“……Sorry. I wasn’t being very refined myself. I went too far.”

Rose apologized honestly. She felt the tension drain from her shoulders without meaning to.

Getting riled up over a petty jab and acting like the very Ordos she despised. She really was an Ordo through and through.

No, she had been worse than Anton and Piar. She had known better and still hadn’t held back.

“So the rumor about you pursuing a match with Prince Julius, is that the real one?”

Satisfied with the apology, Jade shifted to a more familiar tone and started digging into idle gossip.

“What match.”

Rose shook her head with a sullen look and swirled her legs in the water.

“Nothing of the sort. We’ve had tea a few times and I haven’t received a proposal. That’s hardly a match.”

“Unlucky for you, then.”

Poor thing, Jade mimicked the sympathy Rose had used to tease him.

“Not really. Prince Julius is a good man, but marriage…… marrying into the imperial family is a little frightening, even for me.”

She offered a deflection.

The humiliating words Empress Camilla had spoken to her were something she had never shared even with her family.

The Empress had surely assumed Rose wouldn’t repeat that conversation to anyone. Carelessly spreading word of that day would only bring shame on Rose and her family.

“Is that so? You used to say it had to be someone you loved passionately. Now you’re factoring in the in-laws as well. How many families are actually going to meet that standard.”

Jade gave a light, mocking remark.

Passionately loved? Had she said something like that? Rose frowned, reaching back through a hazy memory.

“Well……”

“So you want a few more years. You still haven’t found someone to burn with passion for.”

Jade seemed to remember some conversation he and Rose had shared in the past. Every time he recalled something they had talked about, Rose noticed that his memory was just slightly sharper than hers.

“Right. I just don’t feel any urgency. Twenty-two isn’t exactly old.”

Rose kept the question to herself rather than pressing him on something she didn’t particularly want to dig into.

Love? Passionate love, even? When had she said that, and why?

During her most talkative years as a teenager, whenever she ran into Jade at the hot springs, the languid warmth of the water had loosened her tongue and she had said all sorts of things. That was the problem. She had even complained freely about her brothers without realizing she was embarrassing herself.

“If that’s how you feel, there’s no need to rush on my account. I’m not getting married.”

Jade crossed his arms and leaned his back against the edge of the spring. The sight of his thick arms pressing against the layered muscle beneath his broad chest made Rose feel a faint pressure of her own, and she drew a slow breath.

“Not ever?”

Rose asked carefully. A suspicion crossed her mind, one that anyone who knew his history of marriage meetings would have had.

“Do you…… like men?”

If so, at least in an Empire where same-s*x marriage was impossible, he would have had no choice but to remain unmarried.

“No. I dislike all animals with chest hair.”

Jade denied it flatly and without hesitation.

“Hmm……”

Rose made a vague sound and looked off into the distance.

Responses like you and I have similar views on chest hair, or there are rare exceptions among Iresian males where some individuals are born without chest hair, though it’s extraordinarily uncommon, all seemed likely to earn her nothing but insults. Staying quiet was the better option.

“Anyway, you don’t need to rush because of me. I won’t be getting married first.”

Jade said it while idly running his fingers over the grass at the water’s edge.

“Ha. How am I supposed to believe that? One day you’ll announce out of nowhere that you’re getting married first, and my mother and father will both collapse on the spot.”

Rose shot him a look that said she wasn’t falling for it.

“I won’t.”

He repeated it almost as though trying to convince her.

“Not before you.”

With the certainty of someone who had a clear reason behind it.

“……Why won’t you?”

Something was off.

Rose studied Jade’s face carefully, her eyebrows twitching.

She had some confidence in reading Ordo people, but outsiders were always harder. And Jade Camelot was particularly difficult to read, even among outsiders.

“Can you swear to that?”

“Why would I need to swear?”

He returned a reproachful look immediately.

“Because otherwise, if you change your mind, it’ll be my fault for trusting you.”

Rose looked down and muttered.

Honestly, it might be a trap. Who was to say he wasn’t lulling her into complacency by telling her to take her time, only to go off and get married first and leave her to be hounded by her parents?

“Ah, no, forget it. Asking you to swear is a bit much anyway. Both of us must have lists of suitors a hundred pages long. Surely we can each find one person worth spending a life with. If I make an effort and meet someone new every week, I’ll find the right one soon enough.”

She had already made up her mind to try harder.

“A life partner……”

Jade murmured meaningfully and tore at the grass within reach. Rose glared at him for tormenting innocent plants, and his hand shifted quietly to stroking the blades instead.

A blade of grass slipping between his long, thick fingers caught the sunlight breaking through the clouds and glowed.

Quite a bit of time had passed since they arrived at the hot spring. Someone sent from House Ordo might be arriving soon.

“I’ll swear.”

He said it out of nowhere.

“I swear I won’t get married before you.”

He said it as though it were nothing, but his gaze stayed fixed on the grass he was stroking like a small animal.

“You’ll swear……?”

Rose’s eyes went wide.

He was actually going to swear?

“Yes. I’ll give you a sworn promise. If the terms are right.”

Jade adjusted the ending of his sentence and shifted his expression into something slightly more arrogant.

“……Of course. Nothing comes free.”

Rose narrowed her eyes and continued.

“What do you want?”

She crossed her legs under the water. Jade’s eyes moved as though the opaque water were somehow transparent.

“Hmm. What about what you said at the start, not getting married until twenty-five? If you go and get married early, I’m the one who’ll be pestered. Our lord of Camelot is quite the stubborn man.”

“Three years is too long.”

In the past, that would have been a condition she could accept without hesitation.

But Rose had already resolved to actively search for a partner. She couldn’t afford to put it off for three years.

“Then one year.”

Jade hesitated briefly, then slashed the timeframe dramatically.

……This is almost funny. Acting so solemn over a trade like this.

Rose laughed and kicked her crossed legs lightly in the water.

“Fine. I’ll make that promise, why not. One year is enough time for me to think carefully and find a good match.”

“One year from now.”

Jade’s lips curved slowly into an arc.

“Marriage is forbidden, Rosemaria Ordo.”

But his eyes, somehow, weren’t smiling.

Was he regretting cutting the time down so much? Even though the deal had been struck willingly, his eyes, catching the backlight, looked dark and shadowed, like the deep green of the fog forest.

“Obviously. No taking it back, agreed? I like things in writing, so next time we can each prepare a written oath and……”

Rose was about to nail it down, thinking she might as well enjoy a year of peace of mind while she was at it.

Thud, thud, thud. The sound of hoofbeats came from far away.

“Ah……”

Chaconne had almost certainly brought the Ordos with her.

Who had Anne sent? What if it was Anton or Piar?

If the reckless brothers caught Rose and Jade sitting together in the hot spring without a care in the world……

“I’ll be off, then.”

Splash, Jade rose from the water in a burst of spray.

He stepped out of the spring, had himself ready in an instant, and mounted his horse. He raked his wet, darkly gleaming hair back with one hand and glanced down at Rose.

“Have our written oath ready, Rose.”

Jade murmured it like a secret. As though he hadn’t missed a single word of what she had left unfinished.

“Fine. And you had better not try to back out when the time comes. You swore, remember.”

Rose’s nagging demand for one last confirmation went pointedly unheard. Jade grinned and spurred his horse forward.

The large black horse, every bit as imposing as its rider, thundered away to the east.