Chapter 55

The soft whispering voices of several noblewomen entering could be heard.

“I told you I was right. Marquis Inglebert and the Duchess of Polshared.”

“It really is them. Weren’t the two of them supposed to have broken up?”

As if their original purpose had been merely to confirm the faces of the two, the women’s voices were fairly excited, and they did not seem to have any intention of even taking seats. Though they meant to keep it hushed, their fussing voices were so loud that Yvonne and Ethan could hear them very clearly as well.

“That’s true. Since she remarried. Ah, no, not remarried. They were never separated in the first place.”

“Then I suppose they were never involved from the beginning.”

“That must be it. To be honest, Marquis Inglebert is quite close with Duke Polshared, isn’t he. Those gossip-loving reporters must have simply attached their own story to it again.”

“Did you hear that?”

At Yvonne’s clear face as she signaled toward the whispering voices behind them, Ethan let out a laugh without meaning to.

It was not that he had fallen for a beauty’s smile like the foolish men of Aerondo.

Just moments ago she had looked as though she felt terribly sorry, and now she was blinking those especially blue eyes and asking with a face so bold it seemed to say, wasn’t my confidence proven right.

Was this the proper time to say someone was subtly meticulous.

They had entered a rather eye-catching cafe located along the main road toward Sandiewood. Since they had taken the broad window seats, it was only natural that they would attract the eyes of passersby.

He had assumed, when she insisted he simply follow her, that they would go somewhere quiet and tucked away, but only now did he understand why she had brought him to a place so full of attention, and he laughed.

“So you deliberately dragged me here.”

“At this time of day, there’s a gathering of noble ladies at the nearby art gallery. They enjoy tea every time after it ends, and this is the road they pass where they can see exactly where we’re sitting.”

“So you were waiting for the right moment.”

Once the noblewomen had settled themselves, Yvonne lightly covered her mouth with one hand and whispered softly.

“Don’t worry. They attend quite a lot of gatherings, so it’ll spread by today. Since they have a good eye, their interests are diverse as well.”

Now that pretending to stay angry would no longer accomplish anything, Ethan adjusted his posture and leaned his upper body forward.

When he, like her, lightly covered his mouth with one hand, Yvonne stopped just as she was about to draw back at the suddenly shortened distance.

Swallowing the pathetic realization that talking with a woman who looked innocent one moment, clever the next, sly one moment, and pure the next was actually rather enjoyable, he narrowed his eyes.

“So what are you going to do from here on? Even if the rumor is corrected, I’ve suffered a fair loss. You’ll have to give me what I wanted.”

“You don’t need to worry about that. Nothing has changed. Our plan will continue exactly as it was.”

“Mm?”

Ethan made a quiet sound of surprise, as though it was unexpected. He had thought that, after whatever conversation had passed between husband and wife, she would back out now.

Then, when his eyes met those of the noblewomen who were still whispering about them, he gave them a pleasant smile, and the ladies flinched in surprise and quickly turned their heads away.

In that opening, Ethan asked,

“Then Miss Yvonne, I think we need to redefine our relationship. What exactly are we?”

Perhaps she had not expected that question, because her blue eyes shifted slightly as if in thought.

“Since being lovers is no longer an option, I suppose we need to find a proper relationship.”

“Hmm. How about friends?”

“I think an affair would work rather well.”

When Ethan asked with a lift of his brows, Yvonne’s neat eyebrows drew together slightly.

“That’s far too immoral.”

“Was taking a lover before the divorce was finalized moral?”

“That was under the premise of separation, but an affair is too disadvantageous. If we’re not careful, the blame could fall entirely on us, and that would be troublesome.”

The blame could fall on the .

At the choice of words, which one could hardly believe had just come from the mouth of a noblewoman, Ethan smiled faintly and lightly brushed the tip of the woman’s finger as she rolled her eyes in thought.

When the startled woman met his gaze, Ethan lowered his eyes into a smile and tapped the table lightly twice with his index finger.

“Let’s go with friends, just as you said, Miss Yvonne. Dangerous relationships all begin as friendships, after all.”

* * *

By the time she parted from Ethan and arrived back at the mansion, the sun was already tilting westward. As she entered beneath the sunset draped over the antique estate, the servants lowered their heads awkwardly as they passed.

There was no line of servants assembled for Yvonne’s return as there was for Carlisle. The butler did not come out to receive her either, but no one in this house found that strange.

