Pembroke's Early Summer

"Enya, are you making no progress with the Whitmore second son?"

"…We remain on friendly terms."

"I didn't ask about friendship, I asked about progress. See to it that none of your old bad habits have crept back in—and watch yourself closely, or I'll have to intervene."

Intervene?

Ever since the investment in the oil fields had been settled, talk of a match between Enya and Lucas had cropped up constantly. All this time, the family hadn't managed to secure so much as an engagement, let alone a wedding, and had groveled at the Marquis Whitmore's feet at every turn—and yet here he was, puffing himself up about who would keep whom in line.

Enya swallowed her scorn and stayed silent.

Seeing his daughter's silence, the Count pressed for a firm answer.

"There's talk everywhere that the man can't resist a pretty woman. I'm telling you not to go manufacturing excuses to look the other way."

"……"

"At the same time, don't show any petty jealousy, either. Your job is simply to secure the name 'Whitmore.' Remember—and remember again—that a family like ours rarely gets an opportunity like this."

The Count spun out his absurd logic once more, just as he had in the past when he'd seated a former courtesan as Countess to make Mario Campbell his heir.

"Even the noblest bloodlines throw up the occasional mutation. A pity that mutation happened to be a Campbell, but the blood alone is worth more than enough."

At that voice—finally reducing Lucas to nothing more than a fine-blooded stallion—Enya gave a listless nod.

The Count wore a displeased expression, yet he did not call out her attitude. Presumably because her relationship with Lucas was, so far, not a bad one.

Since construction had begun on the equipment for the oil fields, Enya had been obliged to stay at the Campbell estate every weekend. For occasions exactly like this one—reporting on how things stood with Lucas.

When the meal, which had left her insides knotted, finally came to an end, Enya climbed to her room and collapsed onto the bed. She knew it was an undignified thing to do, but she couldn't overcome the exhaustion that wrapped her whole body. Her full skirt had ridden up past her knees, baring her calves, and the impropriety of it nagged at her until she straightened herself out.

'Clothes that show your legs are in fashion now. How uncomfortable.'

As she tidied her rumpled dress, a bitter smile crept onto her face. She'd remembered how, once the family's fortunes improved, her father had thrown out every one of her mother's dresses. Worse still, under the pretext of maintaining decorum, the maid her father had arbitrarily foisted on her at the dormitory had burned all the clothes there as well.

It struck her as laughable—how she had already grown used to wearing stiff new clothes, having all but forgotten the loss and grief of that time.

'I want to go to Eberdeen. Soon.'

She hadn't managed to keep a single memento of her mother, but she wanted to meet the people who remembered her too, and soothe her longing among them.

…No, perhaps it was her restless, stirring heart that truly drove her. Her graduation date was fixed, and yet the impatience kept welling up inside her.

When she thought of the man who was the cause of it, Enya caught the hand that had been drifting toward her forehead. That spring-scented night—the accident on the terrace—had taught her one habit she needed to police.

Because the feverish sensation she'd felt that night showed no sign whatsoever of fading.

"Your ears are bright red, Enya."

"…Summer seems to have come early this year. It's rather warm."

"You'd be better off blaming the wine."

"Pardon?"

"It's far too vivid a color to be caused by the heat. A rather dangerous color to wear to a party, in fact. …As though someone else had put it there."

"…If it's such a vulgar color, then by all means, let the record show it was the wine."

"Haha, that wasn't what I meant. It suits you."

Because the freshly flushed ears she'd been caught with by Lucas kept making their appearance at the most inconvenient moments, she finally buried her face deep into the cushion.

'I've lost my mind.'

She couldn't deny that the feeling she had labored so relentlessly to kill had only grown larger instead.

And that was why she wanted time to pass quickly. Because once she reached Eberdeen, she felt her heart—bound as it was to Raphael—might finally find its freedom.

Raphael curled his fingers and brushed his knuckles across his lips. It was a new habit, one born only a few weeks ago.

"Master, is something troubling you?"

"Not particularly."

Despite the answer, his blue eyes stared blankly out the window.

Albert stole a glance at his master's reddened nape. It was far too deep a color to have been made by the early summer sun.

It was a shade unfamiliar to Albert, who had served him since childhood, too.

