"I do hope that tea hamper I sent was up to scratch, CP." The rather calm icecream lady mentioned, giving a slight shrug as she finished her sentence; originally she had planned to bring it herself as an apology for melting all over the grass outside his kingdom but bringing it herself just seemed like it would probably give the Prince the wrong idea. It wasn't a gift of admiration but you'd be surprised by how many people had taken gift-giving the wrong way, it was best safe than sorry.
There was a time, in the not so distant past, when Cadbury wouldn’t dream of accepting visitors while feeling like this. It was a question of appearances, a hyper-consciousness of the way he looked when sick, all wrung out and rumpled and small in the middle of the endless supply of pillows his guards began wedging tenderly around him the minute he sat down anywhere.
A month of lying in bed was all it took to change his mind. It wasn’t that he had gotten any less worried about how he looked, exactly, just that he had grown even more tired of being sick, trapped indoors with no one to talk to but his guards.
So the first day he felt himself improving, he ordered the gates opened, declaring that it was time to play catch up with princely business. Now, he fixed Lady Icecream with what he hoped was a regal gaze, feeling rumpled and small and nauseous and well on his way to regretting his decision. "Oh, that was you, was it?" There was something unfriendly in his voice, a prickliness mixed with lethargy which was less a reaction to his guest and more to the way his stomach was rolling. "No, it wasn’t bad. It really wasn’t at all bad," (appreciate this, Lady Ice, the closest to a thanks you’re likely to get) "although your timing was absolutely awful. People are convinced you’ve poisoned me, you know.”