Daisy schemed every waking moment that she was allowed to herself and soon came up with an admittedly risky plan to escape. It would unfortunately mean leaving Steel Wind in the care of the Duke’s stablemen. The horse would probably eat better than she once she found the road.
Daisy often chatted with the servitors in the tower and convinced several of them to bring her old rags in exchange for coinage and modest jewelry. They knew the princess was up to something but considered the business of royalty to be none of their own except where they were paid to attend it. It did not take long for Daisy to amass a good sized collection of rags that she could stitch together to make an outfit that both fit her and was not uncomfortable. The remaining scraps and rags she tied into a makeshift rope and a pair of slippers.
The products of her work she hid among the volumnious folds of her canopy bed's large quilts and allowed no one to approach the bed except when she had moved the quilts off of it herself. If the servants were put off by this behavior they still did not report it nor comment among themselves except perhaps to remark about the strange things little princesses did in their idle time.
The plan involved a good deal of luck, as Daisy intended to rig the door to her rooms leading out of the tower so that it would not lock completely. She did not often have a chance to work on this part of her plan but on cleaning days when the servants were in the rooms en masse she hung out by the door and fiddled with it when no one was looking. She made sure the guards outside her suite were otherwise occupied and no one seemed to catch on.
Her uncle came to visit twice more, each time solicitous towards her health and happiness and never mentioned her betrothal. He seemed cheerful and reticent to break his mood with an argument and so apparently he gave no chance for one to be made. When Daisy raised the subject he changed it and brushed it off with an allusion to better things to think about than far off plans. Yet Daisy saw through his unclever subterfuges. She also saw the reasons for them and held her tongue. The last thing she really wanted was to alert her Uncle to her own defiant feelings about marriage in general and in particular her unwilling betrothal to the inevitably loathsome Earl.
The day of her planned escape soon arrived and Daisy spent the morning and midday with butterflies in her gut and shivers up her back as ambivalence crossed over her spine more than once. Would it really be so bad to be married to even the most foul knight if he treated her moderately well? Would she really be courageous enough to make a life for herself away from her title, riches and servants. She knew she was clever but wondered if she was clever enough to survive without the protections built into the life in which she trapped now.
As the sun dimmed over the horizon, however, all her fears diminished and her certainty solidified that she would not brook being handled by a stranger in ways that she knew men sometimes handled women. Nor would she be sold to the highest bidder to enrich an uncle she knew was far from poor. That was all she would be here. A trophy or trinket waiting to be sold to someone who lusted after young women. She would languish if she did not attempt to find her freedom.