Fendrick glared at Loretta von Pescar’s letter as though he could burn a hole through it with his gaze.

Was this a betrayal? Or was she asking him to betray her?

A deep frown creased his brow. The letter’s contents were elegant and refined, with no obvious flaws. However, meaning isn’t found only in the words; there is always nuance between the lines.

This letter was urging him to sleep with another woman rather than his fiancée.

Loretta herself would have hesitated at such a suggestion before marriage, yet she was telling him to sleep with someone else.

D*mn it!

Fendrick quietly cursed under his breath and lifted his head. The woman who had brought him the letter flinched when their eyes met, her shoulders trembling.

“My fiancée sent you?”

“Yes. That’s right.”

She nodded in response to his question.

The woman was small in stature and, at first glance, clearly appeared to be from the south. Her hair was as red as the wine served at Holy Communion, and her lips matched its color. Light freckles dusted the bridge of her nose shyly. Her skin was pale, and her cheeks were tinged with a soft blush.

Although she wore an expensive-looking dress, she was certainly no noblewoman — she wasn’t wearing a single piece of jewelry. Not even gloves. Her hairstyle was clearly an attempt to follow the latest Southern trends, but the result was a complete mess.

His fiancée had undoubtedly chosen the plunging Southern dress on purpose. Despite her low status, it marked her as a woman touched by Loretta’s hand.

While Fendrick examined her, her hazel eyes, shifting with an oddly muted hue, also drifted over him, taking him in subtly. She was appraising him in her own way.

The difference was simple: his gaze swept over her without restraint, taking in every detail, while hers only flickered over him a few times before retreating to the floor.

“What’s your name?”

“Katarina Shaieren.”

“…Shaieren?”

Fendrick raised an eyebrow at the familiar word. That wasn’t a person’s name—it was…

“I grew up in the Shaieren Convent. So I took the convent’s name as my surname.”

Ah.

A dry laugh escaped him.

A woman raised in a convent, no one could question that purity.

“So you took a saint’s name for your given name, and the convent’s name for your family name. How very holy of you.”

When Fendrick said this mockingly, the woman raised her head again. She didn’t seem offended; she just widened her eyes slightly.

Looking at her pure, saintly face, he asked her something.

“Do you understand what it means to attend to an unmarried man?”

“Ah…”

She blinked once, then nodded.

“Of course. Lady Loretta told me that my role is to familiarize myself with northern customs before the wedding to help her settle into the House of Lorhast more easily. She also said that I should stay close to you, Your Excellency, and find out exactly what you like and dislike, so that I can attend to your every ne….”

She rattled on without hesitation, not even stopping to breathe, repeating the contents of Loretta’s letter word for word.

Fendrick let out a brief, derisive breath.

“Right. Naturally.”

When he cut her off, the woman pressed her lips together, shrugged her shoulders and drew in on herself.

With her hands folded neatly in front of her, she folded herself up into a ball. This posture pressed her arms inwards, lifting her br*asts into a dangerously pronounced curve above the neckline of her dress.

Seeing that only made his anger flare higher, certainly not desire.

‘…On the eve of a sacred marriage vow, this is how she tries to stain me?’

If Loretta didn’t want to marry him, she could simply have told him. There was no need to disgrace him like this.

Among imperial nobles, having a wife and a mistress was hardly considered scandalous. In House Lorhast, however, things went even further. Any child with Lorhast blood was recognized as an heir, whether legitimate or not. Their bloodline was far too thin for them to be selective.

In this context, refusing to marry Fendrick was not just a personal choice. Even if Fendrick went ahead with the ceremony, Loretta’s message was clear: she had no intention of ever sharing a bed with him.

‘So she wants to make me look like a pitiful fool, an engaged man betraying his own fiancée.’

The letter crumpled in his hand. The woman ordered to warm his bed shrank even further at the sound. Her face was an even deeper shade of red than before.

“…”

Fendrick dragged a hand down his face, exasperation simmering beneath his skin.

Annoyingly, he had no real reason to send Loretta away.

Loretta’s letter presented everything as innocent, a harmless preparation, sending a maid ahead of time to help him ‘adjust’ to married life. The girl standing before him was cunning and hid her true purpose behind the guise of a wide-eyed, naïve maiden.

