Duke Siegfried looked as though the ground had shifted under him. It was the look of a man faced with a wild creature that was impossibly unruly yet too insignificant to take seriously. He drew a long breath and spoke.

“Since you have no one to tell anyway, I’ll just say it. My fiancée confessed her feelings to me, I turned her down, and I took a slap to the face as the price for it.”

“Your fiancée confessed to you, and you turned her down?”

Lionette tilted her head. She wore the expression of someone questioning whether she had heard correctly. Duke Siegfried continued.

“I need a fiancée who won’t fall in love with me.”

“I see.”

Her easy acceptance made the duke raise an eyebrow again. He seemed to have no idea that Lionette read so many novels that this sort of thing barely fazed her. She felt a strange sense of relief that her habit of reading hadn’t made it into whatever information he had on her.

“You’re a rather peculiar woman.”

“I hear that from time to time.”

Ha! Duke Siegfried burst into a genuine laugh. At that moment, Lionette felt something a little strange.

The man laughing at something she said filled her with a pride that made her feel she had accomplished something remarkable. For some reason, she felt she would do just about anything to make him laugh like that one more time.

“So that fiancée position is vacant now?”

“It’s been vacant for exactly about thirty minutes.”

Lionette spoke with her heart thudding in her chest.

“Then may I fill that position?”

“What?”

The duke stared at her. Lionette, feeling awkward, could do nothing but hold his gaze in silence.

“A fiancée who won’t fall in love with you.”

“Are you in your right mind, Miss Wagner?”

“Haha…….”

And with good reason, for they were that Wagner and that Siegfried. If the world split in two, one half would be Wagner and the other Siegfried. As a ducal house and a count’s house, they had never openly clashed, but the two families had always stood on opposite ends of everything.

The emperor’s faction and the nobility’s faction. The conservative Wagners and the reformist Siegfrieds. Two families that had never once been on the same side had, naturally, never once been joined in marriage.

Count Wagner himself disliked the Siegfried family, even though the two families had never truly come to blows in his generation.

“That’s precisely why it’s the Wagner. It’ll make you look far more like a man in love.”

“Are you always this peculiar?”

“I told you. I hear it from time to time.”

Duke Siegfried frowned, then seemed to turn something over in his mind, and then let out a short, disbelieving laugh.

“So then, how does making me look more like a man in love benefit me?”

“It would naturally make the marriage seem less like a fake one. Who would ever think you’d bring in a Wagner of all people for a sham marriage?”

Lionette shrugged after saying that much.

“You need someone who won’t love you but will look like a happily matched couple in front of others. For my part, a marriage of appearances is far better than an arranged sale, if it means I can escape one.”

“Bold of you, Miss.”

“If I count that one too, that’s three now.”

Duke Siegfried laughed out loud at her follow-up. Was that a yes? Lionette held her breath and waited for his answer.

“Give me three days.”

It wasn’t the duke saying he would wait. He was telling Lionette to wait. It was the same as saying he needed time to think.

Lionette gave a quiet nod.

***

Three days, however, was far from a short time for Lionette. She had to stay out of the house to avoid her father, who looked ready to marry her off to an old nobleman as soon as tomorrow.

“Phew.”

“Lionette…….”

Charlotte called Lionette’s name carefully. She already seemed to know that Lionette was not doing well inside. It wasn’t because Charlotte was Lionette’s friend and privy to her situation. Word of this arranged marriage had already been spreading through high society, passed quietly from person to person.

“Oh my, Miss Wagner. You haven’t left for Quinton yet?”

“……Quinton and I have no connection.”

“What? I heard your newlywed home would be in Quinton.”

The old nobleman’s estate must be in Quinton, then. Lionette swallowed a quiet sigh. The two women in front of her didn’t seem to have wanted an answer from Lionette at all; they were too busy tittering among themselves.

Go on, I have plenty of headaches without you two…….

Lionette muttered to herself and pushed to her feet. She felt sorry enough for Charlotte, who stood beside her not knowing what to do, that she decided to head home for the day.

“Quinton?”

Just then, a low, soft voice slipped into her ear. Lionette’s body went rigid for a moment. A familiar voice rang in her ear.

“That would be a problem, going to Quinton.”

It was Dante Siegfried.

“To propose all the way out in Quinton…… news travels far too slowly there.”

A languid smile hung at the corner of his handsome mouth. The curve of his eyes hinted at the ease he had worn his entire life.

“Everyone would find out too late. That I proposed to Miss Wagner.”

“……Pardon?”

It was Lionette’s question that broke the frozen atmosphere. She asked again because she couldn’t be certain she had heard correctly, and Duke Siegfried answered with a soft smile.

“The proposal letter should have arrived at the estate by now, but the person in question isn’t there.”

“Your Grace, what do you mean by—”

“In any case, Miss Wagner won’t be going down to Quinton for the time being.”

Duke Siegfried had spoken casually to the two stunned young ladies, then drove the point home.

“I proposed to her.”

The moment she and Duke Siegfried were alone, Lionette couldn’t hold back her question. It was as much a demand for an explanation as it was a question.

“What on earth were you thinking?”

“About which part? Letting a woman I don’t know off the hook for witnessing something unfortunate? Agreeing to a contract with that woman? Or going so far as to propose to her in person?”

She felt she ought to say “all of it,” but instead Lionette bit her lip.

She had wanted to ask what possessed him to announce in front of everyone that he had proposed, but thinking about it, from this man’s perspective, everything that had happened over the past few days was strange.

“……People will talk.”

“Isn’t that a good thing?”

Duke Siegfried said it with perfect composure.

And he wasn’t wrong. Their sudden marriage had too many suspicious aspects to it. So if word spread that Dante Siegfried was completely taken with Lionette Wagner, it would help conceal at least some of that suspicion.

But why did she feel so unsettled?

“Do you regret it?”

“Pardon?”

“I asked whether you regret proposing a contract to me.”

“…….”

Lionette thought it over slowly, then shook her head. She didn’t. Looking back, no better opportunity than the man in front of her would ever come again. The choice she had made then was the most important choice of her life, and the one she would least regret.

“No. I don’t regret it.”

“…….”

“I’d do the same thing again.”