“Yes, well, it just sort of happened…….”

She wasn’t sure why she was speaking in such a defensive tone, but Lionette answered him, flustered. Dante brushed the hair from her face and met her eyes.

“I was going to carry you to bed if you were asleep, but you’ve robbed me of my chance to kidnap you.”

The words, almost like a murmur to himself, drew a laugh out of Lionette. Dante followed with a small smile of his own, as though he hadn’t quite meant it, then rose to his feet.

“Would you like to take a walk? The weather is lovely.”

“Of course.”

It had been a while since she’d spent time with Dante like this. After Elise’s visit, Dante had grown so busy that Lionette always fell asleep before he came to bed.

She had tried to hold out by keeping her eyes open and reading a novel while she waited for him, but somehow, whenever she came to her senses, she was already lying quietly in bed.

Dante walked slowly through the rose garden, matching his pace to hers. They were passing the fountain and the cherub sculpture, as beautiful as ever, when she spoke.

“Um, Dante.”

“Yes.”

She liked the answer that came back whenever she called his name. That alone made her happy. Lionette pressed down the feeling swelling in her chest and opened her mouth. Today, she had planned to ask him about Elise.

“Um, Your Grace.”

But another voice cut in.

The butler. Lionette wondered what could bring the butler himself rather than a servant, and gave a nod to Dante’s questioning look asking her permission. Whatever it was, it had to be urgent, so having their time together interrupted was nothing.

The butler, who had been watching Lionette’s reaction, approached quietly. To give Dante a little more privacy, Lionette stepped two or three paces away and touched the rose petals. She remembered the time he had asked whether she knew the theory that keeping pink roses inside the home brought harmony to a family. Had Dante ordered these pink roses planted for a harmonious household?

“……Miss Elise…….”

Painfully, that one name alone bored its way into her ears.

Elise again, in the end. Lionette had to work to swallow the sigh rising in her throat.

“Lionette, I’m sorry. It seems I have to leave in a hurry.”

“……That’s all right. Please go.”

Dante’s apologetic expression, and the fact that he never told her anything first, all of it felt like confirmation that she was nothing to him.

And yet she couldn’t ask him herself. What exactly were the two of them to each other? Lionette laughed bitterly as she turned the question on herself. Had getting along well for a little while made them close enough for her to involve herself in something like this?

Her marriage to Dante had been a contract from the start. And in that contract, because Lionette hadn’t thought to include it, there was nothing at all about what would happen if someone else appeared for the other party.

If there had at least been something like a clause saying they must work to preserve each other’s standing, she could have used that as leverage, but there was nothing of the sort. The carelessly stamped agreement weighed on her now.

I’m being punished.

Lionette murmured quietly to herself. For charging ahead without thinking anything through, I’m being punished. Because Dante was too sweet in this contract, because he kept saving her every time she found herself in danger, because he acted like he truly wanted her.

So she had been mistaken. She had thought that perhaps Dante had opened his heart to her too. The reality was that a woman appeared, his fiancée or whatever she was, and he didn’t even tell her. Everyone around her was working to hide that woman’s existence from her.

Under the blazing sun, Lionette cried a little. She cried without a sound, just enough that the maids standing at a distance wouldn’t notice, then dabbed her tears away with the back of her hand.

“Let’s go back.”

Ephine reached out her hand without a word. Lionette didn’t understand at first what it meant, and only then did she take off the jacket Dante had draped over her before leaving. It smelled like him, like being held in his arms, and it made her want to cry more.

She wanted to demand an answer from him. Ask whether he hadn’t felt something real, even a little. Whether he hadn’t come to care for her, just a little, even the tiniest bit. Whether she was truly nothing to him, when he was giving so much of his attention to Elise, who had appeared out of nowhere.

“Ephine.”

“Yes, my lady.”

“…….”

After a long hesitation, Lionette ended it flatly with nothing, that’s all.

Only Ephine watched her mistress with worry, thinking she had grown thin lately. Serving her since her time at the Wagner count household, Ephine had come to know that her mistress was an easy one to serve. She wasn’t prone to mood swings, and she wasn’t the type to make life difficult for those beneath her.

That young lady, no, that mistress of hers, had lately been wearing eyes that wavered easily, gazing off somewhere. Ephine knew well enough where that gaze ended.

‘I wish the master would pay a little more attention to my lady.’

Saying it aloud would only upset Lionette, so Ephine simply did her part by serving a slightly sweeter dessert than usual alongside the tea.

***

The days that followed were thin as ice, fragile enough that the servants had to tread carefully and read the mood.

Even through that atmosphere, Dante tried to share at least meals and sleep with Lionette, yet somehow Lionette always felt distant from him regardless. Close in proximity, but not in feeling. Perhaps because she couldn’t properly hear what was in his heart.

The rainy season fell over the ducal estate in the height of summer. Unable even to take walks, they had no choice but to stay cooped up inside the manor for the duration of the rains.

Today was a particularly torrential day. The sky seemed to have sprung a leak, the rain pouring down so hard and sharp that it was difficult to see ahead.

Yet someone had pushed through that rain and arrived at the front of the ducal estate. He explained to the Siegfried gatekeeper that he absolutely had to deliver this letter today. When the family crest showed through the inside of his rain cloak, the gatekeeper finally stepped aside and called for the servant in charge of correspondence.

The servant, too, wore a curious expression, wondering what family would send a subordinate out with a letter on a day like this. Then he caught sight of the sealing wax and looked even more puzzled.

But his curiosity had no bearing on his duties whatsoever, so he resolved to do his job without concerning himself with his mistress’s personal connections.

It took roughly three minutes for the letter in question to reach Lionette. She had been sitting blankly, watching the rain-soaked garden through the window.

She was entertaining idle thoughts, imagining that with this much rain, the trees might have shot up taller by tomorrow. What broke that reverie was Ephine’s voice.

“……My lady!”

“Oh, yes. What is it?”

She looked up belatedly to find Ephine, who had called her name several times already, swallowing a sigh and asking again.

“My lady, a letter has arrived. Would you like to open it now?”

“Yes, bring it here.”

Ephine delivered it on a silver tray, the letter and a paper knife set upon it. Lionette picked it up and found a sealing wax stamped with a count family’s crest holding the letter firmly shut. She opened it with a puzzled look.