If he told her to leave and said that he had no intention of letting her near his bed, and that he found the entire scheme offensive, she would undoubtedly widen her eyes and insist that she had never been sent for anything improper. Then he would be at fault for disrespecting not only her, but his fiancée as well.

“…Fine. I suppose I’ll do exactly as Lady Pescar wishes.”

He tossed the letter onto the desk and stood. At that single movement, the woman flinched and stepped back two or three paces.

‘She really sent someone with nerves this fragile.’

Ignoring her, he walked to the wall and pulled the bell cord. Before long, Madam Keller, the head maid, appeared.

“You called for me, my lord?”

“Yes. Prepare a room for Miss Shaieren. Lady Pescar sent her personally. She will be attending me starting tomorrow.”

“Starting tomorrow? …Understood.”

Surprise flashed in Keller’s widened eyes, but she answered him respectfully. Then she turned and gestured to the woman.

“Come along, dear.”

“Yes… yes.”

The woman let out a long breath and pressed a hand to her chest, looking relieved. As she turned to follow the head maid, her red hair rippled behind her like waves.

Fendrick watched her retreating figure for a moment, then frowned and looked away.

She would be in his bedroom within a few days — of that he was certain.

Tonight?

Tomorrow?

Or perhaps she would pretend to serve him first thing in the morning, starting by taking off her clothes.

This was the first time his fiancée had sent someone herself, but it certainly wasn’t the first time a woman had tried to sleep with him. Previously, he had thrown them out without a second thought.

He was doing it all for Loretta von Pescar.

He refused to betray his future wife, even before they were married.

“D*mn it…”

He threw the flowery, meaningless letter into the fireplace.

If that brazen redhead tried to sneak into his room, he would grab her by the scruff of her neck, send her straight back to the Count of Pescar and give her a stern warning never to try it again.

***

“Wow… wow…”

Walking behind Madame Keller, Katarina found it difficult to remain silent.

Every corner of the enormous, old-fashioned mansion was luxurious, even the servants’ passageways. Madame Keller naturally assumed the constant murmurs were reactions of awe. It wasn’t uncommon for a country girl to feel overwhelmed when entering a noble household for the first time.

But that wasn’t why Katarina kept gasping.

The owner of all this was what filled her mind so completely that everything else faded. Because of him, nothing else seemed to matter.

The convent where Katarina had grown up was strictly closed to men. As a result, she had hardly seen any in her entire life. At most, she had carried water for laborers delivering supplies or coachmen waiting for noblewomen to come and pray.

Now she was in the empire’s capital, near the northern edge of the continent.

The carriage that had brought her, treating her like a criminal, travelled from south to north for ten hours a day, every day. For ten long days, she endured motion sickness while taking in the ever-changing landscape outside the window and the ever-changing people.

She saw everything from sun-browned skin and short builds to pale complexions and tall, slender limbs.

This must be because they were so far north; most people here seemed to carry northern blood. They looked nothing like the people Katarina had known all her life.

‘Madam Keller too…’

Even the head maid walking just ahead of her seemed taller than any nun in the convent. Everyone Katarina had encountered in this mansion was the same.

‘They must all be Northerners.’

The Marquessate of Frosthine, also known as the Marquessate of Lorhast, was located at the northernmost tip of the empire. It is entirely possible that many of the mansion’s servants hailed from there, too.

Their lord, Fendrick Noertwald von Lorhast, was on a different level entirely, though.

His hair was as silver as the eternal snowfields she had only read about in books; it was so bright that it almost seemed to shimmer. His face was more beautiful than any marble statue of a saint. He had smooth, noble brows; a sharp, elegant nose; and a firm, masculine jawline.

Katarina hadn’t been able to take her eyes off him while he read Loretta’s letter. Staring blankly at the marquis, one thought kept circling through her mind.

‘Why would Lady Loretta dislike a man like him enough to reject marrying him? Is the man she loves even more handsome than him?’

It seemed impossible that someone like him could exist in reality.

But her moment of disbelief was short-lived because the moment Fendrick lifted his head, Katarina froze.

It was his eyes.

Golden irises that shimmered faintly like molten yellow light.

Yellow eyes – something you’d expect to see on a beast, not a man.

Those golden eyes bored into her from the depths of his gaze, and in that instant, she felt her heart turn to ice.

Fear. Cold, cutting fear.

He was unmistakably angry.