The Night Your Fiancé Sleeps (2)

The two of them carried on their conversation with the easy rhythm of people who had been traveling together from the very start.

"What if your maid comes to understand the meaning of it, someday?"

"Even if she does, she won't say a word. When the prince's wrath comes down, it's his maid who'll have to bear it—not some nameless foreign lady."

"And what are the odds that someone else in that room happens to know Eberdeen as well?"

"That's a fair point I overlooked. Though Darkel's nobles prize profit over knowledge."

"Which makes it sound as though you prize knowledge over profit yourself."

Raphael kept picking apart her answers like a man spoiling for a debate.

"Put another way, it means you're the only clever one in the room. Isn't that rather an insult to everyone taking Eberdeen lessons?"

It was, in truth, a question closer to childish provocation than genuine inquiry. His voice was thick with undisguised mischief.

Perhaps because of that, the woman let out an unmistakable sigh.

"…I pursue profit too. I only learned a little because my aunt happens to live there. Is the hearing over with now?"

At the exhaustion she made no effort to hide, Raphael snorted a laugh—and then, noticing that her gaze remained fixed stubbornly straight ahead, his brow creased slightly.

Was she bracing herself against a scandal?

Scowling before he quite realized it, the man ended up delivering an exceedingly stiff, formal line.

"Do you happen to know who I am?"

Only then did her slender face turn toward him. Bright hazel eyes swept briefly over his features.

It was a candid, unadorned appraisal. One that fed his mischievous mood for no good reason at all.

The two of them had come to a natural stop, and now stood looking into each other's eyes. Raphael bowed, a light, easy bend at the waist.

His blue eyes, turned clear water-color by the spring sun, curved with amusement.

"I'm rather famous, you know."

At that, the woman wore a briefly troubled expression. Then she drew one foot back, bent her knee in a curtsy, and answered in a smooth, unhurried voice.

"…It would probably amuse you more if I said I didn't, but unfortunately I know you quite well. I was only matching my answer to the Young Duke of Pembroke's manner. Since you're a man whose path I'll never cross again, I thought there was no need to guard myself around you."

At that, Raphael laughed out loud in spite of himself.

"Well. That's not the answer I expected—so yes, this is certainly the more entertaining one."

Strangely, entertaining was exactly the word for it.

He was beginning to understand, a little, why Lucas spent every spare moment on empty-headed dates with women.

The way her brows arched faintly at his answer was amusing. Watching displeased indignation frost her garnet eyes, or her lower lip jut out for a flash of a second, proved surprisingly diverting as well.

The man who had judged her expression dull and uninteresting had vanished entirely. Raphael found the woman before him fascinating. Far more so today, when she had gracefully declined the winnings, than on the day she'd taken tokens off gentlemen foolish enough to bet against her.

…Ah, gracefully is perhaps overstating it.

A short laugh escaped him at the memory of that now-famous hundedock, and then—watching her well-shaped brows settle neatly back into place—he went and said something quite unlike himself again.

"Your Eberdeen pronunciation is excellent. I find myself wanting private lessons."

As though paying tuition in advance, he held out a token stamped with the crest of the House of Pembroke.

It was an impulsive gesture—possible only because he already knew that this flicker of interest he felt in her would burn out just as quickly as it had caught.

"……"

The woman looked at the token extended toward her, and her brows climbed to an even steeper angle than before.

"…The words I know in Eberdeen aren't terribly refined ones, you see. As you witnessed earlier."

"I'm very interested in those unrefined words."

"Then I wish you the best of luck finding an excellent teacher. …Oh, and for your information—the Eberdeen classes were discontinued. Not enough students enrolled. A fortunate thing, really, since it means I never actually insulted anyone. Good day."

Well. She got me good.

In the end, the woman never took the token Raphael offered.

It was worth far more than anything ever wagered in a salon debate, yet she spared it only one indifferent glance before looking away.

And yet—rejection, something he had never once experienced in his life—left neither his pride wounded nor his temper soured. A strange sort of playfulness did rise in him, though.

Raphael saw her off like a gentleman, up to that point. But he soon came to regret the choice. Because the woman he'd assumed he would see again in the salon never appeared after that day.

Could it be deliberate?

If it was a calculated move, it deserved praise. His interest in her certainly showed no sign of fading.

While Raphael was lost in these rather arrogant thoughts, his valet, fastening his cufflinks, spoke up with a worried face.

"Young Master, surely you don't intend to stay at the Academy again this weekend?"

The voice pulled Raphael from his reverie, and he smirked.

"Learned mind-reading, have you?"

Tidying the fall of his shirt as he answered, the valet—Albert—said,

"At the very least, do show your face midway through. The ladies who call on the town house will be sorely disappointed if you don't."

"Goodness. It's Mother's tea hour—why would anyone be disappointed that I'm absent? You make it sound as though I'm the centerpiece dessert of that table."

"A tasteless comparison, Young Master, though I can't refute it. To the young ladies clutching invitations to Madam's tea hour, the actual desserts won't matter in the least."

It went without saying, of course.

The heir to the House of Pembroke, now in his final year at the Academy, had no official fiancée yet.

