Lesley was eating lunch in the servant's hall, a rare moment of quiet. Bodyguarding was a harder job than he'd expected. Follow the silly little princess around, listen to her woes, and report to her aunt about how little of note she ever did. As expected, there were no physical threats to her safety; nobody had even jostled her roughly on the street the few times they'd gone out. Being on his feet all day lightly armed and armoured wasn't difficult for a man in as good of shape as the gladiator, and he was naturally gifted with a gentle enough face and square enough body that combined to mean he didn't need to put too much effort into either convincing people to take him seriously as a deterrent nor that he wasn't actively looking for a fight.

So far so boring.

Gods above, but he hated most nobles. Prissy, spoiled idiots who couldn't have survived a single day doing the work they looked down on, favoured by the gods they might be but that didn't do anything to make them likeable, and keeping his mouth shut and his expression blank took a kind of effort he was no longer in practice. He wondered how long he would last. It was a good job, and he wasn't tempted to give up, but he knew himself. Eventually, he would go stir crazy without enough physical outlets. An hour twice a week training with the palace guards was a good challenge, and given that he had virtually no experience with formation fighting, even that little was enough to show real improvement so far, but he knew he'd plateau soon enough. Only one day off a week to go train at the Arcus and take care of any errands his mother couldn't handle on her own, and that meant juggling efforts to keep his fighting reflexes sharp and his fitness training up - gods knew he wasn't getting enough exercise for either strength or endurance otherwise. All he really needed, though, was to last until the end of the looming famine... so, what - a year? Assuming that the weather sorted itself out in the farming provinces by the end of summer and there were no problems with the crops over the winter or next spring, maybe not even that long. But whatever, call it a year. He could last a year here, right? Easy. He'd behaved himself around nobles for ten years, before.

Well, mostly behaved himself. Heh.

At least he had a few around he could respect. That definitely helped.

He reached for his wine, and glanced up as someone else entered the room. Not unexpected enough to startle him in the least, but he blinked in surprise as it turned out to not be another guard or servant, but a very pretty lady dressed well enough to be well-born - or possibly married into wealth or nobility, she was old enough to be most likely married, he decided. Either way, better to overestimate a stranger's rank. "My lady." He set his cup down, and stood. "Can I help you?"

He didn't have the poleaxed look many youths got when unexpectedly confronted by a beauty, but someone good at reading expressions could certainly see that he'd noticed she was pretty - and dismissed it as having nothing to do with him as his eyes had flicked from her face to her hair to the trim on her dress, and back to her face. He knew better than to notice rich women.