But It Wasn't Her

But the moment Davion opened his mouth to cry out Cecilia's name, someone beat him to it.

"Honey."

A man was waving at her from the top of the stairs. His face was lost in shadow, but Davion was certain he was wearing a tender smile.

"......."

Davion slowly sank back into his seat. Behind the bar, the bartender mixing a drink watched him with a strange look in his eyes.

"Sorry about that. Guess I got swept up in the mood."

It wasn't Cecilia.

It wasn't you.......

With a sigh, Davion pulled another bill from his pocket and slid it across the table. Then he pressed a weary hand to his forehead and muttered darkly.

"That's for the glass."

Cecilia thought the inn was unusually crowded today.

Far across the room, at one of the bar tables, sat a black-haired man who looked remarkably like Davion. Of course, it couldn't possibly be him. A young master raised in luxury, beloved by all, would never set foot in such a shabby place.

Cecilia walked right past the man and was halfway up the stairs when Arkan appeared above her, waving warmly.

"Honey."

He was leaning on crutches under both shoulders. While Cecilia had been out doing a bit of shopping, Arkan had gone to the hospital.

Perhaps he'd been given an injection, because his complexion looked far better than before. Matching his pace as they returned to their room, Cecilia muttered under her breath, grumbling half to herself.

"Anyone watching would think you were actually my husband."

"Forgotten already? I am your husband."

Arkan flashed a sun-bright smile and waggled his left hand.

The cheap ring they'd bought as a stopgap gleamed on his fourth finger.

"You'd better get used to it. If you react like that every time I call you, even the most gullible soul in town will start suspecting what we really are."

She knew. She knew all too well — Cecilia was already suffering under the weight of the unwelcome stares that rained down on her every time she walked beside Arkan.

A man as handsome as an actor, married to a woman whose face was scattered with pockmarks — of course people would find it strange. Leaning against the corridor window, she took the key Ruby had brought back and asked,

"What did they say at the hospital?"

"That I'm not to use the muscles in my left leg for a while. In plain terms, it means walk properly on my crutches. Oh, right — here's your change."

While Cecilia turned the key in the lock, Arkan rummaged through his pockets and shook out a handful of coins.

The moment they stepped into the room, Cecilia tipped her chin toward the mantelpiece. There sat an empty tin can, serving as their piggy bank.

Though they'd been living together less than a day, the two of them had already worked out their own system. While Arkan fed the animals and tidied the room, Cecilia kept the household ledger and counted what remained of their money. With the family grown to four, their spending had swollen beyond what she'd expected.

"Tomorrow let's get identification papers and move to a slightly bigger place. We need to save money, but we can't go on sleeping in the same bed forever."

"A good idea. Still, no need to push yourself too hard, Sissy."

Sissy was the pet name Cecilia's grandmother used to call her. The name of Countess Winterhall was far too well known for her to use it as she was.

Arkan was not a bad partner. The only information they had gathered about each other was their given names — and even Cecilia's was a lie.

Yet Arkan asked nothing. Cecilia, in turn, made no effort to learn more about him. By unspoken agreement, they respected each other's secrets.

Besides, unlike Davion, he was fond of animals and had no aversion to Nagi or Ruby. Davion, the moment he laid eyes on Nagi, had shoved the muzzle of his gun in her face.

Somewhere along the way, the snow had begun to fall again.

Cecilia checked that the window was sealed tight, then gazed outside. A black-haired man was passing along the sidewalk below the inn. The same man who'd been sitting at the bar table moments ago.

Perhaps hailing a taxi, he stood at the edge of the road with both hands buried in his coat pockets. Every time he breathed, white plumes of breath rose up and veiled his face.

After confirming the window was properly shut, Cecilia took her pill bottles out of the travel bag and gathered the tablets into her palm.

Arkan, counting the bottles by eye, spoke up in surprise.

"Perhaps it's you who needed the hospital, madam, not me."

"I've been taking these for a long time."

With an embarrassed smile, Cecilia began explaining the pills one by one.

