She wrapped her coat tightly and wore leg warmers, but it was still no match for the driving cold wind. She hadn’t gone far before her teeth were chattering and her ears felt ready to fall off.

She should have worn a hat and earmuffs. Listening to Anna’s instruction not to mess up her pretty hairstyle had been a mistake.

Snow began to fall. The dull grey sky pressed lower, heavy clouds close enough to touch, a sign that a serious snowfall was coming.

Lisa quickened her pace, silently hoping the snow would hold off a little longer.

She rounded a narrow path with a steep rock face on one side. On the other, a barren meadow stretched out without a single cow in sight. Sleet began to accumulate gradually over the dry, brittle grass.

‘My ears are freezing.’

She cupped her hands over her stiffening ears. The sound of the falling snow grew muffled, and only her own labored breathing grew louder.

I have to hurry. Getting stuck out here would be the end of me. She was moving with desperate urgency through the steepest cluster of trees on the hillside when—

Whoosh……

A massive creature attacked Lisa.

A shadow several times her own size leapt and came crashing toward her. The vibration of the heavy weight launching off the ground shook the earth beneath her feet, and the gust of air sweeping down from above sent the falling snow swirling.

“Ah!”

She fell straight backward. Lisa squeezed her eyes shut and curled into herself. A dizzying terror of death seized her and she lost all composure.

A dull scraping sound came from behind her. Something seemed to be striking the ground.

She trembled and waited, but no pain came. No bear’s paw struck her, no wolf’s teeth found her. The only thing that hurt was her backside from landing on the ground.

Her head wouldn’t cooperate as she turned to look, stiff with fear.

A scene she had not expected at all was spread across the narrow path. A man with a disturbingly dark presence was standing there.

“Sir?”

He was catching his breath.

“You again.”

At Renato’s feet, a black horse lay on its side, struggling.

The horse’s knee was bent at a wrong angle and bleeding heavily. It couldn’t get up and kept tossing its head with long, anguished cries. The situation looked serious. The horse was kicking so violently that only an experienced handler would be able to get near it.

Through the thickening snowfall, their eyes met. His expression had gone gravely still. Through all of this, Renato was completely uninjured.

Was the horse hurt because of her? From the angle at which the shadow had come down, it looked as though he had been rounding the slope and jumped high to avoid her. That large stallion, Titan, was Count Maldini’s most prized horse.

“Titan……”

Setting aside the disaster that awaited her when she returned, the immediate worry was that the horse couldn’t get up.

“So this one’s called Titan.”

“Yes, he looks badly hurt.”

She moved to approach, and Renato stepped in front of her. He rubbed his knuckles across his brow in thought for a moment, then shrugged with an expression of resignation.

He moved toward the thrashing horse’s head to try to calm it. But against Titan’s desperate, wild kicking accompanied by sharp cries, there was nothing to be done.

Lisa watched, stamping her feet with helpless anxiety.

“Should I go back to the house and bring the stable hand?”

Renato tilted his chin toward the whitened slope below.

“It won’t be easy. Even if you made it down, you wouldn’t be able to come back up.”

She came to her senses and realized the light sleet had turned into a heavy snowfall. While they had been at a loss, the snow had thickened rapidly.

After a long struggle with the horse, Renato finally managed to pull the reins and get it to its feet. Titan limped along on three legs with great difficulty.

Getting back down looked bleak. The snow had piled up so deep the narrow path was no longer visible, and returning home safely seemed nearly impossible.

“There’s a mountain lodge nearby. What if we rest there until the snow lets up?”

His forearms were taut with the effort of controlling the frothing horse.

“Lead the way.”

Lisa guided them, frequently glancing back at the horse struggling to follow.

The lodge was very small. It was a single-room hut where cattle herders sheltered briefly. In winter, when the cows weren’t grazing in the pasture, there was no use for it, and the inside and outside were both bare and empty.

First they drove the horse into the small stable beside the hut. Lisa quickly spread straw, and Renato pulled the reins taut and with great difficulty coaxed Titan onto it. The horse was spent, but kept stubbornly trying to stand even as it limped.

Lisa had no experience tending to horses. She had no sense of what to help with and could only look around helplessly. Renato was removing the tack when he spoke over his shoulder.

“Go inside.”

He then found a blanket and draped it over the horse. It was strange that a young man from a wealthy family was so practiced at work that belonged to a stable hand.

“I’d like to help.”

“Then get the stable heated.”

“Heated?”

She looked around but saw no stove. This was Lisa’s first time stepping inside the lodge. After her mother died, she had spent her days in the manor kitchen and back courtyard doing chores, and as a child she had wandered and played all over the pasture.

His unreadable gaze landed on her confused expression.

“A place like this will almost certainly have a fireplace you can light.”

Lisa lifted the bar on the hut door and stepped inside, pulling her arms in against the cold that hung in the empty room. She found an oil lamp and lit it, and looking around, she saw that Renato was right. On the other side of the stable wall, there was a fireplace.

The humble lodge was well-stocked with everything needed for cattle herding, including plenty of firewood. She was able to build a generous fire and send warmth through to the stable.

Renato appeared a good while later. When the creaking door opened, she could see that it was already dark outside. The snow, which showed no sign of stopping, was nearly at the threshold.

“How is Titan?”

He shrugged without a word and knocked the snow from his shoes. Why wasn’t he answering? The worry made her ask again.

“How is he?”

“……”

In place of Renato’s silence, a horse’s anguished cry came through the wall. The long cry of the animal sounded like a scream.

She balled her hands into fists inside her skirt, suppressing the urge to cover her ears. Right now, she felt that blocking out any sound would only make the fear worse.

Once the snow stopped and they brought the horse back to the manor, the family would call a proper veterinarian to treat him. It’s probably just a scraped knee. Titan is the biggest and most spirited horse in the stable, practically a wild one.

Lisa set down the fire poker and turned to face him. She wanted agreement for her blind hope.

“Sir.”

Renato set his belongings on the table without interest and pulled off his wet gloves. He lifted his gaze from the dry, crumbling edge of the wood, and fixed it on her with a slow but inescapable weight.

The moment their eyes met, the air around her shifted entirely.

Breathing became difficult, as though the air had been vacuumed out, and the room grew cold as if a snow storm were raging inside. The background surrounding him was the color of storm clouds. She was seized by a dread she couldn’t explain, and her vision began to darken at the edges.

No, it wasn’t without explanation. Something unsettling had happened every time she encountered Renato. In the corridor behind the kitchen, in the study. By some cruel coincidence, she always ended up exposed at her lowest. These were things she normally endured without much feeling because they happened so often, but the feeling she got from this man was uniquely like cold, black ash.

Approaching him first had clearly been the wrong choice. Lisa pressed her lips together, became aware that she had drawn too close without realizing it, and stepped back.

“Hey.”

Her small shoulders jumped at the blunt address.

She startled herself and missed her footing. A raised edge of the wooden floor caught her and she went down on her knees. Her eye level dropped sharply, and she had to crane her neck back to look up at him.

A similar memory flashed through her mind. A few days ago, Lisa had also been on her knees, showing the whites of her eyes as she looked up as though gazing at the sky.

The storm cloud stepped closer. Renato bent at the waist and enclosed Lisa in his space.

“Were we on familiar terms?”

Her tongue froze.

“No, I……”

She was not even a proper servant in someone else’s household, a useless burden, and this man was worlds apart from her. He was the heir to an international financial firm, and beyond that, a distinguished guest being received with the utmost hospitality.