Almost immediately, the blanket rustled loudly behind me. Baek Seungjo had turned over and followed my position without missing a beat. The man’s body blocking my back from behind radiated a pressure like a towering fortress wall. The bridge of his nose had been far less troublesome to deal with.

I wondered if this was how it felt to play dead while a tiger crept closer.

I held my breath and pretended to be asleep, straining every nerve toward the man behind me. And then the very thing I had been dreading came to pass.

The arm supporting the back of my neck suddenly bent, and in one motion it pulled me into his chest. I panicked and grabbed my jeogori ties with both hands to keep them from being undone, and cried out.

“My lord! Th, this is…! Is this not a breach of your promise?”

“Stay still. I said I would not do anything improper. I am cold, that is all. Cold.”

In an instant, the burning heat of his chest pressed against my back. Baek Seungjo rested his chin squarely on top of my head and whispered low.

“You are warm.”

The relief woven into his voice was genuine. The drowsy laugh that followed seeped into my hair and tickled, and my shoulders drew up on their own.

“Now that I have you like this, you cannot run away. You fit right in my arms.”

Something in my chest ached at those words.

If my husband had said something like this to me, my heart would have fluttered.

Without realizing it, I had stopped struggling entirely. The hand holding me close moved in slow, gentle strokes over my stiff shoulders. That warm touch raised every fine hair on my body, yet it was so tender that tears nearly rushed to my eyes.

What a fool I am, finding warmth in the arms of the man who betrayed me.

Han Seollyeon, get hold of yourself. This man is not my husband. He is nothing more than a common man with a hidden agenda.

No matter how tenderly he acts now, who is to say he will not turn on me without warning?

Was I going to give away not just my heart but my body as well?

I gripped the silver knife hanging from my ornament cord the way one clings to a lifeline. I kept every nerve on edge, alert to the scorching warmth of the man’s body wrapped tight around me and the heartbeat hammering against me hard enough to break through.

Tonight, I would surely have to keep watch until dawn.

***

…Good heavens.

To think I had slept so deeply under the same blanket as my enemy that I would not have stirred even if someone had come for me.

At what point had I abandoned that solemn resolve to protect myself? To make it worse, when I opened my eyes, I was still in that mortifying position, nestled against him with my head on his arm.

To feel so refreshed and clear-headed after a sound sleep, and to find it so unsettling.

Could it be that this witless body of mine had never shed the habit of trusting and following Seungjo from our childhood?

Since coming to this provincial office, I had not slept soundly a single night. It was precisely because I had kept myself on edge, waking at the mere sound of a cold wind brushing past the door, that I had managed to keep myself safe from beasts like Park Wonchul all this time.

And yet I had let down my guard for Baek Seungjo alone. I was so disgusted with myself I wanted to take a switch to my own calves.

Nansil, who brought in the washbasin, had no idea what was churning inside me and grinned from ear to ear. She took one look at the rumpled bedding and our faces still heavy with sleep, then covered her mouth and flushed red, just like someone who had stumbled upon a bride and groom the morning after their wedding night.

Even as she pinned up my hair in the servants’ quarters, Nansil could not stop smiling. She went so far as to look at me in the mirror and say something thoroughly embarrassing.

“My lady’s face has bloomed like a peach blossom in the spring breeze.”

Was she not seeing the grimace on my face? Perhaps I needed to take her to a physician.

“Your skin is so smooth and luminous, like a white porcelain moon jar.”

I could not bring myself to admit, not even at knifepoint, that it was because I had slept well for the first time in ages. I kept a perfectly straight face and lied shamelessly.

“It is all thanks to the remarkable restorative power of yesterday’s croaker.”

“Hohoho, my lady! You make such good jokes, just like you used to. It puts my heart at ease.”

But I was not in the mood for jokes.

“My lord must have treated you so tenderly for your color to improve so much in just one day.”

Whether Baek Seungjo had treated me tenderly last night I could not say, but he had kept his promise not to do anything improper to me.

Was he trying to lower my guard?

The suspicion rose, then I shook it off. A man of his power could get a lowly courtesan to lift her skirts with a single word. He had no reason whatsoever to go to such laborious lengths.

