The black falcon arrived safely in Cedric’s hands, unbothered by the shower.

“A reply.”

Cedric unfolded the letter with swift hands and spread it open. Annabella’s elegant handwriting captured his attention at once.

“Not gentlemanly enough… how very like her.”

The moment he finished reading, the urge to write back surged up in him immediately. It was a feeling he was unaccustomed to — this thing called excitement.

“What should I write to unsettle her?”

Cedric spoke as though intending to tease Annabella — and yet he couldn’t quite bring himself to pick up his pen.

“Her reactions are so amusing — that’s what makes teasing her so satisfying.”

Nobody had asked — and yet the words slipped out regardless.

The falcon’s name is Knox — strong, like his owner.

His pen paused for a moment.

He had more than enough interest — and yet he realized he knew remarkably little about the person herself.

Might we share a cup of tea before I return to the North?

Written plainly like that, it felt rather sparse.

I would like to make it up to you — by way of apology for teasing you all this time.

Adding that last line made it look considerably more presentable. At least, that was how it struck Cedric.

“Knox — you have a mission.”

At those words, Knox spread his great wings wide. He was a falcon bred to traverse battlefields — but today’s mission was to be of an altogether different nature.

***

After sending Knox off, Annabella had only just managed to drift toward sleep when the knocking woke her again.

“You again…”

Perhaps because they were no longer strangers, Knox settled on the table without ceremony and extended his leg once more.

“Yes, yes. It’s your owner who’s the problem — not you.”

Annabella untied the letter from his leg, read it, and set it down.

“So your name is Knox. What a fine name.”

At hearing his name spoken, Knox blinked.

Annabella studied Knox for a moment before turning her eyes back to the letter. The contents were brief — but the Grand Duke was making his interest in her plainly known.

“Tea…”

Perhaps because of the harsh experiences of her past life, a man’s attention felt like a burden. She knew, of course, that Cedric was nothing like Alexis — but beginning something new required courage.

“What sort of compensation could he mean for all the teasing?”

Even so, Cedric kept drawing her attention in spite of everything. And unlike Cedric, who had yet to put a name to what he was feeling, Annabella had already acknowledged her own feelings to some degree.

A heart that kept racing. The helpless feeling of anticipating their next meeting despite herself. Cheeks that flushed the moment they were face to face.

What all of it was saying was perfectly clear. She had simply been refusing to look at it.

“But…”

Cedric carried the mission of reclaiming the throne. That would lead to war — which made him a dangerous person to be close to. And yet if that war meant striking against Alexis, she found herself wanting to cheer him on.

“One cup of tea should be fine.”

Cedric had to return to the North regardless. His face already kept drifting before her eyes, and thoughts of him arose on their own whenever she was alone — there was no real reason to avoid a simple tea.

To His Highness the Grand Duke.

Annabella wrote just a single line beneath the greeting.

I shall see you tomorrow at three in the afternoon, in the indoor garden.

This feeling was dangerous. But the harder she tried to push it down, the larger it would grow.

Having learned many lessons from her past life, Annabella decided she would rather face this man head-on and push through. In a way, it was a more mature choice than Cedric’s own fumbling.

The following day, word came that Grace was too occupied with preparations for the investiture to meet.

“My lady, your engagement with Her Majesty the Queen has been cancelled.”

Annabella, dressed in a softly rose-tinted dress, was in the middle of selecting a fan when Hilda spoke.

“I know. I’d like to visit the indoor garden today.”

“That sounds like a lovely idea.”

“Mm.”

Annabella raised her fan in an attempt to hide her awkwardness.

“How does this look?”

“You look beautiful no matter what you choose, my lady.”

“Even so… the dress is pink, but doesn’t the white fan look cleaner?”

Annabella held the pink fan and the white fan up in turn, this way and that, studying herself in the mirror —

It was a rather unfamiliar sight — Annabella, who had grown weary of even the sort of dress tour any woman might dream of, agonizing over a single fan.

“The indoor garden is somewhere you visit freely — just take whichever fan you like.”

“Hmm… I’ll go with the white one after all.”

“Of course. Either would do.”

Hilda didn’t know it, but today’s visit to the indoor garden was set to turn into a tea from what would appear to be a chance encounter.

