To think that the man who had been wiping down the tub with an indifferent expression had shown this kind of consideration.

She could not imagine what expression he had worn when he turned his back and placed these herb leaves in.

Thump thump.

She lay soaking in the warm water for some time like that.

Her breathing grew as short as her quickening heartbeat.

And in doing so, she came to realize something.

“Eleanor. You really have grown brave.”

She had come to stand before Cayel with the purpose of protecting a family she had already driven to ruin once, but it was also true that her actions had been far bolder than anything she would have done in the past.

She had no familiarity with him to speak of, and apart from the introduction her late father had given them, they had barely even been acquainted. Yet here she was, barging into his home without warning and demanding he marry her.

And as though that were not enough, she had even suggested they come together before the wedding, and was now lying in his makeshift washroom, fully submerged without a care in the world!

‘I must seem like a woman with no manners.’

Her pale skin had been slowly turning pink.

Eleanor had been mulling it over, and was about to slowly rise from the tub.

Swish.

It was then.

Just as she was about to pull herself free from the warm water wrapped around her body, Eleanor heard the sound of the cloth that served as the washroom door being drawn aside.

She startled and sank back down, and her eyes found the man standing tall after pulling aside the black cloth.

“Ca……”

“I am coming in.”

Before the flustered Eleanor could even call out to him, Cayel moved first.

‘What!’

Eleanor’s eyes went wide when she saw him step into the makeshift washroom without waiting for her answer.

Between herself, sitting in the tub overflowing with hot water without a stitch of cloth on her, and Cayel, who had barely covered his lower half with a large towel, there were no more than three steps.

“Ca, Cayel.”

Cayel was moving toward the tub without hesitation, clearly intending to close that distance by another two steps, and she called out to him quickly.

“What do you think you are doing?”

Cayel, who had never had any intention of covering his upper body, covered in long and short scars, looked down at Eleanor, who had gone rigid at his sudden appearance.

“Did you not say you wanted us to come together?”

He turned the question back on her. Eleanor froze for a moment at his response, and Cayel gave her a short answer before closing the remaining distance between them in two steps.

“If we are going to come together either way, there is no need for me to wait until you have finished washing.”

What?

“We can wash together.”

So, what he was saying right now was……

“You intend to get in here with me……”

Two steps. Then one more.

If Cayel were to shift his gaze downward even slightly from where he now stood, he would take in at a single glance Eleanor’s full chest where she sat curled in the tub, the valley between, and the more hidden place deeper still below.

Thump thump thump thump!

Her heart pounded so hard it felt ready to burst under that gaze, composed to the point of stillness.

“Miss.”

Cayel’s voice reached Eleanor’s ears as she instinctively drew herself in.

“Are you truly certain you will not regret this?”

In his home.

In the home where he lived alone.

In this home where only he existed.

The one who had asked to use his tub first and wash up was none other than herself.

Through the hazy steam, Cayel’s dark gaze reached Eleanor. He did not let that moment pass, and held her in place with his eyes as he continued.

“Once you become mine, I will not let you go even if you refuse me afterward.”

……What?

“Even if the day comes when you grow to dislike me, you will not be able to leave.”

His manner of speaking had changed.

“Even if the day comes when you grow to hate me, I will hold you so you cannot walk away.”

Until just a short while ago.

The man who had kept himself deferential and never lost his courtesy was now speaking of himself as an equal to Eleanor.

Before the startled Eleanor could respond, Cayel went on.

“Of course, if I fail to keep the promises I made to you in our agreement, you may dissolve our contract unilaterally.”

“……”

“So I will ask one last time. Are you truly certain you will not regret…… choosing me?”

Was he truly trying to give her one final choice?

Cayel’s face was clear even through the blurring steam before her eyes.

Eleanor thought.

‘Well.’

Would a day come, as he said, when she would regret this choice?

She soon shook her head with a faint smile.

‘No.’

That could never happen.

Eleanor had already made the worst choice of her life once before.

She had even been certain of that choice and told herself she would never regret it.

But what she ultimately came face to face with as a result was her own death.

A betrayal she could not wash away and a despair too heavy to bear had followed her all the way to the moment her breath gave out.

Could anything more terrible than that happen?

“I will not regret it.”

Choosing you. Not ever.

And.

“I will not give myself cause to regret it, either.”

This was not a supposition. It was a resolution.

To keep the past from repeating itself, Eleanor had made a new choice.

To prove that this choice was the right path, Eleanor would keep striving and keep preparing.

So I will not regret choosing you.

Cayel had been staring at her in silence after hearing Eleanor’s answer, and a faint ripple passed through his dark eyes.

“In that case……”

Soon after, a low, deep voice passed through his parted lips.

“I will do as you wish.”

His answer carried through the dissipating steam. Then came the sound of the large towel wrapped around his lower half sliding to the floor.

Eleanor flinched at the sound, and before her eyes, his solid upper body gave way to reveal the heavy lower half beneath.

Her eyes went wide.

She had already been unable to look away from the lines of his abdomen, which had been on her mind to begin with.

But the moment she saw what lay between his fully exposed legs and found what rested at the center― Eleanor had cause to doubt her own eyesight.

‘Good…… lord.’

Her breath came up short.

The body of the man before Eleanor now was worlds apart from Marcus’s smooth frame, which had cared only for appearances and gone through the motions of sparring with the knights of the mansion.

Skin bronzed to a pleasing copper, a build that looked hard enough that a blade grazing it would not tear, and muscles that shifted with a life of their own whenever he tensed even slightly.

The scars large and small scattered across his body seemed to speak of the rough years he had lived through, and because of them, Eleanor found herself perceiving Cayel’s body as all the more striking.

The most startling thing of all was that formidable column hanging heavily between his firm thighs.

‘What on earth……’

The thick, flushed shaft stretched long and looked almost menacing.

The veins standing out along its surface made her head swim for reasons she could not name, and the tip looked hard enough to pierce through anything.

She could not look away.

She swallowed past a throat gone dry.

‘……Different.’

In her past life and in this one.

For Eleanor, who had known no man’s body but Marcus’s, the sight before her now was nothing short of a shock.

It was nothing like Marcus’s, which had been unremarkable despite his striking face.

What stood before Eleanor was a shaft that inspired a kind of pressure she could not explain just from looking at it.

The deeply flushed, thick column did not sway limply from side to side with each breath. The fact that it already commanded this much presence while not yet aroused kept pulling Eleanor’s thoughts into disarray.

If that were to enter her.

‘Could I even take it?’

It still hung downward.

Which meant it had not yet responded at all.