By this point, I had reached the conclusion that Baek Seungjo truly had no intention of being intimate with me. The rumor that he could not resist the company of courtesans but rarely shared a bed with them was no rumor after all.

“It seems a woman truly does live on the love of her beloved.”

Love, of all things. He had done nothing but lie there like a stone and sleep.

It was like him, the Baek Seungjo I had known. His generous nature toward those beneath him was also the man I remembered.

But had he always been this tolerant of someone who came at him with such reckless impudence? My memory was hazy on that.

My conduct last night had been brazen enough that I could not have complained if I had been beaten for it. Yet he had not grown angry in the least. He played along with me and coaxed me gently.

Even now that morning had come, rather than reproaching me for last night’s insolence, he was picking clean pieces of precious croaker and putting them in my mouth. He was a man whose inner workings I could not begin to fathom.

“My lord, please do not. I will do it.”

“Now, now. Do you feel no pity for the croaker that dies twice at your hands?”

We had been going back and forth over a pair of chopsticks for quite some time when a shout rang out from beyond the door.

“My lord, I have brought the scorched rice water.”

The rough, male voice told me it was Deoksoe.

This detached quarters housed only one guest, yet there were already four people working here: myself, my two attendants, and Baek Seungjo’s guard Taegang. And yet Park Wonchul had sent Deoksoe along, saying there ought to be a man around for heavy work.

For Park Wonchul, a man who feared nothing under heaven, to step forward and try to curry favor first, Baek Seungjo’s influence must truly be something.

Thanks to him, Nansil and Meoru had less to do. From what I had seen yesterday, Deoksoe was quick-witted and quite agreeable.

But why had a manservant assigned to heavy labor come with the scorched rice water instead of Meoru or Nansil?

I could not let him catch sight of this outrageous scene, a chamber courtesan being waited on by her own master.

I swallowed the croaker I had not even finished chewing and wiped the corner of my mouth as though I had eaten nothing. If I could just take the chopsticks from his hand, the last piece of evidence, it would look as though nothing had happened. But Baek Seungjo lightly evaded my hand and gave Deoksoe a firm order to leave.

“Leave it outside the door.”

“The morning air is cold and it will go cold quickly. Allow me to bring it inside, my lord.”

The moment Deoksoe answered, Baek Seungjo’s eyes went cold. He fixed a piercing stare at the paper door as though he could bore through it and snapped.

“Do not make me say it twice!”

It was a command that froze even the air inside the room in an instant. The razor-sharp force of it startled me so badly I nearly hiccupped.

“Ugh…”

I pressed a hand over my chest and gripped my jeogori, and Baek Seungjo, seeing me, looked flustered and reached out toward me.

Wh, where exactly does he think he is reaching…

His hand moved toward my chest, and I went rigid. Then Baek Seungjo stopped his motion in the same instant, and our eyes met directly.

It seemed he had meant to calm me and moved without thinking. He realized too late where his hand was headed and snatched it back the way one pulls away from a flame.

“……”

“……”

While we both fell silent and avoided each other’s eyes, the oblivious Deoksoe remained outside and kept talking.

“I, I have committed a grave offense, my lord! The scorched rice water is here. I will stand rooted right here in front of the veranda, so please call on this Deoksoe any time you need anything!”

Baek Seungjo cleared his throat with a quiet ahem, and whatever had become of his earlier ferocity, he gave his next order in a deflated voice.

“As it happens, I have something for you to do.”

“Yes! Please give the order!”

“My skin condition seems to have flared up again. Go to the mountain behind us and fetch some mineral spring water.”

Having sent Deoksoe off on the errand, he picked up the chopsticks again as though nothing had happened. It seemed I was the only one whose heart was still pounding.

That command just now had been so fearsome. Even I, who had done nothing wrong, had nearly thrown myself flat on the floor.

…But what exactly had Deoksoe done wrong?

Compared to my own outrageous behavior last night, defying his master’s wishes did not even register as a transgression. And besides, what I had said was tantamount to sedition, while Deoksoe had spoken out of nothing but loyalty.

So why had he been so angry with Deoksoe?

“Open up.”

A piece of steaming tofu came through my lips while I was deep in thought. Even as I accepted it without any manners whatsoever, he watched me with a smile that said he found it unbearably endearing, and the answer suddenly came to me.

Deoksoe’s crime was being a man.