The Crow Gentleman

As he turned the dial, music began to flow.

The operatic aria pouring from the gramophone atop the mahogany cabinet banished the stillness of the boathouse parlor in a single breath.

Matthias changed the frequency a few times until a waltz filled the room, then settled back against the sofa. The melody was bright and light. The long tips of his fingers, resting lightly on the armrest, tapped slowly along with the beat. The mantel clock on the console across from him pointed to five o’clock.

His gaze lingered for a moment on the shabby rose vase beside it before drifting toward the window. As evening drew near, the breeze had grown cooler. The wind rising off the river stirred the robe he wore and swept on toward the forest.

Matthias reached out and opened the small silver box at the edge of the reception table. He took one of the cigarettes—scarcely diminished in number—and lit it just as the waltz ended. Listening to the lively string piece that followed, he smoked at a leisurely pace. The late summer afternoon was dull and quiet.

When that piece, too, came to an end, Matthias picked up Leila’s glasses, which had been tossed carelessly beside the tray. Through the lenses the world looked dizzyingly blurred; her eyesight must have been quite poor.

So that was why she was always frowning.

He remembered the child who used to stare at him with those stubbornly scrunched eyes. A shabby, unremarkable little girl—yet her eyes alone had sparkled with uncommon brightness.

The child who had been meant to stay only a short while had grown up inside Matthias’s world and become a woman.

A small face framed by slender gold-rimmed glasses overlaid the image of that plain little girl. From the woman who still possessed those uncommonly sparkling eyes came a fresh, sweet fragrance—the scent of the very roses that filled the summer gardens of Arvis.

Exhaling a long stream of cigarette smoke, Matthias stepped out onto the balcony overlooking the river, glasses held loosely in his hand. He tossed them up and caught them playfully again and again as the shadows lengthened.

“Leila.”

He whispered the name, warm as the heat of midsummer.

“Leila Lewellin.”

The name that only emerged after tickling the tip of his tongue was faintly irritating.

Returning to the parlor, Matthias slipped the glasses he had been tossing and catching into the console drawer. When he closed it, the memory of those green eyes seen through the lenses vanished as well.

He went to the bathroom and took a long shower. He changed his clothes and smoothed his hair. By the time he left the boathouse for dinner, he was once again the perfect Duke of Herhardt.

It was an utterly ordinary midsummer evening.

“Did a crow steal them again?”

Bill asked, mixing in a touch of humor. Leila, who had been sitting at the table with a grave expression, flinched and gave a little shiver of her shoulders.

“Well… I hope not.”

“You never know. Those birds go crazy for anything that sparkles. Remember? Your hairpin.”

Bill burst into a hearty laugh. At the memory his words summoned, the stiffness melted from Leila’s face and a smile returned.

For her thirteenth birthday, Uncle Bill had bought her a glittering hairpin. He had carefully noted how the girls her age each wore something in their hair, then asked Aunt Mona to purchase one for him.

Leila had treasured that pin carefully. If Uncle Bill hadn’t threatened to throw it out unless she started wearing it at once, it might have slept forever in a drawer.

But on the very first day she pinned it in her hair, it met a cruel fate. While she was tending the kitchen garden, she had taken it off for a moment and set it on the fence—only for a crow to snatch it up and fly away. It had been the one incident that left even bird-loving Leila with somewhat less-than-friendly feelings toward crows.

“If you can’t find them, tell me, Leila.”

Bill put firm insistence into his voice.

“It’s nothing—we’ll just buy new ones. No need to make that face. Understood?”

“Yes, Uncle.”

Leila nodded readily.

“I will.”

She could answer so easily because she was certain the glasses were still exactly where she had left them at the landing.

But at dawn the next morning, the moment the sky began to lighten, despair was waiting for Leila at the riverside. She searched the landing thoroughly, then the area around the boathouse and the entire riverbank—yet the glasses were nowhere to be found.

Her apron remained exactly where she had set it down; only the glasses had vanished. She considered whether the wind might have carried them off, but that would not explain why the apron was still in place. She had clearly removed the glasses first and laid the apron on top of them. The glasses alone could not simply disappear.

Still… surely not.

Lingering near the front of the boathouse, Leila shook her head as if the idea were absurd. The Duke had no reason to take them.

She turned away with her shoulders drooping. She should have come looking for the glasses sooner. The problem was that she had delayed out of fear of running into him.

“Was it really you?”

Leila muttered, glaring at a crow perched on a branch. The bird tilted its head a few times as if pretending innocence, then flew off toward the distant forest.

Leila clenched her fists as if steeling her resolve and began walking with a wider stride than before. First she would go home, eat breakfast, and think it over again with a clearer head.

There seemed to be only two suspects.

The crow—or the Duke.

A dove white as snow settled on the windowsill. Kyle, who had turned his head without thinking, smiled and opened the window.

“Hello, Phoebe.”

Even when he held out his hand, the dove did not fly away. Kyle casually removed the letter tied to the bird’s leg.

