Damon was already in a foul mood, truth be told. He turned to Nate.
“What would you like to do, Miss O’Hara? Stay here? Or……”
“……”
“Come with me?”
Damon’s voice settled quietly through the air. Roderick, who was glaring at Damon, shifted his gaze to Nate as well.
The answer was already decided.
“I’ll go with Young Lord Preston.”
Roderick let out a hollow laugh. Damon looked satisfied as he slowly led Nate out of the balcony.
Damon did not stop at simply getting her off the balcony. He already knew what she needed.
He led Nate out of the banquet hall building entirely. To the left, Nelson was hiding behind a tree out of sight of the other nobles, waiting for him. Damon glanced at her briefly, then turned right and walked the other way with Nate.
It was late at night, but outside there were plenty of bright lights and the air moved freely. More than anything, there were far fewer people than inside the hall.
“No one will notice us here.”
Damon walked until they reached a spot few people passed through, and only then did he release Nate from his side. Her color was much better than it was on the balcony.
“Why… did you help me, Young Lord Preston?”
Once she finally caught her breath, Nate asked the question she wanted to ask from the start.
She chose Damon not because she particularly wanted to be with him.
“Because I know you don’t care much for dark places.”
Damon added plainly.
“I happened to see you being led out to the balcony by Young Lord Lovitz. It was hard to pretend I didn’t notice.”
Nate smiled faintly. So he rescued her by chance, as she thought. It was not a particularly surprising fact.
She nodded.
“I see. But you didn’t have to do this, Young Lord Preston.”
Damon’s kindness felt like too much to bear. She would rather he pay her no attention at all and spend his time with other young ladies, the way he always did. That way she could forget him without wavering.
But he looked at her as though he could not understand her request.
“Didn’t have to…… Are you saying I should ignore whatever difficulty you’re in?”
“Yes. I’m very grateful for Young Lord Preston’s kindness, but I could have gotten out of that situation on my own.”
Damon answered with a slightly crooked look, his expression somewhere between incredulous and dry.
“It really didn’t look that way.”
“Of course, I couldn’t ignore appearances, so it would have taken a little time, but… I would have been fine on my own regardless.”
She was still pale-faced even now, yet she was putting on a strong front, and Damon had no idea what to say to that. One thing was certain: Nate’s changed attitude did not sit well with him at all.
He studied her quietly for a moment, then asked, “Is the reason you said you’d give up on me… because another young lord caught your eye?”
The truth was, Damon did not believe Nate gave up on him because of another man. No, he did not even believe she gave up on him at all. He thought she was only going through a passing phase, wounded by him and wandering for a time.
But a different thought struck him suddenly. Was it actually a shock to him, seeing her with another man? Damon realized her change of heart might not be simply because he hurt her, but because she found someone else.
If that were the case, it was a genuine crisis. If her feelings shifted because of another man, the chances of her coming back were slim.
‘…Wait. Why am I thinking of it as a crisis? What does it matter if Nate O’Hara stops liking me?’
Damon caught himself belatedly, sensing something off in his own thinking, and corrected course. But the eyes waiting for her answer carried a strange, clinging unease and restlessness.
Nate held his gaze and slowly opened her mouth.
“…That’s not it.”
Damon felt a strange relief at her words. But there was still something he needed to confirm.
“Are you sure? You and Young Lord Lovitz looked quite close just now.”
“Roderick is kind, so it probably looked that way. My decision to give up on Young Lord Preston has nothing to do with Roderick.”
Damon stared at Nate with an unreadable expression. Nate looked back at him, puzzled, and then noticed that the tightness in her chest had eased. Absurdly, simply talking with Damon seemed to have steadied her.
“In any case, thank you for today. I’ll be going now……”
Nate wanted to stop spending time with Damon. The panic had subsided, but her heart was still racing. It was purely because of her feelings for him. She had not yet fully let go, and she needed to keep herself in check.
“The first time you told me how you felt was five years ago, Miss O’Hara.”
But just as Nate turned to head back to the banquet hall building, Damon stepped forward and blocked her path. She looked up at him with startled eyes, caught off guard by how close he suddenly was. He looked down at her with a blank expression.
“That means you spent five years trying to get closer to me. Of course, Miss O’Hara only ever told me she liked me once a season and nothing beyond that. You never struck up conversation otherwise, never made any particular show of affection.”
“…What are you trying to say……”
“And yet you’re already calling Young Lord Lovitz by his first name. You’ve never once called me by mine so warmly.”
“Pardon…?”
Is he actually taking me to task right now for not calling him by name, after five years of loving him?
Nate looked at him in confusion. She wanted to believe she was imagining things, but Damon’s displeased expression told her she was not.
She reached for an explanation first.
“That’s because Young Lord Lovitz asked me to……”
“Is that so? Then why didn’t you ask me?”
“Oh, it’s because Young Lord Preston and I aren’t close……”
“Were you closer to Young Lord Lovitz than to me?”
“Pardon? Oh, that’s……”
“Young ladies who’ve exchanged no more than a greeting with me call me by my name without a second thought. And yet you, who claimed to like me for five years, never did.”
Faced with Damon’s strangely fixated line of questioning, Nate ran out of things to say. She scrambled to find a rebuttal.
“W, well, Young Lord Preston has never called me by my name either.”
Damon curved his lips into a smile.
“Ah, so you want me to call you by your name?”
Nate’s eyes went wide and she denied it quickly.
“No. I’ve already decided to let go of my feelings, so there’s no particular need for me to want……”
But Damon cut her off mid-sentence and tilted his head down. Then, like a whisper meant to seduce, he breathed into her ear.
“Nate.”
He only called her name, nothing more, and yet Nate felt her heart pound fast and hard. He tilted his head further and let his lips graze the shell of her ear.
“Can you really, truly forget me?”
He said that, watched her for a moment, then left first. He did not forget, of course, to leave one of his attendants with her, since she had not been well just moments before.
Nate stood there with a dazed expression, staring blankly at the spot where he disappeared, then belatedly pressed her hand over her ear. Her face felt hot. The soft press of Damon’s lips against the shell of her ear still lingered. She bit down on her lower lip, pressing her feelings back down.
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These nobles in novels really have a lot of free time. If they were just ordinary citizens who had to pay their bills, they wouldn’t be doing such silly things. My mom is probably the only person my love for her won’t change in five years (I’m not even sure about my dad). If this woman had to go to university and earn money, she wouldn’t have the energy to be platonically in love with this man for five years.