Gentle Madness

Perhaps it was a backlash against growing up poor. Cesare Elperts II craved nothing but the very finest. With no discerning eye and mediocre taste besides, he nonetheless picked out only the most expensive things without fail — and Count Lambroise footed the entire bill.

Noah looked at the Kasika before him.

And smiled, with the same harmless face as the old days.

Just as she had back then, Kasika wore the expression of someone who could not care less about Noah.

"I am no longer a person of the Elperts family. You cannot demand that of me. And the Marquisate of Lamplis is hardly wealthy."

"Yes, it does appear that way," Noah replied. "But the Count's guarantor on the debt is listed as Lady Lamplis."

"I never agreed to any such thing."

"Really? Because the documents say otherwise."

With that, Noah held out the paperwork. Naturally, it was a document she had never seen before. Kasika spared it a single glance, then looked up at Noah without lifting it from his hands.

"You will have to repay the debt, my lady."

"...How much?"

"2.8 million gold."

"What did you say?"

"2.8 million gold."

"...I don't have that kind of money."

"So it would seem."

Just who is he mocking right now?

Irritation flared up at once. It was only natural that she should have no warm feelings for someone who had barged uninvited into a peaceful existence to dun her for a debt.

"You didn't come all this way just to tell me it 'would seem so,' I take it."

Knowing him made it all the more disagreeable. He had been her pupil once, no less.

Of course, nearly ten years had passed since then, and the young man before her bore no trace of the boy he'd been. Whatever feelings had existed back then would all be gone — not that theirs had ever been a relationship that bred feeling. If he hadn't given his name, Kasika wouldn't even have remembered who he was.

"Then why have you come?"

"To collect the debt, of course. And if you can't pay, shouldn't you sell something to cover it?"

So saying, Noah glanced around the room. For a marquisate, the place was remarkably modest. He doubted that selling this entire estate would raise the sum. And he had already made a thorough assessment of the Lamplis finances. Kasika Lamplis had no means of repaying this amount.

"I have nothing to sell."

"Then I suppose you'll have to offer up something else. Yourself, perhaps."

There was nothing he wouldn't say. Kasika's brow furrowed.

"But, my lady — if you accept my proposal, I'll knock off roughly half the debt."

"And what, exactly, is this proposal?"

"Take me as your lover."

"...I beg your pardon?"

"Your lover. Your official, recognized lover."

He must have misspoken. Clearly. She had lounged about all summer in slothful idleness, and evidently her ears had begun playing tricks on her. When Kasika offered no answer of any kind, Noah smiled faintly and asked again, "And your answer?"

"Forgive me, but I believe I misheard you," Kasika said. "What was it you just said, Noah?"

"I asked you to take me as your lover, my lady."

It was truly an absurd thing to hear from someone she was meeting after so long.

"And why would I do that?"

"Because you have Elperts blood in you as well."

So that was his way of telling her to offer up her own body — take him as a lover? He wasn't even offering to be her lover; he wanted her to take him as one?

"Pardon my asking, but have you married, my lord Viscount?"

"No."

"You haven't married, and yet you intend to keep a lover?"

"No — I would be your lover, my lady. Not the other way around."

"Why?"

"To avoid marriage."

Ah, well. That was a use for it, he supposed. Kasika considered. For noblewomen, virginity was all-important — but for noble men, it earned nothing like so favorable a glance. Most aristocratic men kept company with fine ladies even before they wed.

"I detest high society. I detest the crowds that gather there to chatter just as much. Yet I'm compelled to attend regardless, and the moment I do, all manner of people come circling. Even if I wish to refuse, the unmarried among us are assigned family members or guardians who arrange introductions and push us into dances. I find it revolting. In the first place, I have no wish to squander my time on such things. Dances, with those people."

Kasika gave him a strange look. "You could refuse without a lover, couldn't you?"

"I could — but it becomes a great deal more tedious."

So his plan, in short, was to deliberately become a lover-keeping rake in order to spare himself the tedium.

Truly — if one must be a scoundrel, better an unrepentant one.

