The Most Perfect Stranger

Siena, her cup guided along by his hand, blinked with a look of mild displeasure.

The hand steadying the back of hers lifted away a beat too late, as though the moment had slipped past it. Even after her fingers had closed around the cup, it lingered—just for a breath.

Siena looked up at him through the haze of her exhaustion, her vision blurred. Even at this late hour, he wore his usual appearance. His face, most of all.

Must be my imagination.

Strange, how the thought that she ought to be on her guard kept arriving one step behind everything else.

"One glass of milk, and—"

Beneath the lamp hanging overhead, half his face was swallowed by shadow.

Faced with that countenance, the words she had been about to say slid back down into her mouth. A hard jawline and the set of his lips, cast in shadow above a shirt buttoned to the very top of his throat—a colorless, scentless expression that earned him the nickname of the flower without fragrance.

His face now carried a distinctly masculine edge, but as a child, Claude had been so lovely it was difficult to tell he was a boy at all. A boy with dense, dark lashes and a strikingly fine, symmetrical set of features that drew every eye.

Which was why, out of nowhere, he became my playmate.

The palace attendants, curious about the third son of the ducal house everyone whispered about, had intersected with her mother's calculation of political advantage, and so he had first set foot in the Imperial Palace.

Siena, who had been staring at him blankly, snapped back to herself. Focus. Focus.

"...I didn't realize a single glass of milk required two people."

Without a word, he leaned back against his chair and studied her. An expressionless face. Eyes that gave nothing away.

That was what unsettled her.

Siena wrapped both hands around her cup.

I never can tell what he's thinking.

It had been true when they were young, but these days it was worse than ever.

After a moment's hesitation, she seemed to come to a decision and spoke.

"Let me ask you something."

With a faint smile, Siena pushed her cup away. Claude, whose gaze had followed the cup, straightened in his seat.

"Is this because of my mother? Or the suffrage vote?"

"I'm afraid I don't follow."

"There's a reason you're approaching me like this. There always is."

It was something she needed to pin down before returning to the Imperial Capital.

He had begun speaking to her only two days before their departure for Gaverum, and the whole time there, she'd had the sensation of living inside the net of his surveillance. Now, at the point of returning to the capital, she needed to know what these strange behavior of his meant.

"If there were nothing behind this, it wouldn't make sense."

She had lost count of the times they'd crossed paths.

While she resided in the Imperial Capital, they ran into each other three or four times a day—on the parliament floor, at state banquets, even in the street-side cafés. They were young nobles of the same generation, and as in any such circle, intimacy and connection were confined to a very small roster of names.

And yet within that tight little orbit, he had never once acknowledged her.

They knew each other, and did not know each other, all at once.

Even when everyone around them invited them to the same gatherings, an unspoken arrangement always placed them at separate tables, and when circumstance forced them to share one, the seats were spaced far enough apart to spare them both the discomfort.

People sometimes scoffed—how awkward could two former playmates possibly be?—but everyone understood that relationship was nowhere near so simple, which was exactly what made the custom possible.

And so this sudden multiplication of encounters, this mutual self-consciousness, was something she could not accept.

Least of all when she thought of the stack of reports bearing the Marcel seal, sitting on Hassar's desk.

"Isn't that right?" Siena asked him with an easy smile.

"..."

A tense silence stretched long between them.

She hadn't expected an immediate answer, but she hadn't expected this, either. His invocation of the right to remain silent was running longer than anticipated.

Tick. Tock. The clock's second hand drummed insistently against her ear.

"Siena."

It was just as a lone passenger rose from the far end of the dining car. He spoke like a man who had been waiting for the room to empty.

"That petition."

The fingers resting on the table went still. The air in the dining car seemed to contract.

"What it was bound to seems to have arrived in the Imperial Capital unharmed."

The tips of her fingers went cold. It was not the answer she had expected.

She had never imagined she could keep it hidden forever, but this was sooner than she'd thought.

"I haven't looked at the contents."

When she slowly lifted her head, he was watching her with the same expression as before.

"No one delivered it to me. No one but you."

Siena clenched her back teeth. It was a confirmation—delivered with the full knowledge of how she had hunted down and contacted her people—that he had no intention of exploiting that information.

For a moment, she couldn't tell which answer was the more dangerous.

"...And?"

"His Majesty doesn't know yet. All he's aware of is that you were 'threatened.' That much, and nothing more."

It sounded like an admission that he had failed in his duty as an inspector answering directly to the Emperor.

When she fixed him with an incredulous stare, he spoke again, his voice lower than before.

"The moment we reach the capital, you'll be summoned. Think carefully about what excuse you'll offer."

"Excuse for what? I don't even know what it contained."

"Siena."

"Why do you keep—why do you keep making me owe you?"

The hotel room in Gaverum, the new clothes, the disguised informant. And now this—knowing of the petition's existence, and burying it.

"Why are you doing this, Claude Marcel? What is it you want?"

"I haven't put you in debt."

"There's no such thing as a transaction that isn't a debt. You know that better than anyone."

It was Claude's turn to fall silent for a moment.

"Then I suppose this settles a debt from the past."

He rose slowly from his seat, the words slipping out almost carelessly. Siena, unable to make sense of them, sat frozen—then turned her body toward the angle of his movement and asked,

"What... what is that supposed to mean?"

"Still awake until dawn, I see. Some habits die hard. Go to sleep early."

Soon he was gone through the doorway of the dining car. Siena stared for a moment at the empty space he left behind, then slowly withdrew her gaze.

"Settles a debt from the past"?

Was that not a chilling thing to say?

Between the two of them, the past was littered with debts that begged to be settled.

The train slid into the vast station.

Siena checked her reflection once in the window, then slowly drew on the gloves resting in her lap.

The holiday was over. It was time to work again. No—had she even truly been on holiday? A self-mocking smile escaped her before she could stop it.

"My lady, your aides will already be waiting on the platform," Hannah reported from beside the door, as Siena moved to rise.

"Thank you for your work. John and Carter will ride in the carriage with us."

"Yes, my lady."

Having opened the compartment door, Siena paused at the end of the corridor. Two doors down, Claude stood waiting with his luggage carried in his own hands.

As always, his attire was immaculate, his grooming faultless. Only the shadowed skin beneath his eyes hinted that this assignment had been a considerable strain on him as well.

Her gaze drifted slowly forward, tracing the line of his body the way a pen marks a point on paper. Had the debt from the past he spoke of been connected to the documents on Hassar's desk? All the way here, the question had gnawed at her. If these enigmatic maneuvers of his were tied to Hassar—then what was she supposed to do?

She was at a loss. How was she to respond to this man reaching out to her again, while she had no idea what her brother was plotting?

Just then, his eyes met hers over the head of the secretary he was speaking with.

She watched him turn his face aside with something like a sigh, watched their glances cross at an angle, watched the expression drain from his face once more—and then she offered him a perfectly courteous bow.

Clinical. Precise. Bent at the knee.

"We were much obliged to you in Gaverum, Young Duke Marcel. Until we meet again."

"Take care on your way."

The two of them passed each other in the exchange of courtesies. Siena did not look back at him. Not once.