Chapter 35 – I Won’t Do Anything

Sasha fumbled in a panic after losing hold of the glass of lemonade. Watching her, Robert belatedly noticed where her feet were headed and warned her.

“You mustn’t step there.”

But he was a moment too late. Sasha brushed against the faucet, and water began pouring down over her head from the tray held by the n*ked boy statue. Flustered, Sasha tried to dodge the stream, lost her footing, and slipped into the pool.

Pitiful, really. Robert folded his arms and quietly watched the scene. Only after some time did the woman, flailing foolishly in the water, realize that her feet could reach the bottom well enough and finally stand up.

“Stop laughing.”

At Sasha’s angry voice, Robert only then realized that he had been laughing.

“You told me too late on purpose. Because I was spying on you, and you wanted to tease me.”

“No. It’s just that I’m more of a gentleman than you think.”

“You don’t even know what I think of you. Maybe I think you’re a better person than you think you are.”

A small rainbow showed behind the woman’s head as she spoke in protest. Fresh green eyes looked straight at him. Burning with a heat that might have been from embarrassment, or perhaps anger.

“Even so, it doesn’t seem like you like me very much.”

Stopping his laughter, Robert strode toward her. Sasha reflexively shrank her shoulders. Paying it no mind, the man stretched out an arm and turned the broken faucet closed well enough. When the sound of water stopped, a quiet silence followed.

“That’s because you are often rude to me. You’ve shown that kind of attitude from time to time. Saying things a courteous gentleman would never seem to say. You’re not going to tell me you’ve never done that, are you.”

Sasha broke the silence that had felt as though it might last forever. If he really were a gentleman, as Mr. Robert said, then he would not have laughed out loud just now at seeing her fall into the water. Nor would he have calmly pretended not to know even while being aware that she was spying on him, and he certainly would not be teasing her with it now.

“So even if I do like you, it would not be only because you behaved the way you called gentlemanly.”

An awkward current swallowed them, and swallowed the pool as well. Sasha wanted to prove that this discomfort was not because she disliked him. To him, and to herself as well. A feverish impulse churned inside her, and it felt as though it had to be now or never. She wrapped her arms around his neck and quickly pressed her lips to his.

The blue eyes, opened unusually wide, stared straight through Sasha without blinking once. Robert’s lips twitched against hers. Slightly damp, and smooth as well. The droplets that had clung to his body had long since dried beneath the fierce sun. Sasha thought the bare skin of his arms against her felt burning hot.

Robert pulled Sasha’s stiffened waist close against his body. The uncontrollable impulse passed on from her was ruling him. When he bit into and tugged at her full lower lip, a thin little sound escaped her, and the door to the red cave opened. The intruder who at once pushed into a place that had never been permitted and greedily swallowed her damp breaths was astonishingly gentle too.

Slipping his fingers into Sasha’s hair, which gave off the scent of orange whenever it swayed in the wind, Robert pulled downward without hesitation.

“Ah!”

The woman’s chin lifted in pain, and her lips helplessly parted wider, and Robert, not missing that opening, went deeper still and lost himself in it. Sasha could not believe any of this. It could not compare to the goodnight kisses she gave her grandmothers by their bedsides before sleep. It absolutely was not anything like that……

“Sasha.”

At last releasing her, the man called her name in something like a whisper. It was a thick, sensual voice to a frightening degree. In complete contrast to the rough kiss, Robert brushed back Sasha’s wet hair like a tender lover. He had to do so in order to soothe the frightened woman. Sasha was terrified by having experienced part of a strange world she had never once imagined concretely before, only vaguely guessed at through a hazy heat.

“Are you all right?”

Only after some time had passed and her breathing had calmed did Robert ask in a low voice. Seeing the woman, who barely nodded without even knowing what he was asking, Robert’s lips moved. The impulse of summer had vanished like a mirage, and they were left in reality. And one mistake was enough.

Without a word, Robert lifted Sasha up out of the pool. Then he too lightly climbed back onto the ground. Sasha was wringing out her hair, her teeth clattering. In her current state, she could not leave Hawthorn Mansion. If she happened to run into anyone on the way home, it could lead to misunderstanding, and even if by luck she made it home unseen, people there would ask what on earth had happened.

“I’ll be going now. I was rude today.”

But more than anything, her head felt as though it would burst from confusion. Robert stared at the woman who looked like a drenched mouse, stammering that she would go home at once, then irritably shook his head. At the water droplets that scattered and landed on her cheek, Sasha flinched and took a step back from him, only to stagger on the wet ground. Robert did not bother to point it out or catch her.