'…Though "unfamiliar" hardly covers it, given how often I've been seeing it of late.'

A faint worry settled in Albert's eyes. It had begun, hadn't it, after Baron Simon's party some two weeks ago? Ever since, Raphael would sink at times into deep thought. It had become commonplace to find him sitting alone in the townhouse's hyacinth garden—a place he had never much cared for.

'And every time he does, his neck turns red like that.'

But the seasoned valet did not commit the blunder of voicing his worry that his master had gone strange. Instead, as his master raised a hand to cover his mouth without seeming to notice, Albert casually asked after something he appeared to need.

"Shall I bring some chilled tea?"

"…Cognac instead of tea."

Albert nodded at the unhurried request.

Once he had left the room, Raphael stretched out along the couch. The red that had stained the back of his neck had spread, somewhere along the way, across his face.

Even recognizing his own foolishness, Raphael found himself quite unable to do anything about it.

'Idiot.'

Having passed this merciless judgment on himself, his thoughts drifted naturally back to the night of the party. Or rather, they merely elaborated on what he'd been thinking since earlier.

A night when a gentle warm wind had hung in the air. Himself, leaving for the garden because he could no longer bear to watch Enya and Lucas dance. The woman looking down at him from the terrace.

Tracing the memory of that day in order, he finally recalled the moment when those transparent hazel eyes had glared down at him.

She had looked so damnably beautiful in that moment that he realized the feeling he held toward her ran far deeper than simple fondness.

It was the bitter recognition of first love.

The man who had always been composed about everything, once he had defined his own emotion, understood at once that he had no real way of hiding it.

The ungentlemanly display he'd made of himself before Enya was proof enough. Climbing the terrace barehanded, no less—with only a few glasses of wine to blame it on, hardly enough to excuse the excuse. There was nothing to call it but a childish, jealousy-drunk spectacle.

And in the end…

"…Damn it all."

He had gone and committed an act worthy of her contempt.

The small back of her, fleeing down from the terrace, was still vivid in his mind.

He had not chased after her because of the eyes of others. At the time, it was simply that he had not wished to apologize to Enya for what had happened. Because if he apologized, he felt the whole thing would be swept away as if it had never been.

Her slender waist, the warmth of her skin, the sensation of fine, downy hair brushing his lips.

He had even caught himself thinking he did not want another man to take those things from him.

Perhaps that possessiveness, which had been raising its head for some time, had finally shown its true face.

Letting out a hollow laugh, Raphael recalled the conversation he'd had with Lucas after the party.

"What is the Marquis thinking? Word is everywhere that you're to become Lucas Campbell."

"Hard to say. Dangling a troublesome second son as bait for the black gold, perhaps? No telling what will come out of that land, so he's covering his bets."

"…So the marriage talks are still only a rumor, then."

"Depends on how the land's true value gets appraised, I should think."

Whether it became a match or remained a light scandal.

Even the careless lilt of Lucas's voice as he'd added that came back to him, and Raphael's brow furrowed.

In short, the Marquis Whitmore had dangled a line named Lucas at the Campbell family against every contingency. And loosening or pulling that knot seemed to be entirely at the Marquis's discretion.

Which meant, in the end, that Enya's reputation counted for nothing in his eyes at all.

Lucas's reputation had long since been scraping the bottom anyway, so there was nothing to consider on that front from the start.

'Filthy business.'

Raphael cursed the Marquis Whitmore even knowing full well that this was precisely what noble marriages were. And mid-curse, no less, he thought of the delighted face of the woman dancing with Lucas.

The scene, lingering like a dark afterimage, finally knotted his brow. A mood that had been perfectly fine moments before plummeted to the floor in an instant.

Any intelligent woman would know the tangled interests between the Campbells and the Whitmores. She would be aware, too, that the two of them meeting had produced nothing but rumors—nothing had actually progressed.

And yet she had attended the party on Lucas's arm. Had it been the Count's will?

And if it hadn't been…

"……"

Raphael forcibly shook off the assumption he had no wish to dwell on. And swallowing down the cognac Albert had brought, he thought:

'…Am I still, to you, one of your good opportunities?'

Only Enya could give him the answer to that question. And somewhere in Raphael's mind as he thought of her, the word duty had quietly evaporated, as if it had never been there at all.