A Different Good Opportunity

Not the matchmaking—but some other good opportunity?

Enya narrowed her eyes, unable to grasp what Raphael meant by the question. It had sounded almost like an order not to attend the matchmaking at all, and her heartbeat shot up of its own accord in an instant.

She had convinced herself that his irritated expression existed because he disliked her suitor, and a strange flicker of hope had bloomed because of it. Her old defense mechanism—well aware that such hope always ended in pain—summoned the voices of the past without delay.

"No matter what you do, you won't be able to stop my marriage."

Replaying that man's resolute voice in her head, Enya swallowed a bitter smile and spoke at last.

"...Well. That's the only method I know of."

"No, there are plenty more if you look for them."

"That must be by your standards, my lord."

"A good opportunity may in fact be a bad one. A matchmaking is nothing but two people sitting across from each other, their faces lacquered over with a veneer of gilding. Is it really right to assume something is a good opportunity when you've never truly tested it?"

"That's reality."

"..."

"Aren't you much the same, Young Duke?"

Enya shot back without bothering to hide her scorn. The man who kept planting useless hope in her had suddenly become hateful to her. Every time the hope he offered turned to disappointment, the drop she felt made her voice sharpen to a point.

"Do you know the face of every young lady who attends the Duchess of Pembroke's tea parties?"

Her light golden-brown eyes held a fierce rebuke aimed squarely at him.

"Will you choose a marriage partner based on their faces? Of course you won't. You don't even know who came to the last tea party."

"...That gathering only admits a certain caliber of people—vetted ones. It's not the same as blindly trusting anything that calls itself a good opportunity. It's a calculated room, curated so that only those worth marrying ever take a seat."

"Is that so? Judging by how even the penniless Campbell daughter received an invitation, I'd say that isn't quite true."

"What? ...You went to that tea party?"

Raphael frowned, as if doubting his own ears.

Why would you be there?

He stared at her with an open astonishment that laid that question bare, and she answered with a scoff.

"Yes. Apparently there was some sort of clerical error, because even the penniless Campbell daughter got the seal of approval stamped for her."

The cold voice stressing every syllable of penniless left Raphael utterly speechless. He could find no rebuttal to her biting tone at all.

She was there.

If he had known Enya had been invited to his mother's tea party, he would never have spent that entire day shooting billiards in the Academy salon. He would have at least shown his face at the town house, as Albert had advised. ...No—more likely he would have sprawled his broad frame into a chair at that table and lifted one of those dainty little teacups himself.

...Because back then, I assumed Enya would come to the salon.

Raphael muttered the excuse to no one, and strangely, his mood began to lift. The fact that Enya had set foot in the Pembroke town house improved his spirits to an almost alarming degree.

It was a truly bizarre thing.

His counterpart, unfortunately, appeared to be feeling precisely the opposite of his mood.

Enya's eyes had grown colder still.

"Forgive the presumption, but that gathering was quite a 'good opportunity' for me as well. That's why I didn't refuse it."

"Enya—"

"The Campbell daughter is plenty, my lord. Just as I did then, I'll simply go out and find some other good opportunity this time as well. Honestly, I don't know why I'm explaining any of this to you. My Eberdeen language class ended on the hour already. So may I take my leave?"

No. Don't go.

The words he would normally have blurted out refused, for some reason, to leave his mouth. It was because of her face—somehow, it looked wounded. Enya glared at him with more thorns bared than usual, a gaze that read less like indifference and more like fury.

The resentment pooled in those large, luminous eyes was so unmistakable that his voice died in an instant. Even though neither of them was speaking anymore, he kept his mouth shut for no reason at all.

At the same time, a strange, absurd thought flickered through one corner of his mind—that if she wanted something, anything, he would grant it. And while he was behaving more unlike himself than ever, gaping like a fool, Enya slipped out of the piano room.

I've lost my mind.

Raphael suppressed the urge to chase after her and scrubbed a hand down his face.

And yet an unconscious smile had spread across his lips.

...I'm one of those 'good opportunities' to you too, aren't I.

It was perhaps the most obvious thing in the world. Realistically speaking, no better 'opportunity' than himself existed anywhere in the Darkel Empire.