“I told you, just dry your clothes before you go. I won’t do anything to you.”

He said it in an irritable tone. Picking up the shirt he had taken off, Robert quickly slid his arms into it. The silver necklace pendant hanging against his bare chest flashed in the fierce midday sun. It gave off a sharp reflection, piercing like the final strangled scream of someone in danger, then vanished between the neat folds of his shirt.

“It wasn’t because I was trying to hurry back before something happened to me. And if we must be precise, I was the one who behaved rudely toward you first. I swear I was never trying to blame you.”

Sasha made her excuse in a shrinking voice. The man, who tossed her the beach towel hanging over the chair, did not even listen to the end and simply strode ahead. Wrapping the green towel that had dropped onto her head around her shoulders, Sasha followed after him.

Robert passed straight through the corridor and headed for a room Sasha was seeing for the first time. In the middle of the sunlit room stood a bed. To enter someone else’s bedroom so casually. And in broad daylight, at that. Even noticing Sasha’s shocked look, the man paid it no mind and opened the wardrobe beside the bed.

“I’ll wait outside. I think that would be better.”

Gathering what little courage she had, Sasha managed to say it. Entering someone else’s bedroom carelessly was rude, and when it was a man’s bedroom, all the more so, and if that man was Mr. Robert, then it was the worst of all.

“I’m the one who’ll go out, so you change, and leave the wet clothes outside the door.”

Robert took out a blue shirt from the wardrobe. The trousers would not fit her anyway, so there was no need for them.

“It’s fine if I just wear them and let them dry. If you hang them outside, other people might see and misunderstand.”

Sasha was clutching the collar of her blouse desperately, as though he might force her to undress. Robert answered with patience.

“Don’t worry, Sasha. I’ll hang your clothes where no one can see them.”

And before she could refuse a second time, he left his bedroom at once. Perhaps he was angry, because the sound of the door shutting rang out loud and hard. Left alone with his large blue shirt, Sasha trembled in confusion.

* * *

When Robert returned after smoking a cigar, he found a neatly folded set of clothes placed outside the firmly closed bedroom door. He picked them up, went out into the garden, and hung them on the clothesline. The white blouse sparkled in the sunlight so brightly it made the eyes ache.

While waiting for the clothes to dry, Robert smoked a second cigar. When he returned to the bedroom to tell her that the clothes had been hung out, Sasha, so quiet he thought she had fallen asleep inside, made no sound at all. Since he had given his bedroom over to a guest, he turned his steps and headed to the study.

A long while later, when the clothes were almost dry, the sun was already beginning to set. Robert took Sasha’s clothes down, placed them outside the door, and knocked.

“Could you just leave the clothes there and go? Please.”

The woman, whom he had thought asleep because she had been so quiet, whispered in a shrinking voice.

“I’ll leave them there.”

Robert obediently did as she wished. The Duke of Guienne was the gentleman with the best reputation in Laurent society, and such a man had enough consideration to willingly grant the request of a young lady in distress. Even if Sasha Vinoche believed he was no gentleman.

Robert set the dry clothes down on the floor and turned away. No sooner had he moved away from the bedroom than the door creaked open, and a hand that slipped out stealthily snatched up the clothes and retreated inside at once. Should he simply open that door and ask what on earth she had been thinking. Hesitating, Robert changed his mind and went back to the study.

But even after waiting a long time, there was no knock. Realizing that no sign of movement could be felt at all, Robert rose from the study and went to the bedroom. On his bed lay the shirt Sasha had borrowed, neatly folded.

Robert slowly looked around the room. The bed was just as he had made it that morning before leaving. Since there was not even a single crease in it, it seemed Sasha had not climbed onto the covers even once. While waiting for her clothes to dry, had that woman really spent the whole time crouching on the floor in his shirt? Robert was sincerely curious.

Before long, he reached a conclusion. Absurdly enough, the woman had simply run away, leaving only the clothes she had worn behind. Did she think she was some butterfly emerging from a chrysalis.

Letting out a quiet laugh, Robert headed for the pool. Pushing through the bushes to the place where Sasha had been spying on him, he found the painting tools left there unattended. Robert tipped his head back and looked up at the sky. The air was heavy, and dark rain clouds had gathered overhead. It would probably rain before tomorrow morning.

Looking at the nearly completed canvas, Robert finally picked it up and carried it to the atelier on the first floor. Hoping that tomorrow, when the butterfly Miss came flying back here again, she would not be disappointed to find her painting ruined.