A Wager on a Lady

The man wore a mischievous expression.

Enya could not understand his oddly persistent request. What irritated her a little amid all this was that her heart had stirred, quite without her permission, at glimpsing this unexpected side of the man she had secretly loved for so long.

It was surely because his manner was so familiar.

Then a conversation from Duchess Pembroke's tea time drifted back to her.

"…Now that I think of it, didn't you say the Campbell heiress attends the Academy as well? How curious that she has a connection to the Young Duke. They say nothing binds people quite like shared schooling—was it a professor's recommendation that earned her a seat here, I wonder?"

That insufferable jab, remembered now, prodded a petty impulse in her. Which was to say, she found herself curious how their faces might change if she kept entangling herself with this man who kept approaching her—through that very 'shared schooling' of theirs.

Of course, she discarded such a childish desire for revenge the moment it formed.

Enya looked straight at the man who was staring at her—or rather, staring at his own puffed-up cheek and frowning as though he were the one in pain—and asked, "Do you know what the best opportunity is for a pitiful Campbell heiress like me?"

"Let's see. Eberdeen tutoring fees you could name any price for?"

"…Wrong. A good marriage prospect."

"How predictable an answer."

Raphael replied with studied indifference. Enya glared at him a little and spoke anyway.

"It's a realistic answer."

"Ah. Was that a proposal, then?"

"…Hardly."

Enya answered, barely holding on to her composure.

Raphael Pembroke seemed entirely unaware that he had attended the Duchess's tea party. Until a moment ago that had felt rather cruel of him, but now she thought it was nothing short of a mercy.

Because if this man who joked so flippantly about proposals ever discovered that she had, in fact, once been a candidate to become his fiancée, she would want to die on the spot.

Reflexively hiding the hand that threatened to tighten, Enya arranged her face into maximum indifference and said, "What I mean is, please stop blocking what little path my marriage has left. It would be rather inconvenient if rumors started that I was chasing after the Young Duke of Pembroke."

And before he could say a word in reply, she set the token she'd received down on his seat and turned her back on him.

Raphael made no show of courtesy in following her, but he called out, quite as if nothing were amiss, at her retreating back. "Then I suppose I'll have to start worrying about my own marriage prospects too. The way things stand, I'm the one doing the chasing."

Enya quickened her pace as though she hadn't heard. The hand she had tried so hard to keep loose was, at some point, clenched into a tight fist.

'…Was dog droppings really that much fun?'

Despite herself, the thought flashed through her mind.

The pity of it was that even having learned the Young Duke of Pembroke's strange taste in jokes, her heartbeat had quickened all on its own.

Killing a long-cherished unrequited love in one stroke, it seemed, was no easy task. The corners of Enya's eyes, which she had been disciplining right in front of the man, had already gone soft and slack without her noticing.

'They don't suit.'

Lucas, leaning his arms on the corridor windowsill, let out a short laugh as he watched the pair visible across in the opposite building. It struck him that he had learned of his illustrious friend's peculiar taste far too late.

The man hadn't been able to take his eyes off her since the salon debate, and had ultimately chased her down at that…. And yet, even so, flirting this brazenly and in the open hardly seemed like Raphael.

Raphael Pembroke had always been flawless to the very last edge—but that very flawlessness was what made him a bored, jaded sort of man.

Was that woman really so interesting? As he recalled, he'd never cared a whit about whatever she happened to be doing….

Lucas studied the woman walking away from Raphael with her back just turned. The golden hair, gleaming as it drank in the sunlight, was rather lovely, and the features filling her fair face were charming—but those were hopelessly ordinary virtues.

Why, she even possessed flaws that made those virtues look positively cheap.

Rolling the name Campbell around in his mouth, he cast a brief smile toward his friend, still lingering in the spot the woman had left.

The inexplicable something that had been circling him all this while had quietly slipped away.

Because he had realized that the objective measures by which one appraised a woman simply didn't matter much here.

"This can't be the first time."

"You're the one losing to me here. Wouldn't it be a bother to concede defeat one by one, every single time?"

'But that was the first time anyone's ever reacted back when I poked at them like that.'

Far more than a mere reaction to a moment's provocation, the sight of him sitting alone and bursting into genuine laughter had been strikingly out of the ordinary.

Meanwhile, the memory of the woman who had seemed barely interested in him at all made the corner of his mouth curl up of its own accord.

Losing to Raphael had been a given since they were children. But this time, it seemed he might just twist that given a little.