It hadn’t been explicitly arranged that way — but the tea between Cedric and Annabella needed to look like a coincidence.

“What time is it now?”

“Half past two.”

There was no need to leave too early. But she didn’t want to be late to an appointment that wasn’t quite an appointment.

“Let me know when it’s ten to three.”

“Why is that?”

“Oh… I heard somewhere that flowers look their most beautiful at three in the afternoon.”

Annabella offered the excuse without much thought, and Hilda, her mind already occupied with the upcoming investiture, noticed nothing amiss.

And then, a short while later —

“What time is it now?”

“Two thirty-five, my lady.”

It felt as though a full thirty minutes had passed at the very least — the clock was maddeningly slow. Having finished all her preparations and having nothing to do but wait for three o’clock only made it worse.

“…Hilda, what time is it now?”

“Two thirty-seven… Is there somewhere you need to be today, my lady?”

“No — what appointment could I possibly have? Her Majesty the Queen’s engagement was cancelled, wasn’t it.”

“That’s true.”

Any more questions and Hilda was sure to notice something. Annabella fidgeted with her fan and tried to settle herself.

She hadn’t even decided what she would talk to the Grand Duke about when they met. Somehow she had the feeling the words would come once she saw his face — but that was not especially reassuring right now.

Time continued to pass with agonizing slowness. Annabella kept stealing glances at the clock, then fidgeting with her fan, then glancing at the clock again.

“My lady — it’s ten to three.”

At last.

Annabella rose slowly, careful not to show how long she had been waiting.

“Shall we go, then.”

“Yes, my lady.”

Annabella stepped into the indoor garden with Hilda. Crossing a single threshold was all it took — the lush greenery made it feel like an entirely different season from the world outside.

“My lady, what flowers are in bloom in the indoor garden? Come to think of it, the roses are mostly in the outer garden, aren’t they.”

“Ah…”

She shouldn’t have made up that excuse so carelessly. Annabella broke into a cold sweat, scrambling for a plausible response.

Just then, Cedric happened to enter the indoor garden.

“Oh — His Highness the Grand Duke…”

Hilda whispered softly.

“What a coincidence.”

Cedric stepped forward with an utterly shameless expression.

“Indeed. What a coincidence.”

At Annabella’s words, the corner of Cedric’s mouth curved ever so slightly upward.

“Since we’ve come across each other like this, shall we have a cup of tea — like before?”

“Yes. Now that you mention it, we did have tea here before.”

Last time the King and Queen had been present, which made it entirely different from now — but just like that, the tea had come together as smoothly as if it had been arranged all along.

“Hilda, please let the ladies-in-waiting know to bring tea. And go to Her Majesty the Queen and tell her… that I’d like to look at the tiara again tomorrow.”

The second request was invented purely to send Hilda away for a while. But Hilda, unaware of any of this, nodded and withdrew.

“Sit.”

Cedric settled in the same spot as before. Annabella dipped a small curtsy and took the sofa across from him. Before long, the ladies-in-waiting brought tea and refreshments and withdrew.

“Quite a remarkable coincidence.”

Cedric looked at Annabella again with that roguish glint in his eyes.

“You said this was by way of apology for the teasing — so I trust there will be no new teasing today.”

“…Fair enough.”

Cedric savored a sip of tea. Annabella watched him with her fan raised, studying him in silence. That alone was enough to make Cedric’s heart beat strangely faster. He and yet the words kept hovering at the tip of his tongue, unable to break the silence.

“May I ask…”

It was Annabella who broke it first.

“Do you have feelings for me?”

At Annabella’s composed question, Cedric nodded without hesitation.

“It would be a lie to say otherwise.”

“What manner of feelings?”

“I’m not sure. It’s a different sort of feeling from anything I’ve known before.”

At Cedric’s candid words, it was now Annabella who gave a nod.

“I understand you’ll be returning to the North soon.”

“I pushed back my departure to see your investiture.”

At that, Annabella looked at him with a steady, searching gaze.

“Why?”

“Because… I wanted to see it.”

Cedric was almost painfully honest. But Annabella didn’t dislike that honesty. She preferred someone honest and unpolished, like Cedric, over someone smooth and cunning, like Alexis.

“But after that, you will have to leave.”

Annabella looked the reality of it squarely in the face.