On the Night Your Fiancé Sleeps — Chapter 16

"Lady Campbell, I haven't seen you in the salon much lately. I'm sure the gentlemen who've been waiting to wager their tokens against you must feel quite bereft."

It was the kind of provocation so juvenile it bordered on gauche.

Enya, who had been on her way to the library, regarded the man who had addressed her with an air of studied indifference.

He made no effort to disguise his hostility. And when her reaction proved meager, he only twisted the knife further.

"Oh, that reminds me — have you given up those frivolous little bets of yours? Now that there's black gold buried in Campbell land, I mean."

"……"

"But surely one must prepare for the possibility of finding nothing but filthy dirt instead of precious oil, wouldn't you say?"

With that, he flung a token — his so-called 'preparation' — and it landed at Enya's feet. An act of staggering rudeness.

Yet Enya felt no particular insult. Just as the man had said, the possibility that the oil deposit might amount to nothing was one she herself had kept firmly in mind.

"Well? Why don't you pick it up?"

No — more precisely, she felt nothing because she knew the source of his hostility was nothing more than vulgar, petty jealousy.

Ever since word of her engagement to Lucas had spread, the Count had been feeding Enya rumors she never asked for.

For instance, that the sister of the man standing before her was one of the young ladies who had once been tangled in a scandal with Lucas.

Or that he, too, like Count Campbell, had been hoping to welcome a 'stud of rather fine breeding' into the family.

Having marked the man's eyes for their resemblance to her father's greedy ones, Enya quietly ground the token beneath her heel.

Humiliation bloomed across the face of the man who had thrown it.

"What do you think you're doing!"

A woman who had stolen the marquisate connections he'd considered his birthright was now trampling the emblem of his house — it must have stung like nothing else.

But Enya no longer permitted his obscene rage to reach her. This kind of childish, low-grade harassment was old acquaintance to her, and so was the art of striking back.

She pressed down harder on the hard object beneath her sole and, before he could open his mouth again, moved first.

"My apologies, my lord. Lucas told me never to accept gifts from other men."

Her voice was soft, and her eyes curved in a pretty smile.

The sight of that face made the man grind his teeth.

"…Let's hope you're digging up more than empty dirt. Otherwise, you'll have to pay dearly for the insult you've just given me."

"Of course. If the soil turns out to be good quality, I'll share some with you."

At her unyielding attitude, the man's face flushed red and purple.

Trembling with the indignity of it, he shed what remained of his gentlemanly facade altogether.

"You've landed a marriage far too good for a bit of oil, and now you think you're untouchable, is that it? Or — ah, will you ask some fine gentleman to protect you this time too? Like you did a few years ago?"

He looked ready to fling down a glove and challenge her to a duel.

Did he truly intend to resort to violence, here in an Academy corridor full of people?

Or was it mere bluster?

Enya watched the man draw slowly nearer, thinking.

Squeezing her eyes shut against someone's violence was something she'd only done as a child. Besides, causing a scene in a crowded place would ruin the reputation of the one swinging his fists, not hers.

Darkel's aristocratic society was a very narrow world. People offered the victim their pretty sympathies while ruthlessly casting out the aggressor.

So Enya actually welcomed his bristling reaction. If she stood at the center of a public incident, taking a convenient leave for illness would become that much easier.

The Academy might even attempt to negotiate a settlement to bury the affair.

They might advise me to convalesce and hand me my diploma early.

She coolly tallied the situation in the space of a heartbeat, then, as the man closed in right before her, hugged her notebook tight and shut her eyes.

But the blow she braced for never came.

What forced Enya's eyes open was someone's strangled voice.

"You gutter rat — how dare you lay a hand on—"

Reflected in her wide eyes was a face that bore no trace of a gentleman. He had seized the arm of the man who had moved to harm Enya, pinning it with a violence that bordered on unnecessary.

"Wh-what is the meaning of this, Young Duke! Ugh—!"

Even so, Raphael's gaze was fixed on Enya.

His face was taut with fury, the cords of his neck standing out — and yet those restless blue eyes swept over her, cataloguing every detail.

At that worried look, her hand curled into a tight fist.

It was her own hand, once again drifting toward her forehead, that she forced to stop.

Raphael watched the man slink away with his tail between his legs, then turned to Enya with an irritated scowl.

