The Marchioness intervened,

“Oh my, the atmosphere has become tense. It seems there was just a simple misunderstanding. Come now, let’s clear up the misunderstanding and continue enjoying the party. Shall we change the music to something more lively?”

At her gesture, the music that had stopped began playing again. Much more upbeat music than before, as if trying to lift the mood.

As expected of the person with the best tact at this party. At the Marchioness’s words, people slowly lost interest in the incident and returned to their seats. Of course, this didn’t mean the issue was completely resolved.

However, the whispering mouths were now focused on Julia rather than me, unlike before. That was enough.

“You must be heartbroken to have your engagement ring stolen,” a passing nobleman approached and consoled me.

For some reason, I was reminded of a line from the villainess in a novel I had been reading a few days ago.

“It can’t be helped. The Duke said he’d buy me an even prettier one, so I’ll just think of it as charity to a beggar and forget about it.”

Glancing over, I saw Julia’s expression hardening terribly.

Come to think of it, that statement from the villainess’s perspective must have been quite satisfying. Because I felt satisfied too.

“When did I promise to buy you anything?”

As I was inwardly savoring the joy of victory, a familiar voice came from behind me.

I forced a smile and turned around.

Why does he always appear at inconvenient times and not when he’s needed?

Ilion was waiting for my explanation with his arms crossed. With that same expression he had when observing me on the first day.

“Did your conversation with the Marquis go well?”

“Yes.”

“Then shall we head back now?”

I deliberately changed the subject and called for the Marchioness. Ilion looked displeased that his question was being ignored, but I made an even bigger fuss looking for the Marchioness.

When I said we were leaving, the Marchioness expressed her regret and insisted that we must come visit again.

As the carriage slowly left the Marquis’s residence, I finally felt that the party was over.

Thinking about it, so many things had happened that it had been a dizzying day. I even lost my ring in the morning…

‘Oh right, I forgot about the ring. Julia took it, how am I going to get it back? I’m sure I said we’d get it back on the way home.’

I looked out the window with a serious expression, wondering how to overcome this crisis. Perhaps because the tension had eased, my motion sickness was creeping back.

‘Come to think of it, from where did Ilion watch the incident just now? Surely not from the beginning? That would be troublesome.’

“You look serious.”

“I’m worried about the ring I lost this morning. You know, the one.”

“The ring you said was stolen?”

So you heard everything from the beginning.

The fact that he knew meant he had watched my fight with Julia almost from the start. If you knew, why didn’t you help? You just stood there watching?

As I was racking my brain for an excuse, Ilion added another comment.

“I thought you had no experience in high society, but you spoke quite well.”

“People have always said I was good at speaking since I was young…”

“That’s not what I mean.”

I know.

The words I had carelessly thrown out to buy time for thinking were neatly cut off.

Ilion stared at me silently with his ruby-like red eyes, even abandoning the documents he so loved.

It was a gaze as if he was observing me. When I didn’t respond for a while, Ilion’s neat lips opened first.

“For a young lady who hasn’t even had her debutante, it’s not easy to overturn the words of someone with some influence in high society. Although Lady Grenoble acted foolishly, an ordinary person would have been flustered by the situation and tried to refute or prove their innocence. But you calmly lied, pretending to apologize on the surface while drawing public opinion to your side.”

“No matter how little I know, I’m not so foolish as to not realize Miss Julia was trying to frame me.”

“That’s good then.”

“……”

Is he deliberately adding those comments? I looked at Ilion, clenching my fists.

“I was wondering what to do, and then I remembered the romance novel I was reading yesterday. The protagonist in that story was also falsely accused of being a thief, just like me. So I just tried saying what I read in the novel, was that okay?”

“…You say you imitated a novel?”

“Yes. After that, there was a great scene where the villainess tries to slap the protagonist’s cheek, but the prince saves her. But I guess reality is different from novels. There’s no prince coming to save me. It seems the Duke was just watching from the side.”

“Don’t change the subject. So, you’re saying you just imitated a scene you saw in a novel?”

Changing the subject is my job. Don’t you know how to divert attention?

“Um, Duke.”

Ilion was looking at me with an incredulous expression, his arms crossed.

