of herself by scampering their feet so Willas is afraid to lift his crutches in case he puts them back down on her paws. "Do you know, I think you picked the stupidest pup in the litter when you chose Sansa's gift, Garlan."
"Don't speak so of Blossom!"
Sansa's cheeks are pink and her hair mussed from the breeze outside, and the whole hall smells suddenly of peaches – Sansa and Mother and the others are all carrying two baskets each, heavily laden with fresh fruit that looks so ripe Willas is half tempted to steal some of it...
"If either of you boys even think about taking so much as a single peach," Mother warns when Sansa sets her baskets down so she can kneel and smother Blossom with kisses (if Willas were an honest man, he'd admit to being jealous of that, just a little).
"Where's Margie?" he asks instead, suddenly noticing his sister's absence – she was with Mother this morning, when she went to meet Sansa and her sister and Leonette in the orchards, he's sure of it – and frowning. "Has she taken ill?"
"Alla fell from a tree," Sansa says absently, and if Willas thinks that Arya Stark looks guilty then he must be the only one, for nobody else seems to notice how interesting she suddenly finds the floor. "We think she broke her wrist, so Margaery brought her to the maester with Merry and Megga's help."
"What possessed Alla to climb a tree?" Garlan asks, having missed the look on Arya's face that explained it all quite clearly – not someone he would have supposed Alla to wish to befriend, but he does not know his cousins that well, after all. "Alla? Alla Tyrell?"
"Yes, Garlan, your cousin Alla," Mother says, rolling her eyes and passing one of her baskets to Father. "Now, come along – we must get these to the hall and then prepare ourselves for the prince's arrival."
Every room in Highgarden has been stuffed full of sweet-smelling flowers, and Sansa knows that she only has Willas to thank for the merciful lack of roses in their own rooms.
Their new rooms – he was true to his word, those weeks ago when he offered to move upstairs, and their rooms, a suite across from Lady Alerie's that looks south across the gardens and out over slow, rolling fields of flowers as far as she can see, are beautiful, high-ceilinged and airy and full of windows, huge windows that let in so much light Sansa half wonders how the walls don't just collapse under the weight of the roof – are brimming over with honeysuckle and clematis and wisteria, twisted into pretty arrangements that climb temporary trellises around the windows in their solar and that curl around the posts of their bed, leaving tiny blossoms all over their pillows every night.
"Just think," Willas calls over his shoulder as he levers himself carefully out of the bath on his crutches, "by the time the prince is gone, I shall be able to bathe with both legs in the bath!"
"Stop it," Sansa laughs, wincing when the comb in Marian's hand catches in her hair. "You've done nothing but whine about that cast since the day Maester Lomys put it on, a few more days will hardly kill you."
"It is killing me," he sighs melodramatically, waving Marian away when he lowers himself onto the bench of the dressing table beside Sansa. "Maester Lomys has forbidden me from going outside, he says it's too likely I'll slip and damage my leg – I'm bored, Sansa!"
"Well, there will be plenty of excitement to be had inside while Prince Aegon and his people are here," she says firmly. "Did you learn nothing from Alla's fall? It is slippy out, Willas, it's rained for the past three days almost without break!"
Rain here in the Reach is as pretty as everything else, soft and warm, and it's just as lethal as everything else, too, turning every surface as slippery as if there's been frost in the night.
"Yes, well, Alla put herself in harm's way when she climbed that tree," he points out. "I would not be so foolish – are you wearing the blue tonight, my love?"
"You would be just as foolish, just because you would refuse to accept what you cannot do," she says wryly, knocking away his hands when he moves to pull her into his arms – he is naked, and still dripping wet, and she already has her smallclothes and her shift on and they are silk, which will be ruined if he gets his wet hands all over it. "And no, the gold."
The gold is not truly gold, but rather a deep, warm, golden-green, a lovely autumnal colour that Sansa very much liked when the dressmakers offered fabric samples. Lady Alerie agreed that it would be a lovely foil for her hair, and so she has a new gown that Willas has not yet seen, but that she hopes will stun him completely.
"I have a gift for you, then," he says, surprising her, and he calls for Aldwin and Marian before she can react – Aldwin, who has a robe over his arm that he holds out until Willas gives in.
"Mayhaps put on your drawers before giving anything to milady Sansa, hmm?" he says with a frown, and Willas rolls his eyes in just the same way Lady Alerie does before giving in and letting Aldwin help him dry off and dress while Marian finishes Sansa's hair.
"You are going to be very polite to Prince Aegon when he arrives," she tells him once they're standing together in their solar, once she feels beautiful and confident and he's too busy staring at her in such blatant admiration that it makes her blush to refuse her anything. "You are going to behave as though he were nothing but respectful towards me, because if you give even the slightest hint that something is amiss, I fear my sister may murder him, and then we are all ruined."
"If he sees you in this gown," Willas says, his voice strained, "then I may have no choice but to commiserate with him."
"Whatever do you mean by that?"
He finally meets her eyes, smiling just a little, and then shakes his head.
"Have you even the faintest notion of how beautiful you are, Sansa?"
Aegon's horse is a silver, gleaming as bright as his hair in the sudden sunset.
"The bastard," Garlan grumbles beside Willas. "You'll have to give him your best, ugliest horse just to get him off that beauty."
"So long as he does not try to get on any other beauty during his stay, I think we may be able to tolerate him," Leonette murmurs primly, and it's all Willas and Garlan and Sansa can do not to burst out laughing as Aegon's feet touch the fresh-swept cobbles of the courtyard.