And so, for those scrambling to claim the position, the invitations to the tea hour the Duchess hosted every other week were climbing steadily in value.

Raphael himself, the party concerned, could not have cared less.

"Even so, I'm rather a large dessert to put on display at a table. Just thinking about wedging myself in among those ladies gives me claustrophobia already."

"…Young Master. But—"

"Enough, Albert. Marriage is a duty to be performed when the proper time comes, and I intend to perform that duty after graduation."

Until then, he planned to savor his freedom.

Above all, choosing the next Duchess of Pembroke was entirely his mother's prerogative. She would undoubtedly select a sensible young lady from a house of impeccable honor.

Quite capably, on her own. Perhaps even neatly wrapped up before he graduated.

Which means, for now, I ought to devote myself to my studies.

Along with that thought, the woman's face surfaced in his mind once more. Raphael smiled briefly, then spoke to Albert—who was eyeing him as though he'd grown a second head—in a tone entirely unlike his usual self.

"I'm thinking of strengthening the bonds of friendship with my companions at the salon this weekend."

"…You intend to play billiards with the Young Lord Lucas from morning to night. Very well, I understand. I shall inform Madam that you are attending a social gathering within the Academy."

At the sigh threaded through the valet's voice, Raphael's eyes curved with amusement.

The words social gathering within the Academy set his drifting thoughts flowing smoothly onward.

Would she appear at the salon this weekend? Was that air of total disinterest in him genuine?

Even as he entertained the mildly cynical doubt, he found himself staring down at his brown cufflink—and remembering, in the end, the hazel of her eyes.

confronted with a master who looked inexplicably pleased with himself, Albert's face clouded with bafflement.

The Campbell estate was respectable only from the outside.

As the family fortune had begun its decline, anything worth money had been sold off one piece after another. Enya walked through the rooms without sparing a glance at the interior, stripped barer than it had been mere months ago.

There to receive her was a middle-aged woman adorned with an ostentatious hair ornament.

"So you've come."

"…And Father?"

"He's gone out."

At the answer, Enya's brow creased almost imperceptibly.

If the Count had gone out on business, his return would be very late indeed. He might even have forgotten his promise to her entirely.

He said there was something he could only deliver face to face—so this had been a wasted trip. Enya swallowed a sigh. The moment she turned to leave without a second thought, however, the woman's sneering voice caught her.

"Sent off to the Academy at enormous expense… and with graduation right around the corner, not a single proper proposal to show for it. What a remarkable achievement. If I were you, I'd have landed half a dozen gentlemen at least—enough to make that tuition money worth something."

The woman wielded an unmistakably coarse tongue. Though more than ten years had passed since she became Countess Campbell, she had not changed in the slightest since the day they first met.

Her walk—chest thrust out, displaying her ample bosom—was unchanged as well. wafting closer on a thick cloud of overpowering perfume, she looked her stepdaughter up and down with unconcealed contempt.

"Your face is passably pretty, so what could it be?"

As if the problem were that Enya insisted on refashioning the dowdy dresses her husband's late first wife had once worn.

"Oh—it's those drab clothes, isn't it? Well, to be fair, no gentleman would fancy a gloomy little miss who wears a dead woman's gowns. So do us all a favor and throw those ragged things out, even now."

Would the woman before her ever understand that noblewomen refashion the dresses of a dead mother or mother-in-law precisely to honor their memory? Even if Enya explained it kindly, she would grasp nothing of such mourning.

In public she was called Countess Campbell; behind closed doors, she was known as a courtesan who had made good.

Watching her new mother, Enya finally opened her mouth.

"And if I throw them out? Does our household happen to have the means to buy new dresses?"

"What? How dare you answer me back, you insolent—!"

The pretense of refinement vanished in an instant.

A woman with a dangerously low boiling point, she raised her voice and her eyes blazed. Seeing her look ready to raise her hand at any moment, Enya continued in a smooth, unhurried voice.

"If you give me the hair ornament you're wearing right now, I could manage to part with a few dresses, I suppose."

At the utter fearlessness in her stepdaughter's eyes, the woman finally raised her hand high. Striking someone out of pure rage—it was an act without a trace of dignity.

Of course, Enya had no intention of standing there and taking the blow. As a child she'd had no choice; not anymore.

But before she could dart nimbly out of reach, the woman—uncharacteristically—lowered her hand first. She fumed and stewed in her own anger for a long while, and then belatedly held something out.

It was an invitation, made of cream-colored paper with a soft, velvety texture. No doubt it was what her father had meant to hand over in person.

When Enya only looked at it without taking it, the woman shoved it at her irritably.

"Your father went to great lengths to obtain it. He says it's a very, very good opportunity for you. Frankly, I don't see what someone like you could accomplish in a place like that… but stuffy old women certainly do take a liking to girls like you. Go on, do your best. It'll make things easier for our Mario once you've married into a good family."

The barbed voice trailing from her ear faded naturally into the background. Enya checked the seal on the invitation in her hand—and her eyes widened slightly.

…The crest of Pembroke.

Beneath the profile of an eagle, two crossed swords had been embossed in exquisite relief. It was, unmistakably, the seal of the empire's one and only ducal house.

The same one she had confirmed just days ago, on the token someone had held out to her.