Kasika respected his choice.

"And that is enough to wipe out half a debt?"

She still couldn't quite wrap her head around it.

"It's no loss to you either way, is it?"

His manner of speaking was rather objectionable. The Noah she remembered hadn't been like this. She distinctly recalled teaching the young man the most refined of manners.

Then again, thinking on it, his words were fairly polished. It was the content that was gutter trash.

"Better me, young as I am, than a man past seventy."

She had never been with a man past seventy. He had died the moment he arrived, after all.

Kasika had worn black mourning clothes instead of a white wedding gown. A body no one had ever touched. Hardly the state of a woman positioned to keep a lover.

"Well, the old man died quickly anyway. He can't have gotten much enjoyment out of it."

As he said this, Noah looked her up and down — appraising her, as one might a piece of goods — and then, evidently dissatisfied with what he saw, shook his head.

"You'd look better with a bit of dressing up."

And where, exactly, would I find the money to dress up?

"Come to society with me, my lady."

Kasika's brow knitted. She could not appear in society as she was now.

Virginity.

It was the one thing no one who moved through high society could ever afford to possess.

"...My lord Viscount Lambroise."

"I received a viscountcy two years ago, along with my knighthood. 'Lord Lambroise' or 'my lord' will do."

"Lord Lambroise. It's been a long time, so you may not remember, but a lover, properly speaking, is—"

"Yes. You said one takes a lover when one finds someone to love."

Noah cut her off.

"How very naive you were, my lady."

So saying, he rose from his seat and stepped closer, looking down at her. Even at thirteen, he had already towered over her. Kasika shrank back from the sheer size of him — the man filled the room. The only man she ever saw here was Max, the butler and Lucy's husband.

She had never once beheld a young man like this. A man built like this.

"Who takes a lover out of love? It's all schemes and desire."

Raising a hand, Noah tilted her chin upward. He drew close as if to kiss her, his face right before hers, and then let out a soft, amused breath of laughter.

"Or did you only phrase it that way because I was a child?"

...Who on earth is this man?

2.8 million gold.

The average commoner earned 17 gold a year. Which meant 2.8 million gold was a sum a commoner could repay only by toiling for sixteen thousand four hundred and seventy years without spending a single coin.

Just how lavishly had Count Elperts lived, to burn through money like that? However she turned it over, she couldn't believe it. Was it not, in fact, a swindle? But there was a contract. She hadn't signed it herself — yet the hand was unmistakably hers.

Played. Utterly played.

It was a command, plainly enough: pay up, or furnish him with gossip material instead.

Half off, he says. Couldn't I talk him down a little more? If I negotiated, would he budge?

Kasika tried to summon the childhood of Noah Lambroise, a boy she could barely remember now. Clever, she supposed — yet the only face that surfaced in her memory was the one from their final lesson, when he'd been swallowing back tears. Truthfully, she couldn't even recall whether he'd swallowed them or actually wept. What had she said back then? Something, surely. Some words.

Ah, well. It can't have been anything that mattered. That's why I don't remember.

Kasika looked at the documents once more.

"Troublesome. This is troublesome."

What on earth am I to do with this?

There was no way out. He would press her for the money, and she could find no gap in the walls he'd built. Noah Lambroise had wanted to study law. Had wanted to work in legislation. To become a lawyer or a legislative official and reap the mountains of advantages that came with it.

Even as a child, the signs had been plain to see.

With that pretty face, the boy had asked, But why is this so? Why is that so? I don't understand — turning every possibility over and over. Looking back now, it hadn't been study at all; he'd been hunting for loopholes, ways to slip through the net of the law.

...A man like that would never have left a gap for me to escape through.

It occurred to her, too, that she had no idea what position Noah Lambroise occupied now, or what he actually did.

Know your enemy and know yourself, they said, and you will win a hundred battles — but Kasika, who knew neither her enemy nor even herself, had no choice but to be swept along in Noah's wake.

Perhaps I should have spent those ten years studying instead of letting them drift away.