Scentless Blooms
The Pembroke summer garden was filled with blue hydrangeas. Their rounded clusters, washed in a soft azure, cascaded in lush profusion all the way to the entrance of the party hall.
Unlike hyacinths, those scentless flowers lent the duke's estate an unusually serene air—a mood decidedly at odds with the Duchess's usual tastes.
Because of it, people could tell she was less than pleased with the lady destined to be the "true protagonist" of this party.
Enya Campbell—the name that had become the most expensive one in high society since early summer. The moment the talk turned not to her beauty or her quiet grace but to her market value, she might as well have fallen out of the Duchess's favor entirely.
The gossips heralding the rise of House Campbell, too, were all busy weighing Enya Campbell's worth. Would Marquis Whitmore truly take that low-born daughter-in-law for his son, or would he curb his greed and choose dignity instead? That question, too, made frequent rounds at every gathering.
Raphael met all those voices with a sneer.
Several guests had already subjected him to unpleasant jokes as he greeted them at the entrance.
"Young Duke, does it not trouble you that the Young Lord Lucas might become a Campbell? Hardly a weighty name to be consorting with, wouldn't you say?"
An thoroughly irritating joke.
Raphael answered with his habitual smile in place.
"Of course it troubles me."
His voice was resolute enough that the eyes of those nearby snapped toward him. They must have thought the Young Duke of Pembroke had openly snubbed House Campbell.
When in truth his heart felt the exact opposite.
Raphael glanced leisurely around at the circle of teeth around him—teeth like those of piranhas ready to strip flesh to the bone—and added with easy charm.
"I heard from my grandfather the other day that when friends marry, one's free time for them shrinks considerably. Given that Lucas and I play billiards together every single day, I can hardly celebrate his wedding, can I?"
A playfully boyish excuse, fitting for a young man his age.
Of course, no one would take the remark at face value. Raphael knew that perfectly well, and regretted none of it.
It was only that he kept recalling the voice of a friend he'd overheard that day—the day he'd been eavesdropping, gracelessly, on a conversation not meant for him.
"Because I like you. So much that I don't want anyone to take you from me."
A bold, unflinching confession.
He'd chased after Lucas too late, so he'd missed whatever came before—but he hadn't stayed to hear how Enya answered it, either. He'd slipped away before she could give any reply at all. Because he knew that the moment she said yes, something in him would shatter.
Damn it all.
If he could have, he'd have excised this wretched feeling altogether. But an emotion that ought to have been strangled in its cradle only swelled instead, as if in defiance of every attempt to end it.
One thought kept circling back, over and over, in his head.
I saw her first.
That woman, walking in now on Lucas's arm—of all people in the world, it had been him who noticed her first.
She seemed oblivious to Raphael's gaze, greeting the crowd with a composed smile. A fairly convincing performance, though the hand gripping her partner's arm betrayed the tension beneath it.
The guests savored the sight as a bit of entertainment. They proclaimed it vulgar to haggle over profit so openly, sneered at the pairing of Whitmore and Campbell—then turned around and pronounced the young couple rather well suited to each other.
Raphael barely kept the corners of his eyes from crumpling.
And at last, they stood before him. Lucas offered the first nod to Raphael, who stood near the entrance standing in for the hostess, the Duchess.
He let that greeting pass him by like a breeze, and looked at the woman instead.
Her eyes, dyed in the light of the glittering chandeliers, were like flawlessly cut champagne diamonds. Raphael repeated the comparison to himself bitterly—it was one he'd already made a dozen times.
Then those eyes shifted, slow and deliberate.
The instant their gazes locked, Raphael heard himself click his tongue, low and irritable. When had he last seen her? Ah—right, the last time had been when she'd rejected him so thoroughly.
Even thinking that, he could not, for the life of him, tear his eyes away.
Part of it was that everything around Enya had gone black and dissolved, leaving her alone in his sight.
What broke that eternity of a moment was Lucas's bright voice.
"Young Duke Pembroke, thank you for your hospitality."
The formal politeness Lucas affected on official occasions grated on Raphael's nerves like a fingernail drawn slowly across them.
The pair had drifted close enough now to stand right in front of him.