Golden hair and gold-brown eyes.

Hardly his usual type, but he resolved to consider that unremarkable combination his ideal type for a while yet.

Entirely, of course, for the sake of his close friend's first defeat.

No… for the sake of his own first victory.

The man straightened up from where he'd been leaning against the window, and his gaze landed on the woman just then opening the library door.

'Could they have made some kind of wager on me?'

Enya finally arrived at that conclusion.

It came after she had locked eyes several times with the platinum-blond man seated in front of her. In a library where men and women mostly sat apart—and in one with plenty of empty seats, at that—the person who had insisted on taking the seat before hers was Lucas Whitmore. The second son of Marquis Whitmore, famous for his close friendship with the Young Duke Raphael Pembroke.

Before him sat several volumes from the series The Virtues of a Lady and the Aesthetics of Silence.

Chin propped on his hand, Lucas idly fanned the book—an odd choice for a gentleman to be reading—with a distinct lack of sincerity. He didn't commit the rudeness of openly observing her, but every time she lifted her head, he would send a deft little nod her way.

As noted before—already several times.

Hence her perfectly reasonable suspicion that the two men might have made some disrespectful wager over her. Had Raphael's behavior seemed strange from the very start, after all.

'His obsession with Eberdeen lessons never made sense to begin with.'

She could hire as good a tutor as money could buy, after all. Thinking it over, it was also odd that interest in her—nonexistent for years—should spring up so suddenly.

She had only suspicion, no proof, but an unpleasant feeling rose in her all the same.

Every time her gaze met those gently curving green eyes, Enya made an effort to let the look slide past her, unclaimed. Thanks to that, she fortunately managed to refocus on her studies before long.

It was around the time the sky beyond the library windows had darkened that she belatedly realized the seat in front of her was empty.

Few people lingered in the library as long as she did, so this was no surprise. But seeing the books left behind on his desk, Enya thought her suspicion might, after all, be correct.

Yet when she reached out to tidy the books away, someone's voice stopped her.

"I haven't finished reading them."

It was a voice close to a whisper.

"I was making slow progress because I couldn't understand why one of a lady's virtues is supposed to be 'skilled needlework.' I got greedy and borrowed too many, so I doubt I'll finish them all today. If you want to read them, would you wait a little longer?"

"…I'm sorry. I assumed the seat was empty."

Enya cut the conversation off before it could continue naturally, apologizing at once and stepping back. Lucas Whitmore told her it was fine, and then did not speak to her again. He simply sat back down and opened his book.

Unlike before, the man lost himself in the book almost immediately, and Enya frowned slightly as she watched him. When she gathered her things and rose, he did not stop her.

She turned back to him without thinking, and meeting those green eyes yet again, she found herself giving a small nod of acknowledgment.

But this time, unlike before, he turned his gaze away indifferently. Exactly as she had done.

Watching the man's platinum lashes droop, so forlorn somehow, Enya caught herself smiling a hollow little smile.

'What a strange person.'

And that impression of hers hardened into certainty the next day, when the man once again claimed the seat in front of her at the library.

Because there he was, arrayed with Civility and Conversation for Gentlemen and Ladies, How to Conceal Your Emotions, A Lady's and Gentleman's Guide to a Graceful First Impression, and the like—and, as though the whole of yesterday evening had never happened, nodding to her again.

Enya faltered for a moment at his unreadable behavior. Noticing her waver, the man smiled, an amusement in his eyes that suited his soft looks perfectly.

"We meet again."

At the whispered words that followed, a faint bewilderment rose to her face. Chin in hand, the man passed her a book with a delighted expression. It was The Virtues of a Lady and the Aesthetics of Silence—the very one he'd been reading yesterday.

Instead of taking it, Enya asked, her voice edged with a sigh, "Did you and the Young Duke of Pembroke make some sort of wager over me?"

The man across from her blinked for a moment, then soon laughed low. "Raphael and I do wager on all sorts of things. Hunting, riding, cards, billiards…. But over a lady? Well now. I don't recall our ever sharing an interest quite that stimulating."

"Then why do you keep—"

"—And yet, sometimes there are things you understand without ever exchanging a word."

Cutting her off, the man suddenly fixed his gaze on something behind her. She was just beginning to wonder at it when someone pulled out the chair beside her.

Naturally, into Enya's field of view as she turned came the face of a man who looked inexplicably displeased. His crooked blue eyes slid back and forth between Enya and Lucas.