“I’m sorry, but I’m not feeling well… Could you please stop the carriage? I think I’m going to throw up… Urgh…”

The motion sickness I had been holding back finally got the better of me.

I hurriedly covered my mouth and lowered my head, and Ilion, startled by my actions, moved away from me and asked the coachman to stop the carriage.

Even before the carriage came to a complete stop, I burst out the door and grabbed onto a tree in the forest, emptying my stomach.

“Bleurgh.”

It wasn’t an act, I really wasn’t feeling well, and if I had been even a little later, I would have thrown up right in the carriage. I must have eaten too many desserts earlier.

I deliberately averted my gaze, not wanting to see the pitiful sight of my precious desserts becoming tree fertilizer with no trace left.

It was good that I had managed to avoid Ilion’s questions like this, but unfortunately, my intelligence seemed to have been expelled along with the lump of fertilizer. My churning head suddenly declared a strike.

If I continued the conversation with the Duke in this state, I didn’t know where I might make a slip of the tongue.

In this situation, I might as well pretend to be sick.

After wiping my mouth with a handkerchief and returning to the carriage, I moaned to Ilion with a face that looked like I was on the verge of death.

“Duke, I’m terribly motion sick. I know it’s rude, but could I lie down and sleep for a bit?”

Ilion seemed suspicious of my behavior, moaning at such a convenient timing, but he wasn’t bad enough to shake a sick person for answers. He exhaled shortly and nodded.

As soon as Ilion gave permission, I lay my upper body on the seat and tried to sleep.

The position was uncomfortable, but perhaps because I had been suffering from motion sickness, when I closed my eyes, I fell right into sleep…

“Ack, ugh, ouch.”

No matter how good the seat cushion is, what’s the use when all the wheel vibrations come through?

Every time the wheels hit a bump, I bounced once, making it impossible to sleep.

“Um, Duke.”

He looked at me with an expression full of annoyance, as if asking why I was calling him again in the middle of sleeping.

“Could you let me use your lap as a pill–”

“No.”

At least listen to the end of the sentence before refusing.

“Duke, you’re really too much. You won’t even call me ‘baby bird’, you scolded me earlier as if I had done something wrong, and now you’re being so cold to a sick person.”

At my words, Ilion’s eyebrows raised crookedly. He seemed to be watching to see how far I would go.

“Then at least lend me your jacket.”

I never expected the lap pillow from the beginning anyway. Human psychology is such that after refusing the first request, it’s harder to refuse a second, easier request.

In the end, Ilion couldn’t refuse the second request, which was nothing compared to the lap pillow, and took off the jacket he was wearing and handed it to me.

I took Ilion’s navy jacket, folded it neatly, and placed it on the carriage seat, where it served as a makeshift cushion.

It might sound a bit perverse to say this, but Ilion’s jacket had a pleasant scent.

Thinking that I should ask later what kind of flower scent it was, I slowly drifted off to sleep.

***

Ilion looked at the sleeping Ravenne.

The more he thought about her, the stranger she seemed. While she said she liked him, her actions somehow felt distant.

Another thing that bothered him was that her behavior so far felt somewhat unnatural.

Clearly, her actions were no different from those of immature young ladies, but the way she dealt with Julia today had too many points that were hard to dismiss as mere immaturity.

However, no matter how much he pondered, he couldn’t understand why.

Why would someone who was unfamiliar with high society, yet sharp and clever enough to overturn Julia’s claims in such a short moment, deliberately do things that went against his mood?

But if you ask him whether he thinks there was malice in Ravenne’s actions, that wasn’t the case either.

What malice could there be in being scammed into buying land or letting a pseudo-religious person into the house? She was just choosing to do incredibly foolish things, testing his patience.

‘I think I’m just overthinking it.’

As she said, it might have just been a case of imitating lines from a novel to overcome the crisis. The lack of physical contact could be due to what he said in the morning.

Seeing her sleeping so calmly, that explanation seemed more convincing.

Either way, there was nothing to gain from twisting the situation and interpreting it differently.

In the end, concluding that it was too early to judge, Ilion decided to observe Ravenne a bit more.