AN: Sooooo, college overloaded me with two papers and homework due for the endterm for the last three weeks. Sorry about the lack of posting, I THANK YOU ALL! YOU GUYS ARE AWESOME! Anyway this is a fun chapter... Enjoy!

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Rin entered the courtyard with a suspicious step, her nose smelled some sort of trouble on Sesshoumaru and Jaken's part. Everything was moving a little too smoothly, a little too easily for her liking…

A carriage waited in the courtyard, the demon Sesshoumaru idly casting his eyes around, drinking in the busy coming and going's of the Japanese marketplace around him. His luscious lips were parted in deep thought, brow slightly furrowed. Grinning, Rin circled the waiting carriage making sure that her step carried no sound. And then tried sneaking up on Sesshoumaru-sama.

"Stop trying to scare me Rin" Sesshoumaru turned around, amber eyes blazing with a fire that she had come to know well. Cringing from the shock, she laughed but quickly quieted when Sesshoumaru had gone still… His eyes roving over her painted face and luxurious kimono. Despite her new status in their relationship she still flushed. There was no more room for being coy, Rin was no longer a virgin after all… But still she couldn't help it…

"Do not look at me like that!" she cried

Sesshoumaru raised his brows in mock surprise, and opened the carriage door bowing to her.

Rin was dumbfounded, Sesshoumaru never did that… Ever

Genuinely concerned she stepped forward and pressed her hand to his forehead, touching her own. He seemed normal temperature

"What are you doing?" he hissed into her ear

"Checking to see if you are ill!" she snapped

Sesshoumaru chuckled "I only wait for my princess to take a seat in the carriage"

Rin turned her nose up at him and took a graceful step into the carriage, a moment later he joined her and they were off on their journey to Edo… Where he would give her a surprise like no other.

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The carriage ride was less then an hour but he had made her comfortable, though he kissed off most of the color from her painted lips. Rin sat in the corner of the carriage her eyes glassy with arousal, her body limp. Sesshoumaru sat across from her looking like the cat that swallowed the canary. A feverish half smile playing over his handsome mouth, he had to get out of his carriage before he did something very embarrassing. Instead Sesshoumaru looked out the window and the glass stillness of the forest passing by in a blur. They had no more then ten minutes leftbefore they would reach the sea and the very beginning of Edo's small fishing wharf.

Hopefully arriving there with whatever dignity the both of them still had, he would give Rin the secret gift that he had promised…

Casting his eyes back over to the young woman he found that she had fallen asleep. Finding everything a little too ironic now, Sesshoumaru decided that it would be better for them to continue on foot.

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Rin woke to the wind whipping up her hair into her face, she was in the arms of something warm, it could only be her Sesshoumaru.Rin opened her eyes and looked up. Memories that made her flush came back and she hid her face into his chest.Squeezing her eyes shut and waited till they came to a stop.

Moments later Rin's feet touched the ground a loose sandal slipped onto her tiny foot, she straightenedand looked around to the modest port around her. Several bridges connected the docks with the surrounding market, the largest that she had ever seen. For a moment Rin stood there releasing her pent up breath and then turned to look to Sesshoumaru. He was smirking even wider now.

"Come with me" taking her hand he pulled through the market where he led her to a small shop covered with a bamboo screen from the burning sun. Pushing the screen aside Sesshoumaru bowed and stepped in, there was an old man sitting in front of a low polished wooden table. Around him in expensive silk fabric lay jewelry, extravagant pieces of jewelry… Rin's mouth gaped, her eyes shining. Stupidly she turned to him as Sesshoumaru took a seat in front of the elderly man, he spoke low and the old man seemed to finally look up at her. A strange half smile crossing his face, standing the hunched form slipped behind a colorful screen and returned with a wooden box. Crafted in a kind of wood that she had never seen, suddenly weak Rin sat down beside Sesshoumaru as the smiling, eldery man opened the box with a shaky hand.

"Here" he spoke, his voice old and gnarled like the wood of the ancient pine trees around Sesshoumaru's mansion.

Sesshoumaru delicately uncovered the cloth within and drew out a smaller box with strange letters on it Rin could not read. Finally he turned to Rin, and spoke

"I hear that the emperor proposed to his wife, with a custom that came from over our seas. Farther then you and I could ever travel" he opened up the box and Rin gasped her hand coming to her mouth.

"It is said that the man gives this to pledge his eternal love to the woman he wants to wed." Reaching in he removed a golden ring, a large pink pearl surrounded by uncut yellow diamonds and placed it on her left ring finger.

"Will you marry me my dear Rin?"

The tears flowed so fast now that Rin couldn't speak all she did was nod, Sesshoumaru smiled and the old man laughed.

"Y-yes I shall"