Enya offered another flawless society greeting. Raphael bowed in kind, smooth as ever on the surface—but for once, he could not quite summon his usual air of leisure.
"Congratulations on House Campbell's happy news, Lady Campbell."
Even as he said it, he held her with his words, as though to keep her from slipping away.
Enya, colder now than she had been before, concealed it gracefully as she replied.
"Thank you, Young Duke. It is an honor to attend a Pembroke party."
Her small hand was still clinging to Lucas's arm. Staring at that familiar distance between them, Raphael curled his lip upward.
"Then kindly let go of it."
The words slipped out of him in little more than a whisper—in spite of himself. Lucas gave a soft laugh, and Enya blinked as if doubting her own ears.
Raphael grinned mischievously at the sight.
"Oh dear, it seems my honest feelings escaped me."
At that imperturbable follow-up, a faint crease formed between Enya's brows.
"Such composure in her bearing, and she's remarkably beautiful besides. If she attended the Academy, she must have a fine head on her shoulders as well. Women's degrees matter even in Darkel these days, you know. She's the very picture of the modern woman."
"This is the first time I've ever heard you speak so well of a young lady, my lady."
At her maid's astonished voice, Duchess Pembroke smiled.
"I was trying to see her in a good light. Otherwise I was afraid I'd furrow my brow and look utterly graceless."
"Ah…"
Only then did the maid seem to realize her mistress's mood had soured. Her hands grew noticeably more careful as they worked through the Duchess's hair.
The Duchess of Pembroke waved her fan in a lazy rhythm, gazing at the mirror before her.
In the glass, the woman's blue eyes still showed a glimmer of the irritation she'd tried to hide.
This party had been orchestrated for one purpose: to find a match for her son, Raphael. And then, without warning, some sordid talk of oil had thrown ashes all over it.
That was why the hall had been decked in blue hydrangeas instead of the cheerful pink roses she'd envisioned. Those blooms—beautiful, and utterly without scent—seemed a fitting tribute to the lady who would play the star of today's proceedings.
The Duchess recalled Enya's visit to her tea party. The lady she'd seen then, in that drab dress, had stirred something almost like pity in her.
She had even found herself thinking: how remarkable, that the girl managed to grow up so well, wedged as she was between a house-predating lord and his courtesan wife.
But the lady she'd seen today was a deep disappointment.
So in the end, the count's blood tells, does it?
Or perhaps she'd simply learned bad habits from years of living alongside that vulgar creature. The Enya Campbell who had seized a sister's inheritance rights had grown remarkably crass—from the way she so naturally hooked her arm through that of a man who wasn't even her fiancé, to the way she exchanged looks with Raphael, unashamed, in the middle of a Pembroke ballroom.
In Darkel, where quiet modesty was held to be a lady's foremost virtue, it was conduct that deserved nothing less than pointing fingers.
And so the Duchess had no intention of ignoring the feverish gleam she'd caught in Raphael's eyes.
It appeared her son had contracted his first ailment of the heart—a most unwelcome development.
He'd be better off keeping a mistress.
Setting aside the fact that the object of his regard was a daughter of a vulgar house—to fall for a lady spoken of as his friend's fiancée, no less. A scoff escaped her before she could stop it.
To think her son, always her proudest achievement, would be swayed by so shabby an emotion.
"This 'modern woman' business, I'm afraid, is a touch ahead of its time for an old soul like me. At the very least, I'd prefer it if only ladies with proper chaperones attended my parties."
"An old soul, my lady? Perish the thought. You're a hundred times right."
Modern women deserve to be gossiped about in Darkel, and so on. The maid flung out her unnecessary flattery. It was an attempt to lift her mistress's spirits, but the fastidious Duchess merely went silent, her face coolly indifferent.
Before long she abandoned all pretense of composure and snapped her fan shut with a sharp crack. At the sound, the maid stepped back a pace, and the Duchess rose from the couch.
It was time to appear before her guests once more, as hostess of the party. Her mood was still foul—but emotions were not to be displayed so carelessly, even in one's private chambers. By the time she reached the door, the woman in the mirror already wore a picture-perfect, graceful smile.