Campbell's Spring

Prologue

Just as the evening party celebrating the Academy graduation was reaching its full warmth, someone cleared their throat and raised a glass high.

Raphael's deep blue eyes drifted lazily toward the sound. The man who had gathered every gaze in the room was his friend, Lucas Whitmore. With a deliberately playful gesture, Lucas flashed the assembly a wink before speaking.

"…I wanted everyone's blessing, which is why I've called for this toast…"

His voice was perfectly clear, yet the words somehow refused to register in Raphael's ears.

"As soon as the graduation ceremony ends, I will be becoming another Campbell."

Everything else fell away but that single piece of news.

The marriage of Lucas Whitmore—a man notorious as the Empire's most incorrigible playboy—was more than enough to seize the public's imagination. All the more so because his fiancée was a young lady from a family that commanded little regard in high society, and because he was to become that family's matrilocal son-in-law.

Lucas, still holding the hand of the woman standing beside him, wore a rather handsome smile. Both of their hands were bare, ungloved—and it was the champagne diamond adorning the woman's left ring finger that seized Raphael's gaze.

He tore his eyes from it with effort, and as he looked at the happy face of the friend he had known since childhood, he tried very hard not to furrow his brow.

As if to mock that effort, a powerful wave of drunkenness shook his head.

"Enya, you should say a word too."

"…To the glory of Whitmore and Campbell."

…No, perhaps it wasn't the drink at all. Perhaps it was nausea rising in his throat.

At the calm voice that followed Lucas's, sickness churned up to the back of Raphael's mouth. It was unbearable, watching those slender hands—trembling as if strung tight with nerves—lift a toast. In the end, Raphael could not raise his glass the way the others did.

He knew it was an insult. He knew an insult like that ill became the name of Pembroke. But there was nothing to be done.

To a man who had loved his friend's fiancée, that toast was simply too heavy to bear.

'…Damn it all.'

The veins stood out across the back of his hand where it gripped the glass. Raphael could not master the pain, the jealousy, and the sense of defeat—feelings he had never once known in his life.

And when at last he turned his head away from the couple, for one fleeting instant his eyes collided with a pair of hazel ones. His heart was in such turmoil that her gaze seemed to waver violently in return.

Perhaps it was only his imagination.

With a bitter smile, Raphael handed his glass to a servant passing by and left the banquet hall with uncharacteristic haste. What kind of gossip his exit might spawn did not matter.

Whatever rumor took wing, it would be better than becoming the Young Duke of Pembroke who, mad with jealousy, vomited in the middle of his own graduation ball.

01. Campbell's Spring

The salon within the Academy was a miniature political arena and social circuit for the sons and daughters of the nobility. The one difference from the real thing was that, bound together by their status as students, young men and women mingled quite freely in a single space.

Even so, no lady ever laid a hand on the cigars and brandy that were treated as the exclusive province of noble men…

"May I raise an objection?"

But there were women who took part in the debates—debates that broke out without warning, with expensive tokens at stake. Raphael, lightly swirling the glass in his hand and breathing in the scent of cognac, turned his eyes toward her.

"Trade isn't dependence, it's exchange. Complete self-sufficiency is nothing but an ideal—in practice, it's simply inefficient."

Her voice, calm and crystalline, had a charm that drew the ear. Yet what met his deep blue eyes was a woman wearing an expression that looked remarkably bored.

Her honey-gold hair hung loose, and she was dressed in a somber gown that would not have been out of place at a funeral. As always.

"Miss Campbell took the most tokens again this month, didn't she?"

"This month? Just wait—next month will be the same, and the month after. She has to, if she wants to cover that astronomical tuition of hers."

Judging by the laughter threaded through the conversation around him, her wardrobe was less a failure of fashion sense than a matter of necessity. Raphael instinctively brought his glass to his lips, recalling the woman in her bright Academy uniform.

Even so, he did not take his eyes off her. He took a mouthful of cognac, savoring the heat that scorched its way down his throat as he studied her deceptively indifferent white face.

Staring openly at a lady was hardly gentlemanly conduct, but the peculiar privileges of the Academy salon granted his gaze a fair measure of license. Besides, he was far from the only man watching her. From the moment she opened her mouth, the other men in the room had been looking her over too.

Raphael's interest, however, was a little different from theirs. He was not taken by the enormous hazel eyes that seemed to claim half her face, nor the smooth line of her nose, nor her vivid red lips. Her features were perfectly harmonious, but to the Young Duke of Pembroke, a beautiful face had never been a particularly compelling qualification.