The mountain dove Phoebe was Leila Lewellin’s messenger. Ever since childhood she had been obsessed with birds, and one day after reading a book about carrier pigeons she had conceived the grand ambition of having a pigeon of her own.

Sure. Go for it.

When he had agreed with a snicker, Kyle had never once imagined that an ancient-legend sort of carrier pigeon would actually come flying to his bedroom window someday. Yet the stubborn girl Leila Lewellin had done it. No matter how many times she failed, she never gave up, and in the end she succeeded in training a mountain dove.

Phoebe had first flown to Kyle’s window two years earlier, late in the spring. He had opened the window half in disbelief, only to find a dove staring straight at him, letter in tow. She was a pretty little thing with glossy pure-white feathers and black eyes.

That was the only short line in the letter the dove had brought from Leila that day. Yet Kyle could read countless other things in it. Leila, thrilled at having achieved her goal. Leila, eyes sparkling as she laughed mischievously. Leila. His precious friend Leila.

A pigeon delivering letters in this day and age.

The absurdity made him laugh, yet he understood it too. To Leila, Phoebe was something like a telephone. In a cabin without a phone, a letter-carrying dove was quite an efficient thing to have.

Today’s message from Leila’s messenger carried tragic news. She had lost her glasses. Because she had to find them, she would not be able to keep their promise to go to the library together today. She was truly sorry.

While Kyle read the letter with serious attention, Phoebe, her duty done, left the windowsill. Kyle slipped the carefully folded letter between the pages of a thick book lying open on his desk and hurried out of the room.

“Kyle Etman! Going to Leila’s again?”

Mrs. Etman frowned at the sight of her son clattering down the stairs in a rush, but Kyle smoothed it over with an easy grin.

“You need to study, Kyle!”

“I’ll do it at Leila’s!”

Leaving only that cheerful reply behind, Kyle stepped out through the front door.

The gleaming silver bicycle slipped smoothly out of the Etman house. Once he entered the Arvis estate, Kyle grew more and more impatient and pedaled furiously. The library hardly mattered anyway. He had only made the appointment because he wanted to be with Leila while she went there. What truly concerned him was Leila herself.

How hard she had worked to get those glasses.

Thinking of foolish Leila, who had made and sold jam all on her own so she would not be a burden to Uncle Bill, made the center of his chest ache with sharp little stabs.

“Oh—Kyle?”

When the bicycle screeched to a halt, Leila, who had been hanging out the laundry, turned around in surprise.

“Did you find your glasses?”

“No. Not yet.”

Leila’s expression grew dejected.

“I’ll buy you new ones!”

That was why the words had burst out of him so suddenly—because it hurt to see Leila looking so downcast.

“…You, Kyle? Why?”

Leila, who had been watching him quietly, asked in a small voice. Only then did Kyle realize his mistake. His feelings had run ahead of him and he had momentarily forgotten what sort of girl Leila was.

“Thank you, but I can’t accept that, Kyle.”

She smiled sweetly, as if trying not to embarrass him.

“And I… I really want to find my own glasses.”

Unlike her smiling lips, her eyes were resolute. It was the look Kyle knew well—the eyes of stubborn Leila Lewellin, who would not yield no matter what anyone said.

“I’m going to find them.”

For several days Leila combed through the forest. The doctor’s son was with her.

Their futile efforts were so admirably earnest that Matthias chose to look the other way—at least for a while. Watching them poke around useless bird nests was rather amusing, too.

Does she truly not know, or does she simply not want to know?

Matthias paused for a moment on the steps of the boathouse and gazed out at the broad forest stretching along the river. Even the foolish antics of Leila Lewellin and that boy were beginning to grow tiresome. So, too, was the sight of himself deliberately carving time out of busy days to come here, day after day.

Smoothing back the hair the river wind had tousled, Matthias climbed the stairs. Hessen, who had followed, quietly opened the door and then stepped aside.

Matthias went straight to the parlor. Instead of sitting on the sofa as usual, he leaned against the window that faced the forest.

“Marquis Lindmann is expected to arrive around noon today.”

“Riette? Earlier than planned.”

“Her Grace has given special instructions regarding the luncheon. If you have no prior engagement, she requests that you join them as well.”

“Very well. I will.”

The chiffon curtain half-covering the window billowed slowly with the texture of the breeze. And when the curtain settled back into place, Matthias’s eyes narrowed as he looked along the path filled only with quiet sunlight. At the end of that path, beneath a tree, stood Leila. She was turning in small circles on the spot, both hands clasped together.

So she was not a complete fool after all.

Matthias gave a silent snort of laughter and now gave Hessen’s report his full attention. In the meantime a middle-aged maidservant brought in cold lemon water. The cheerful clink of ice inside the glass was rather pleasant to hear.

Once they had finished their duties and withdrawn, Matthias held the long-stemmed glass and admired the view beyond the window. Only after the butler and the maid had completely disappeared did Leila begin to approach the riverside.

Not long afterward, the doorbell rang through the quiet boathouse.

Matthias rose from his place at a leisurely pace.