Even Carlisle, who was unquestionably their master, had never taken an interest in Yvonne’s outings or asked where she was going, so Yvonne had always come and gone like an outsider.

“Where have you been?”

As she climbed the central staircase to go to her room, a heavy voice dropped down from above her head.

When she looked up, Carlisle was standing at the end of the staircase where it divided in two.

He too seemed to have just returned, dressed in a sharply tailored deep gray suit.

Though he wore military uniforms just as flawlessly, there was something of the faultless elegance and dignity of a great noble in the figure he cut in a suit that wrapped the lines of his body beneath those perfectly set shoulders.

Because of that, there had even once been a joking article claiming that more than half the women in Aerondo longed to be held by him just once.

Yvonne too looked at the figure she had once fallen for at first sight, then lowered her gaze halfway.

“…The Metropolitan Police.”

“Luca was released at two in the afternoon. You parted ways at the main gate, so that leaves exactly five hours unaccounted for.”

“……!”

The gaze looking down at Yvonne, who had stopped halfway up the stairs, was calm and level.

“What did you do for those five hours?”

Yvonne’s expression hardened. She had known he might set someone to watch her, but she had not expected him to reveal it so openly.

“If you had someone following me, then you already know, don’t you? I just quietly had tea.”

As if it were no matter at all, Yvonne resumed the step she had stopped. Carlisle’s face, which gradually drew nearer, was expressionless as ever, yet somehow seemed faintly displeased.

At the way he mentioned only Luca getting out and not Ethan, Yvonne gave him a puzzled look.

Though they belonged to the same social club, she had thought the reason they did not get along very well was because Ethan would steal information from Rein Kleint Company and move first. But somehow, it felt as though Carlisle disliked Ethan even more than she had thought.

By the time Yvonne reached the top of the stairs, he asked,

“…Do you really have to meet that man?”

“There’s no reason I can’t meet him, is there? The deal between us is that I mustn’t sleep with someone else, not that there’s any reason I shouldn’t see him.”

“So with us it’s a deal, but with him it isn’t, is that it.”

Carlisle muttered the words low, almost as if chewing them out, and swallowed a dry laugh.

It sounded as though she were saying that her coming back into this house had only been due to threats and not her own intention in the slightest.

Three years.

During that not-insignificant time, his wife had provoked him with this same unreadable face.

Despite having conspired with the Earl and Countess to marry him, at some point she began clinging to him, saying she loved him, then later behaved as though all of that had been false, and whenever she had the chance she ran off to her family home. No, perhaps it meant that she no longer even felt the need to keep acting.

That was how she often committed unbearable acts without hesitation, did nothing but draw his anger, and then finally threw down the divorce papers without a trace of regret.

It seemed this was the first time she had done something not discussed in advance with the Earl, but however one looked at it, her change was full of things he could not understand.

“It is a deal, isn’t it? Have you forgotten that you forced me back into this house?”

“To hear you say it, one would think I kidnapped and imprisoned a woman who was desperately refusing to come.”

With a faint laugh, he looked into Yvonne’s bright blue eyes.

Those eyes, so exactly like the greedy Earl’s, did not give him a very pleasant impression, yet because they were hers, he did not dislike them entirely. Finding that fact rather ridiculous, he swallowed a scoff and bent his upper body slightly forward.

Startled by that, Yvonne tried to step back, only to stop when a large hand settled against her back. When she turned her head, she realized that if she had taken just one more step, she would have stumbled from how close to the edge she stood.

As her body turned as if to flee, a firm arm swiftly caught her and turned her back toward him.

“Why, are you planning next to go around saying I’m a husband who even imprisoned you?”

“……If you really did something like that, then there’d be no reason I couldn’t say so.”

To think she said that after having already told such a cunning lie about suffering violence at her husband’s hands and even miscarrying a child because of it.

The eyes with which he looked at his wife, so wilful that he could not even tell what rhythm to match himself to, grew still.

He seized Yvonne by the waist and pulled her tightly against him. Perhaps startled by how close they were, close enough for their noses to touch, her especially long and thick eyelashes fluttered.

Her lake-blue eyes shifted uncomfortably for a moment, then at last held only him.

Even when they first met, she would lower her gaze shyly as if pretending modesty, yet in the end she had always looked only at him. There had been a moment, like a fool, when he had nearly been deceived into thinking that perhaps it was a sincere feeling with no other intention at all.

‘Carlisle, I love you.’

The soft voice with which she had first confessed to him echoed quietly in his ears.