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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Cerebral Paladin" data-source="post: 3559977" data-attributes="member: 3448">“But leaving that aside… I wanted to ask whether you wanted to accept the baronetcy publicly.”“What does it mean?  I don’t know that I have time to be the noble for some land in addition to my other duties.  Besides the land I have in Lyneham, I mean.”“Most baronetcies don’t come with substantial land.  We would probably give you a grant from the Treasury to buy an appropriate townhouse and estate, but nothing more than that.  Mostly, it’s just a higher title.  It would mean that you would outrank other knights and have a higher status.  And unlike a knighthood, it’s hereditary, so your eldest child will eventually inherit the baronetcy, and so forth.”“So my children would be noble, regardless of who their father was?” Kit asked attentively.“Yes, they would,” responded Alistair with a look on his face like he had just bitten into something sour.Kit thought about it for a moment, then nodded.  “I think I will accept it then.”“You know that we won’t be able to prevent people from assuming that it’s because you’re my mistress?”“But they would be wrong, right?”“Of course.  You’ve earned this through your own actions and service to the Archduchy.  But it won’t be like the knighthood, where we could try to make people understand that.  Especially because most of your service is secret.”Kit nodded.  “I understand.  But I think I’ll accept it anyway.  We’ll know that I earned it, and I don’t want to let what they think take away something I’ve earned.”“Good,” said Alistair with a smile.  “By the way, you should pick a name for your house.”“For my house?  Shouldn’t that wait until I’ve bought one?”“No, for your noble house.  For your family.  It’s traditional for baronets to have a house name.  We could just continue calling you ‘Dame Katherine of Lyneham,’ but with the baronetcy title, that would suggest that you were the ruler of all of Lyneham.  So the normal thing would be to add a family name, so that you would be ‘Dame Katherine So-and-so of Lyneham.’”“Oh.  I’ve never thought about that before… my family never had a family name.”“I know.  You can just choose one that you would like.  The easiest thing would be to take a variant of my family’s name.  Instead of Ashberry, you might be Ashland or something else -berry or something like that.”  Alistair deliberately failed to mention that people would take that as an even clearer signal of her status as his mistress, since that would ensure that any of her children had a link to his house, something most appropriate for an illegitimate cadet line.  He also did not mention that it would make it extraordinarily difficult for her to ever marry within Canberry.“Oh.  Can I think about that and get back to you on a name?”  Kit thought, <>“Of course.  Take as long as you need, as long as you decide before we have the public ceremony.”</blockquote>

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