If that were what pleased him, he would have exchanged a word or two with this salon celebrity long ago.

So why was he studying her face now, of all times?

"So, Prince Malik is currently speaking on the basis of… hunde-kot philosophy?"

It was because that question, delivered in her measured drawl, struck Raphael as unbearably entertaining in the midst of a tedious afternoon.

'…Eberdeen, was it?'

A quick glance around confirmed that he appeared to be the only one who had caught the foreign phrase she had slipped into the Imperial tongue. Which meant that her opponent in the debate—the visiting prince of a foreign kingdom—had likewise failed to understand the outrageous, single-stroke attack of being accused of 'dog-shit philosophy.'

To be precise, it was the prince's interpreter-servant who stood there bewildered, sweating through the moment. The arrogant prince, despite months at the Academy, had learned nothing of the Imperial language beyond a simple greeting. As a result, the present debate could not proceed without its ridiculous interpreter.

"Hundia—?"

Watching the servant stammer the word back in a clumsy accent, Raphael concluded that the prince's interpreter was clearly fluent in nothing but the Imperial tongue.

The woman, observing the servant's floundering, spoke again with an air of perfect innocence.

"Hunde-kot philosophy. Is the translation difficult? It sounded to me as though the prince's remarks were founded on exactly that school of thought."

Raphael swallowed the laughter threatening to burst out of him and set his glass down on the table. The interest glimmering in his gray-blue eyes had deepened further still.

The woman was right. A prince studying at a foreign academy for the sake of goodwill, fervently championing restrictions on foreign trade—it looked, undeniably, absurd.

Worse, the prince had begun openly berating his own floundering interpreter-servant. Between the strands of his hysterical voice, the clumsy Eberdeen word for dog dung could be heard again and again.

Yet the woman who had introduced that filthy phrase into the discussion remained cool to the point of aloofness. Hers was a face so utterly without fear that one might suspect she knew exactly what the word meant.

'Setting aside the fact that it's hardly a word to come out of a noble lady's mouth… what does she plan to do if this gets out later? Normally she's content to simply win her money and be done with it.'

As this uncharacteristic flicker of concern rose in him, the prince's servant, unable to withstand his ill-tempered master's badgering any longer, finally nodded hastily.

"Yes—His Highness's logic is indeed founded upon that philosophy. Prince Malik takes a deep interest in the philosophy of… dog excrement."

At those words, the woman's habitual indifference melted away and her eyes curved into crescents. The bored impression she gave vanished in an instant. Just as Raphael's eyes widened slightly, she answered in a voice edged with laughter.

"I see. Then there's no need to continue this debate, is there?"

It was a slightly mischievous face. And in this room, he alone would understand what that expression meant.

A true victor's smile—entirely different from the triumphant grin the prince was wearing, having received his servant's translation.

Raphael stared hard at that face, and as she moved to leave the salon, he rose to his feet on reflex.

"Where are you going?"

He pressed down on the shoulder of his friend Lucas, who had naturally begun to rise and follow, and answered with the corner of his mouth lifted.

"To register for an elective."

Raphael strode after the woman in long, swift steps. That his behavior was ungentlemanly was something he chose not to dwell on—from the moment he had followed her out the salon door, curiosity outranked decorum.

He did exercise a minimal courtesy, keeping a respectful distance between them. Even so, he did not withdraw the gaze that traced her ramrod-straight back and the golden hair spilling loose down it.

Her hair, unbraided and unadorned, suggested she had not brought a maid with her to the Academy.

'Given the state of House Campbell, I suppose that's only natural.'

Having catalogued such details out of habit, he spoke up, casually.

"What would you have done if the prince's servant had known that word?"

At the rude question, delivered without so much as a greeting, the woman faltered for a moment. But only a moment—she resumed walking, clearly having been aware someone was trailing her, and answered evenly.

"…I already knew the prince's translation parrot couldn't speak Eberdeen. I did him a small favor once, back when we were choosing our electives."

"Translation parrot? Are you calling the man an animal?"

"Don't worry. I'm not in favor of reviving the abolished slave trade."

'I can see as much from your hair, which no hired hand has ever touched.' Raphael swallowed the remark, only to find the corner of his mouth already curling upward.

"Then why say it?"

"It merely reminded me of a parrot my cousin keeps. Whenever someone says something to that bird, it opens its beak and spits the very same words right back. It looked similar to me."

It was an almost endearing reason. Raphael soon abandoned his position trailing behind her, closed the distance in a few brisk strides, and fell into step at her side.