"Why on earth do you have to be so reckless?"

"That's my question. Why on earth did you step in?"

"…And I was supposed to just stand there and watch that?"

"Yes. It would have been better if you had."

"Don't talk nonsense. Your hand is shaking right n—"

"It is not. Anyone could see your response was excessive, Young Duke. If you were so desperate to play the righteous gentleman rescuing a lady, you should have thrown down a glove and challenged him to a duel. Not manhandle him like that."

At Enya's level, measured voice, Raphael's brow furrowed.

Watching her hide her trembling hand as though it weren't shaking at all, something hot and furious surged up in his chest.

His head knew she was right. In a situation like that, all the more, one was supposed to maintain one's dignity and pin an opponent down with elegance. There were a hundred ways to punish a half-wit who'd lost his reason.

…Yes. His old self would have done exactly that.

This time, before the thought even formed, my body had already moved.

Raphael swallowed a bitter laugh. It was yet another reminder of how easily his reason thinned to nothing where Enya was concerned.

The pity of it was that he felt no remorse whatsoever for having lost his composure.

What frustrated him was simply his position — the fact that he wasn't permitted to step in when a situation made his blood boil.

He had wanted to kill the man who had threatened a small woman, and he raged at himself for lacking the authority to do it.

…Damn it all.

"My apologies, my lord. Lucas told me never to accept gifts from other men."

The moment he had stopped in his tracks at the sound of Enya's voice — that moment had been wretched.

Ever since she'd come back to him, the 'Eberdeen tuition' he carried everywhere against his chest had felt heavy as lead. Perhaps he'd realized once more that his feelings for her weighed more than he'd ever allowed himself to think.

He had wanted to hand her back the jewel that resembled her eyes and say: I bought it thinking of you.

But before he could, the thing he had dreaded came to pass.

The possibility he never wanted to entertain — that Enya might have feelings for Lucas — had reared its head.

Greed and jealousy swelled to monstrous size in an instant. He wanted to spew out those suffocating emotions, all of them, exactly as they were.

But even that would be overstepping.

"So if anything like this happens again, don't intervene. When you get involved, it only makes things harder for me."

In the end, Raphael let his warped resentment show to the woman standing before him, cold-faced and insufferable.

"…No. I fully intend to intervene again."

"I beg your pardon?"

"I have no way of knowing how close Marquis Whitmore wishes to grow with the Campbell family. Shouldn't I prevent Lady Campbell from being tangled up in trouble?"

"Is that what you tell yourself — that you did it for Lord Lucas?"

"Think whatever you like."

"…What remarkable friendship."

"It isn't remarkable at all. The young lady whose hobby is fistfighting is the remarkable one."

At his sour remark, the woman pressed her lips together tightly and finally took a step back.

Even in the middle of this, the thought rose unbidden: I wanted to look at that face a little longer — it's been so long. The memory of what happened on the terrace surfaced, and a deep thirst rose in him.

It's hopeless. Completely hopeless.

Enya spoke to the man, her face grown several degrees colder.

"Then allow me to thank you — as Lucas's prospective fiancée."

"……"

"And I must offer one more piece of insolent advice. If you truly care about your friend, don't come looking for him on the terrace where 'your friend's woman' happens to be."

His friend's woman.

At hearing Enya call herself that, Raphael froze reflexively.

"Since fighting happens to be my hobby, the next time something like this occurs, I may do something quite unbecoming to you, Young Duke."

A flawless, formal curtsy followed.

"Good day."

But he could not simply let her walk away, not with that farewell on her lips.

He had seen it — the trembling in the arms clutching her notebook had grown worse.

Raphael, holding onto his reason by a thread at the sight, spoke in his characteristic imperious tone.

"Hit me all you like, then. It's not as if taking a blow is difficult for me."

"What—"

"In exchange, come with me. I'll show you somewhere you can rest for a while. With hands like those, you won't be taking notes — you'll be lucky to turn a page. And that idiot just now certainly won't be the last of his kind."

The irritable remark made Enya falter. She lifted her gaze and stared blankly into the man's blue eyes.

It was beyond her control.

"…Then show me somewhere I can rest."

Unbidden, a memory she had guarded alone in the recesses of her mind surfaced on its own.

Because of a man who had forgotten everything that happened back then — yet spoke those very same words.