The Boy in the Rain

Eleanor pressed her lips together and said nothing. Struggling to smother the fury rising in her chest, she looked Harry over. She had assumed he was merely soaked through with rain, but on closer inspection, the boy's clothes were an utter mess, as though he had been rolling about in a mud puddle.

The backs of his hands were scraped raw and bleeding, and his hair was caked with rain and mud. It looked as if he had slipped and taken a hard tumble in the mire.

"Young master! Where on earth have you been?"

While Eleanor stood quietly forcing down her agitation, the wet nurse, who had been hovering anxiously at the edge of the scene, rushed forward and gently took hold of Harry, looking him up and down. When she saw the boy's wounds, she murmured with a pained expression.

"My dear young master, wherever did you get these cuts? Do you have any idea how worried I've been? When did you even go out?"

"I'm sorry, Nanny. I forgot to tell you before I left."

The nurse clasped Harry's hands, reddened from the cold, and breathed warm puffs of air on them again and again. Watching the two of them, Eleanor let out a sigh.

She could hardly blame the woman for her plight. She hadn't been paid her wages in who knew how long, her mistress had taken to her sickbed, and every other servant in the house had already fled. The most likely reason she had stayed was the unpaid wages — though Eleanor suspected loyalty and affection counted for something too.

Behind Harry, a middle-aged man appeared, drenched from the rain just as she'd expected. Eleanor's eyes widened.

"Eben?"

"Ah. My lady."

It was none other than Eben, the Grand Ducal House's personal physician. Eben removed his hat, soaked through until the rain had seeped clean into it, and offered Eleanor a small bow. Joshua, who had been watching, spoke up.

"I happened to see him on my way here. His carriage wheel was stuck in the mud — he couldn't get it out."

Eleanor turned to Eben, who nodded as if to confirm Joshua's account.

"He introduced himself as the personal physician of the Grand Duke Prihoson's residence and said he was on his way to a patient at your urgent request, my lady, so he asked me for help, and I accompanied him here."

"……"

She understood the circumstances perfectly well, but she disliked the idea of owing Joshua a debt of help. Joshua, seeming to read her feelings, added,

"My lady. Shouldn't we save the person first, and sort out the rest after?"

He was right. Whatever her feelings might be, a life came first. Having made up her mind, Eleanor stepped aside. Eben took her meaning at once and walked over to the bedside.

Before long, the Viscountess Belvoir came into his view. The moment Eben laid eyes on the woman lying there, barely drawing breath, his face hardened. He leaned in closer to study her features carefully, then pressed his ear to her chest and caught the shallow rasp of her breathing.

He looked quite grave as he took her pulse. Eleanor stood behind him, watching him examine the Viscountess with complete focus. It felt as though nothing else in the world existed in her sight. Joshua gazed at her turned back — no longer sparing him the slightest attention — with a strange expression on his face.

What a filthy feeling. So Joshua thought. Truly, what a filthy feeling. What he had said to Rukan at their last gathering had been no lie. He had been entirely sincere.

Joshua simply could not understand his father. No — he had never even seriously tried to. Marrying his own bastard child to his dearest friend's bastard child? It was an utterly absurd idea.

No matter how little Joshua cared for the world's opinion, even he had lines he wanted to keep intact. And yet, a bastard fiancée. His brother had no betrothed either, and yet their father had meant to clear his eldest son's path by disposing of his bastard son first. That had to be it.

The first Grand Duke Prihoson had been the sworn brother whom the founding Emperor trusted and believed in above all others. And the family had produced Founding Merits generation after generation, so forging a marriage tie with House Prihoson promised gains that far outweighed any cost.

But Grand Duke Prihoson had only one daughter. And a bastard at that, whose mother no one could even name. Joshua surmised that his father, unwilling to attach a woman of such murky blood to his eldest son, had simply foisted her onto him instead. He wouldn't want a bastard daughter-in-law for his heir — but he still didn't want to let House Prihoson slip through his fingers.

He sneered. In the end, his father's most precious thing had always been his firstborn son. No matter how much his father pretended to look out for him, Joshua was nothing more than a bastard.

What did it matter that he had been entered into the Grand Ducal family register? His lowly blood went nowhere. Besides, at least he knew who his own mother was. Lenna didn't even know that much. The more he turned the thought over, the deeper his mood sank, as if it were being ground into the very bottom of the earth.

It didn't even amuse him anymore — the way they called themselves his 'family' with those kindly faces, without a moment's hesitation. If they had truly cared about him, would they have arranged this engagement? And it hadn't been a suggestion, nor even a request — it had been, quite literally, a notification. That was why he had found nothing to add when his father told him to simply accept it and know his place.

All Joshua could do was look back at his father, who smiled at him with those cold eyes.

He had seen countless women more beautiful, more graceful, more exquisitely refined than Eleanor. The Empire overflowed with women whose looks outshone hers — his brother's childhood friend Charlotte being the finest example.

Charlotte and Eleanor were opposites in temperament. Charlotte, with her easy warmth and gentle manner of speech, drew people to her effortlessly. Eleanor, by contrast, was always quiet and never once approached anyone first. Without that striking face, she would likely have gone unnoticed in any crowd. And because she was that kind of person, people found it hard to approach her.

Joshua had never once seen anyone take the first step toward Eleanor. It reminded him of someone. Himself, precisely. Maybe that was why he disliked her all the more.

Prihoson's bastard. The Grand Duke's daughter. Eleanor. Eleanor Frihoseon. Joshua chewed over his fiancée's name as he watched the raindrops slide down the carriage window, his eyes stinging. At that very moment, the horse whinnied sharply and the carriage jolted to an abrupt halt.

At the coachman's startled cry, Joshua caught himself against the sudden forward lurch, then rose from his seat and opened the carriage door. Rain streaming from the roof spilled across his face. He glanced once at the sky, pouring down as though it had been punched full of holes, then looked at the coachman climbing down from his box.

"What's the matter?"

The young coachman tugged down the hat clinging to his oilskin coat and answered urgently.

"There's a child up ahead!"

"A child?"

The coachman nodded, and the raindrops shaking loose from his coat scattered in every direction.

"Yes, sir! A child dashed out of an alley, so I had no choice but to stop. I'm sorry, my lord."

"No, it's fine. Did you hit them?"

At first the coachman didn't quite follow, blinking as he echoed, "Pardon?" Joshua asked again, his face expressionless.

"I asked whether you hit the child."

"Ah… no, my lord. I didn't hit them. The child fell down on their own from fright."

"That's a relief, then."

"……"

At those words, cold to the point of cruelty, the coachman opened his mouth, then shut it again. When his master spoke that way, there was nothing left for a mere driver to say. And yet he couldn't keep his eyes from drifting, again and again, to the child — still slumped where fright had felled them, staring over with eyes swollen red from crying.

He was a father himself, after all, with a child of the same age back home. He hurriedly moved to block Joshua as the man turned away. Joshua's green eyes gazed down at him in silence. The coachman hesitated, then opened his mouth to speak — and would have stopped himself, too, if not for the small hand clutching at Joshua's coat.

Joshua lowered his head, and his gaze landed on the child's hand. The boy had gotten up at some point and was looking up at him with desperate eyes.

"Please help me!"