Nate naturally turned her gaze to Roderick. She figured Damon’s eyes would leave her quickly. Whatever landed on her was just coincidence.

But unexpectedly, his gaze stayed on Nate for quite a long time. To be more precise, he was looking over both Nate and Roderick with a cool, appraising stare.

Meanwhile, Roderick noticed she seemed uncomfortable and spoke up belatedly.

“Ah, Nate. I asked too suddenly, didn’t I? I’m sorry. You can take your time.”

Roderick now called Nate’s name without any hesitation. She looked at him quietly for a moment, then opened her mouth.

“No. We came as partners, so I’ll use your name too.”

She said that, paused for a beat, then spoke again.

“Ro… derick.”

Her voice was impossibly small. Using first names was clearly nothing special, but Roderick’s expectant gaze and the feeling that Damon was staring straight at her made her tense.

Roderick simply smiled brightly, as though he was just happy. Then he walked through the hall alongside Nate. She kept feeling, for some reason, that Damon was still watching, but she told herself it was her imagination.

Soon the Emperor and Empress entered the banquet hall, and the dancing began.

“Nate, would you dance with me?”

Roderick asked her to dance.

Nate turned down every dance request from other young lords up until now. But there was no reason to refuse anymore. She nodded and walked with Roderick to the center of the hall.

As they danced naturally together, Nate’s eyes drifted past Roderick to the space behind him. Damon was dancing with the young lady he brought tonight. Anyone watching could see they made a striking pair.

‘…As I thought, someone with a dazzling, glamorous air suits Young Lord Preston far better than someone like me.’

Trying to forget someone she loved for five years, her chest could not help but ache. But accepting reality brought a strange kind of peace.

“Nate.”

In the middle of their dance, Roderick called her name in a warm voice. She looked at him with a puzzled expression, and he smiled and said.

“How would you like to step out to the balcony and talk?”

“…The balcony?”

“I think it would be more enjoyable than dancing, honestly.”

Saying that, Roderick suddenly stopped moving and took Nate’s hand. Then he led her toward the balcony.

Nate looked flustered. The balcony was generally a place couples went to spend time away from other nobles’ eyes. But the reason she was flustered now was something else entirely.

Nate had an intense aversion to dark spaces. The balcony, unlike the banquet hall, was not well lit. Because nobles sometimes engaged in indecent acts there, candles were intentionally kept sparse. That was why she never liked going out to the balcony.

“Roderick, why don’t we just talk here in the hall?”

“Don’t be uncomfortable. Plenty of others use the balcony too. Young Lord Preston went there with other young ladies all the time.”

“No, that’s not why. I just don’t particularly like the balcony……”

“There’s a sofa inside, so it’ll be comfortable. And we won’t have to worry about other nobles watching.”

In the end, Nate had no choice but to let Roderick lead her out to the balcony.

She looked around the balcony with a tense expression. Two candlesticks sat in iron wall brackets. That was the only light on the balcony. It was dark outside, and a curtain was drawn between the hall and the balcony to block the view from inside.

“I’ve actually been wanting to keep talking with you, Nate.”

Roderick began in a quiet voice. Nate’s color was draining steadily, but it did not seem to register with him.

“I know you’ve had feelings for Young Lord Preston for a long time. And I liked that devoted, unwavering side of you.”

“……”

“You know this already, but Young Lord Preston is enormously popular. And the young ladies he keeps company with tend to be strikingly beautiful and glamorous, much like him. A quiet woman like you probably never even caught Young Lord Preston’s eye.”

Nate pressed her lower lip between her teeth. Even as fear made it hard to breathe, every word he said drove into her chest like a blade.

She already knew. That she and Damon were not suited for each other. That someone like her was unlikely to ever move his heart. Even so, she could not erase him easily. Because she could not erase him, she spent five whole years with her eyes on no one but Damon.

Nate waited for Roderick to finish. Once he stopped talking, she planned to say she needed to leave the balcony.

But against her wishes, Roderick showed no sign of wrapping up. All the while, Nate’s face was growing paler and paler.

* * *

Damon’s expression darkened as the party went on.

He was not in this bad a mood before he entered the banquet hall. No, even before that, when he met the young lady whose name he could barely remember and exchanged light conversation on the way to the party, he was in a fine mood.

He already heard through a servant that the Count O’Hara household was attending the party. It was not that he was particularly curious whether Nate O’Hara would be there. No matter how he thought about it, she was genuinely not his type.

After the kidnapping in his childhood, Damon grew up under his parents’ strict control. That only made him grow crooked. He went out of his way to do exactly what they hated, purely to defy them.

Damon craved freedom. He was in an environment where he had no choice but to crave it. Without that craving, it felt like he would spend his entire life shackled to his parents, living a life that was no life at all.

So he generally kept company with women of a similar kind. Women who were somehow off, twisted. Women who looked fine on the surface but carried something filthy in their desires.

And Nate O’Hara was not that kind of woman at all.

“Miss O’Hara is a bit of a surprise, isn’t she? I never imagined she’d come with Young Lord Lovitz as her partner.”

Nelson, who came as Damon’s partner, murmured quietly while looking at Nate.

Damon’s gaze was already fixed on Nate and Roderick. He drank his champagne. Tonight the champagne tasted like nothing.

“But you must be relieved, Young Lord Preston? Miss O’Hara was following you around for so long.”

“I’m not sure. I never really thought of it as that long.”

“Pardon? Rumor has it it was about five years.”

“That’s not such a long time. To call something truly long, wouldn’t it have to be ten, twenty years?”

His last words came out almost like a murmur to himself. Even then, his eyes were still moving over Nate and Roderick.

Without taking his gaze from the two of them, Damon asked Nelson.

“Would someone like Young Lord Lovitz be considered good-looking, from a young lady’s perspective?”

“Oh, certainly. Everyone says he’s very handsome.”

She said it plainly, then seemed to catch herself and added with a shy laugh.

“Ah, though of course he’s no comparison to you, Young Lord Preston.”

“He doesn’t seem like Miss O’Hara’s type, at least.”

Miss O’Hara’s type was, without question, me.

He left the rest unsaid. He figured that much was something everyone already knew.

Nelson tilted her head.

“Don’t you think Miss O’Hara came with Young Lord Lovitz because she actually likes him?”

“…Miss O’Hara likes Young Lord Lovitz?”