Chapter 1. A Woman With No Warmth

She was ready to leave.

Her travel bundle sat in an unheated corner of the room. Lumpy and misshapen, it looked something like a snowman that had been kicked apart.

The room, which rarely caught the sun, felt darker than usual today. The sky threatened to open up at any moment. What if it snowed on the way? The worry grew heavier with each thought. This would be her first time leaving the territory she had ever known.

The grief of being driven from the only place she had ever called home seeped into her bones like a cold she couldn’t shake. Lisa sat on the neatly made bed and let her shoulders drop.

“Are you done yet?”

The door rattled under an impatient knock.

“Yes, coming.”

She was already far behind schedule. She couldn’t delay any longer, so she dragged her feet out of the servants’ quarters.

The Maldini comital family.

Lisa’s mother had lived here as a resident maid.

When her mother passed away not long ago, Lisa, still a minor, and her twelve-year-old brother Raoul were assigned to an orphanage. There was no room in this household for unwanted mouths to feed.

Sheila, the head maid who had once looked after Lisa quite well, stood with her arms crossed and shot her a cold, cutting look. Running out of patience with Lisa’s sluggish movements, she shoved her by the shoulder.

“Why the long face. In times like these, with riots and coups tearing everything apart, you should be grateful you’re not out on the street.”

Lisa tensed her thin ankles and barely kept herself from falling. Her own strange reflection rippled in the corridor window.

Delicate, well-formed features. Noble violet eyes. Silver hair gleaming beneath her cap. A waist so slender it might have belonged to a young lady who ate like a bird…… None of it suited the daughter of a maid. That was a clear disadvantage. It gave people reason to resent her.

The footsteps pressing close behind her sounded like a wide rake scraping up dead leaves, brisk and impatient, as though she couldn’t be swept away fast enough.

“Always so slow…… The guest has already arrived. Let’s just stop by the mistress quickly so you can say goodbye, and make sure you don’t get in the way.”

She had tried to choose a quiet day to leave, but the manor received visitors so often that it never worked out.

Today’s guest was supposed to be the fiancé of the count’s daughter, Smila.

Smila was about the same age as Lisa, but they had lived in entirely different worlds. One who had everything, one who had nothing. Polar opposites. The man she was to be engaged to was said to be enormously wealthy as well.

None of that had anything to do with Lisa, of course. What weighed on her far more was how she and Raoul were supposed to survive once they were thrown into the orphanage.

“Try to be a little friendlier in there, will you.”

Lisa, who had heard the words “no warmth about her” so many times the phrase had practically worn grooves into her ears, thought this might actually be sincere advice.

Was her own wretched personality more of a problem than being cast out into an unknown gutter?

* * *

The power of conditioning is remarkable.

Renato stepped off the train at a station that reeked of the countryside and walked out onto the platform with a composed, unhurried air.

His measured stride was neat and fitting for a man of his standing. Even when dealing with the attendant who had come to meet him, he kept his true feelings entirely concealed.

When dead leaves clung to his coat, when a gust of wind ruined his hair, when his shoes got dirty on the unpaved road instead of a proper pavement. Conditioning had taught his body to act as though none of it mattered. His every move would inevitably be reported back to the count.

It had been a while since he had ridden in a horse-drawn carriage rather than a motorized vehicle. He chose not to voice the obvious observation that it was outdated. This was not a pleasure trip; it had to be approached as a business matter.

The carriage carrying Renato rolled for a long while down a road deeply rutted with wheel tracks, then passed through a polished iron gate and came to a stop before a pale-toned facade. He took a brief look at the dry winter garden before turning to face the welcoming party.

“You’ve had a long journey.”

Count Maldini, the master of the estate, spread his arms wide in welcome. Behind the hospitable expression, his eyes were quietly sizing Renato up. He stole a glance upward past the height that exceeded his own by a good hand’s span, past the broad shoulders, to the ash-grey hair that had not been disturbed by the long trip.

“Thank you for the warm welcome.”

The count’s mouth relaxed into a generous smile, apparently quite satisfied with the heir of the international financial firm Trieste.

“But of course. What a joy it is to meet again like this.”

It was a remarkable thing, to be reunited after being tossed about by such turbulent times. Renato returned a suitably modest reply and then exchanged greetings with the count’s family. The countess, who was said to devote herself to charitable work almost as a matter of life and death, smiled with something close to saintly grace, and the only daughter, Smila, curtseyed with the air of a well-bred young lady.

His former fiancée, Smila.

He had received a recent photograph and had at least committed her unremarkably round face to memory. The girl now stealing glances at him before quickly dropping her gaze clearly had no memory of their earlier connection either.

The purpose of this visit was to explore whether the broken engagement might be restored. Both families had dissolved the match while weathering the storms of the age, and now found themselves in need of it once again. Which meant he, too, had to make a good impression on the Maldini household.

“I’m sorry to have come alone. My mother had planned to accompany me, but she fell ill quite suddenly.”

His stepmother was probably cursing this marriage arrangement at this very moment, but he kept up the appearance of regret. The countess stepped in with a lengthy expression of concern before smoothly steering the conversation in the direction a gracious hostess would.

“Please let me know if there’s anything you need.”

“Thank you.”

“There’s quite a bit of fun to be had here in winter as well. I do hope you enjoy your stay.”

“Simply having the chance to build a friendship is more than enough.”

He had deliberately scheduled the visit in winter, the off-season for the marriage market. With all the noise about whether or not the aristocracy was about to be abolished, the last thing he wanted was to attract a journalist’s eye. The engagement between the two families felt more like a covert operation.

“Smila, would you show our guest around the estate later?”

“Of course. It would be my great honor.”

Smila offered a brief greeting and a shy smile, the very picture of a gently raised young lady. The only things that grated slightly were the tightly coiled ringlets in her hair and the enormous bow fastened to her arm.

The countess kept nudging Smila forward with quiet insistence. It called to mind a department store clerk trying to push a product on an unwilling customer.

“I’m afraid I’ve kept you too long in my excitement. You must be tired. Please, do come inside.”

“The title ‘young lord’ feels a bit formal. Please feel free to address me more casually.”

“Oh my, I felt as though you were family the moment I laid eyes on you, Renato.”

The three of them laughed and agreed with one another, and the warmth of it sat uneasily on him. That’s just my own disagreeable nature, he told himself. The Maldini family’s social conduct was flawless.

Walking side by side with Smila across the hall, he already felt drained. The thought of the weeks he would have to spend here was bleak. He would sooner be rolling around on the grounds of a military academy. Socializing was entirely against his nature.

Not that he would let it show. By any measure, he was a perfectly presentable gentleman. Renato tucked his feelings away and, out of sheer habit, swept his gaze over every corner of the manor the way one might scout enemy territory.

That was when he noticed her. A figure of a woman lurking in a recessed passage that appeared to be a servants’ corridor.

A girl who looked slightly younger than Smila, holding a large bundle. The coat covering her slight frame was quite worn. The backlight and the distance made it hard to see clearly, but her wide, startled eyes were striking enough that, with only a little exaggeration, they seemed to take up half her face.

A stout middle-aged woman grabbed the girl roughly by the arm. She was being dragged away when the countess stopped walking.

“What’s going on?”