Even so, Raphael rolled her words over and over in his mind and broke into a helpless, snickering laugh.

Meanwhile, Count Campbell fought to maintain his dignity, struggling to keep himself from skipping down the street like a boy. His efforts proved futile, however—his face brimmed over with delight and jubilation all the same.

He looked back at the grand mansion he had just left, choking back tears of gratitude. It felt as though, at long last, he had been compensated for his long string of business failures.

The barren northern land—the only remaining piece of Campbell Territory he hadn't sold off piece by piece. Oil had been discovered beneath that troublesome plot, the very land that had refused to sell until the bitter end.

Who could have imagined that black gold lay slumbering beneath that wretched stretch of earth, where everything they planted died within days?

It had been pure Providence that they had dug a pit there intending to bury livestock carcasses. Had they never broken that ground, no one would ever have known what slept beneath it.

The problem was that developing an oil field demanded a staggering amount of capital. In truth, no one had stepped forward with an investment, since once serious work began, the reserves might well have turned out to be modest.

Just as the headache was becoming unbearable, a giant among investors—the Marquis Whitmore—had extended his hand.

Whatever the yield of oil, the Marquisate would take thirty percent of the profits in exchange for funding. An audacious condition, but Campbell had accepted gladly.

It means they'll shoulder the risk of a meager reserve as well.

A deal that shifted that burden off his shoulders alone was hardly a bad one.

Now, if I issue bonds backed by the oil field as collateral, I can live in style for the rest of my days.

"Hah, hahahaha...!"

The Count burst into laughter entirely bereft of dignity.

Out on the boulevard, he sought out and boarded the most respectable carriage he could find. Of late he had either worn his knees ragged walking or ridden nothing but shabby freight wagons, and the plush cushion swallowing his backside satisfied him immensely.

I've earned the right to enjoy at least this much.

It wasn't only securing a solid investor that counted as good fortune.

Thanks to this very investment deal, a matchmaking between the second son of House Whitmore and his own daughter Enya had even been arranged. Truthfully, it was a somewhat lighter affair than a formal matchmaking, but still—

Count Campbell was already striding ahead alone into a radiant future.

House Whitmore, my in-laws...

If he bound his family to theirs by marriage, then surrendering thirty percent of the profits from the black gold would be, truly, no loss at all.

The Count had reached a state in which he could die without a single regret. Now all that remained was for his daughter Enya to do her part.

He thought of his wretched daughter, who was by now ignoring who knew how many letters sent to her at the Academy.

The second son of Whitmore attends the Academy too, they say. Perhaps it would be better to send a letter telling her to cultivate the acquaintance herself ahead of time. Yes. That's the way.

The moment he arrived home, he would write to her first. And if, by some chance, this letter were ignored as well, he was prepared to go so far as to march down to the Academy himself.

"...What on earth is this supposed to mean?"

Enya read the letter from her father and murmured the words before she could stop herself. She was every bit as flustered as she had been upon receiving the invitation bearing the Pembroke seal.

The Marquisate of Whitmore...

Their second son was to be her suitor? Having read as far as the instruction to go ahead and build a rapport with Lucas Whitmore within the Academy before they ever met formally, Enya set the letter down.

She was still dumbfounded—but soon enough, a soft laugh escaped her as she recalled a certain man who had poured out nothing but sharp, cutting words, and she felt a small measure of relief.

"Why, the Campbell daughter sees quite a few suitors herself, doesn't she? I've been busy enough lately turning young ladies down."

Lucas, too, had shown no particular eagerness for marriage at the moment.

She couldn't yet tell what exactly he was about, but at the very least, she and he spoke the same language.

However—

When they met a few days later, the platinum-blond man beamed at her with a sunny face and said,

"Let's meet at the tea shop on 4th Avenue. Arriving separately feels far more thrilling, don't you think?"

"...Meet?"

"I do hope you haven't brought some other lady I'm meant to kiss instead."

He rattled on as though joking, then added the incomprehensible remark that this matchmaking would be different from the others. Enya's brow furrowed.

What on earth is he talking about?