"This one is something like a supplement for my strength. The truth is, I had fairly major surgery not long ago. This one eases depression, and this one is for sleepwalking. This one especially — I have to take at least two a day, no exceptions."

The round white sleepwalking pills were so large they were hard to swallow in one go. Arkan, listening to her explanation, was startled all over again.

You have sleepwalking? You sleep so quietly, like the dead......."

"I've had it for a while now. According to my doctor, severe stress can bring on sleepwalking all of a sudden. It's much better these days. Still, don't be alarmed if I cry out or start screaming in my sleep once in a while."

"Don't tell me it's because of your husband?"

Arkan's expression darkened. In his imagination, Davion had become the lowest dregs of humanity — a man who would raise his hand against his own sick wife.

"Then I can only pray you didn't give that man much of a dowry. Was it an arranged marriage of some sort? Or a marriage by coercion?"

"Nothing like that. We married because we loved each other."

Rubbing her pink-tinged nose, Cecilia smiled shyly.

But as she turned her gaze back to the window, her smile slowly faded.

"Though people change as time goes on......."

It was living with Davion that had changed her — Cecilia had never been fond of snow to begin with. On a day when the flakes came down in thick, blinding sheets, her mother had abandoned her daughter at the mouth of an alley.

Useless girl.

That particularly brutal winter, all she could do was watch her mother's retreating back as those words hung in the air. Cecilia had been barely ten years old.

But perhaps it was proof that the world was not entirely cruel.

Before long, an elderly grandmother came to find Cecilia as she shivered there, cold and starving. Taking the girl's small hand in hers, she led her toward the grand mansion of a noble house.

That grandmother had been the wet nurse of the House of Thistledown.

1-3. The Charity Party

"My — my luggage was lost?!"

Gripping the hotel reception counter, Cecilia let out a cry.

The clerk beyond the counter clasped her hands together, her face a portrait of helplessness.

"I'm so terribly sorry. The bags looked very similar — it seems another guest mistook it for theirs and walked off with it."

She had left the bag in the hotel's keeping while they changed lodgings, and after taking a short look around the neighborhood with Arkan — this was what greeted her: the bolt-from-the-blue news that the bag had vanished without a trace.

And it was no ordinary bag — it held several hundred thousand Burnett in cash. It would be no exaggeration to call it everything Cecilia possessed. The moment she thought of it, the tip of her nose stung and tears welled up unbidden.

What was she supposed to do? Without it, she couldn't even rent a single room right now.......

"Hey, so what are you going to do about it?! There were clothes and everything in there!"

"Madam, I sincerely apologize. I don't know what to say."

"How do you plan to compensate me? Do you have any idea how serious this is?!"

Arkan, who had been quietly listening beside her, cupped Cecilia's cheek in his hand.

"Honey."

His handsome face came into view. His deep amber eyes were astonishingly calm.

"Yelling isn't going to fix anything. Ruby and Nagi are right here with us, and the ID papers and your medicine were in the handbag, so we've dodged the worst of it. And you set aside an emergency fund too, remember?"

"Still......."

"The bags were swapped, so that guest will discover what's inside and come back here without fail. For now, let's go out and get some fresh air, hmm? You'll make yourself ill like this."

Cecilia nodded reluctantly, but she didn't agree with him. Anyone who opened that bag and saw the cash inside would be all the less likely to return.

The hotel clerk was a woman several years younger than Cecilia. It pained Cecilia a little to watch her, frozen stiff, unable to do anything but stare down at her own trembling feet.

Right — she never saw this coming either.......I'm angry, but I can understand.

As Cecilia passed a hand down her face, struggling to gather herself, Arkan tore a page from the notepad on the counter and scrawled something in quick strokes.

"If the bag turns up and we haven't come back for it, please send it here."

He held the note out to the clerk. Then, winking slyly at the astonished girl, he whispered:

"It's where my parents work."

By and by, other guests began approaching the counter, and Arkan took Cecilia's hand and led her out of the hotel. He had heard someone click their tongue at the fresh pockmarks spread across her face.