“Are you here again today?”

A blazing summer afternoon.

After enjoying a late-night swim with his partner and falling asleep right there on the spot, a shadow fell over Noah’s head.

The owner of the grumbling voice that woke him from his sleep was Noah’s aide, Albert.

“This is no time to be sleeping.”

He yanked away the beach towel covering Noah’s face.

“Ah…….”

The lips of the man sprawled out across the chair parted, and the voice that scraped up from his throat came out rough and cracked.

“That’s blinding.”

“Mmm, Noah?”

Roused by the commotion, the woman who had been sleeping pressed against Noah’s chest opened her eyes.

As though drawn by the sound of her voice, Noah buried his face into the woman’s shoulder. He nuzzled his head against her as if the light bothered him, then twisted his chin to rub his eyes against her neck.

“Hehe, Noah, that tickles!”

It was very much like the behavior of a large dog. The woman scrunched her shoulder up and burst into a fit of giggles.

“Quiet…….”

Noah murmured low, his brow furrowed. The tone was somewhat irritable, but his voice slid out smooth and soft.

It was his roundabout way of saying he didn’t want to hear her voice.

Yet Noah was a man born with a gift for making people misunderstand. Far from feeling put off, his voice gave the woman the impression that they were savoring some secret, intimate rendezvous.

“Hmph, Noah…….”

It was around then that the mood shifted.

Noah’s hands, which had been reaching back toward sleep, grew more deliberate. He gently kneaded the woman’s firm backside. The sound of him biting at her neck like a kiss rang out vividly.

Smooch, smooch……

And Albert, who had witnessed all of it, closed his eyes and steadied himself. He had to endure. Ever since becoming Noah’s aide, Albert had occasionally needed quite a bit of time to manage his own emotions.

“A letter has arrived for the young lord.”

Noah narrowed his brow as he groped the woman’s br*ast. He lifted his head and looked at Albert, the man who had interrupted his time.

“Can’t you see I’m busy?”

In Noah’s shameless grip, her full br*ast was kneaded this way and that. It was rather sensual. Noah glanced once at the br*ast in his hand, once at Albert standing there like a stone statue, and curled the corner of his mouth up playfully.

“Aha. So you want some too, is that it?”

Albert’s chest expanded with a deep breath.

“No. It is nothing of the sort.”

“Then why make such a fuss? Celia will feel left out, won’t she? Celia, want to make it a threesome?”

“Threesome? Hmm…….”

At the suggestion of indulging in brazen daytime s*x, Celia shot a glance at Albert and fell into thought.

Birds of a feather…… Albert, who had no taste for womanizing, shuddered and stepped a couple of paces away.

Hoping to change the subject, he unfolded the letter he had brought and began to read it aloud.

“To my dear betrothed, Noah Miller.”

Noah, who had been wholly absorbed in kissing Celia with his back to the dull Albert, went still.

Just moments ago, a letter had arrived at the Miller ducal estate.

The sender was this dissolute man’s fiancée.

“Now that summer is here, I keep thinking back to the day we got engaged. I remember complaining to Father about how dreadfully hot it was, but the moment I found out the other party was you, Noah, I was just so happy.”

Unable to concentrate on the kiss, Noah had gone rigid, and he tried to pull his lips away. Celia clung to him and whined. At that point, his irritation getting the better of him, Noah shoved his hand into her hair and pried her off.

It was rough enough handling to warrant hurt feelings, but Celia, well used to this sort of treatment, stuck out her lower lip and climbed down from the chair.

Whether Celia left the lakeside in a sulk or not, Noah wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He snapped his fingers irritably.

“Keep reading.”

There is no ease on Noah’s face as he drinks the prepared whiskey. Whenever his fiancée made contact, something unpleasant always followed.

“A whole year has passed since we both came of age. We are well past the proper age for marriage. So I would like us to hold the ceremony before it gets any later.”

Unable to bear Albert’s gravelly voice any longer, Noah snatched the letter away. He glared at it, seething, and his sharp eyes creased in a frightening scowl.

“Has this woman completely lost her mind.”

As always, the letter contained a one-sided declaration.

I’ll give you half a year. Let’s start preparing for the wedding.

* * *

[Noah. They say we’ll get married when we grow up.]

[If I become your wife, I’ll protect you. So you’ll never be abandoned again…….]

If only he hadn’t heard those words.

If only he hadn’t believed them.

Would things have been a little different?

* * *

An oddity.

Noah was a rare libertine for the Miller ducal house. His father, the Duke of Miller, was famously devoted to his wife, and his grandfather had walked much the same path.

And yet, somehow, Noah preferred leisure over duty, and women over leisure.

In a word, he was a moth that flew into the flame without a care for getting burned.

Concern for him came from all corners, given that he lived chasing only immediate pleasure and amusement, but Noah lived as he pleased, as if to prove a point.

There was one thing, however, that this man could not do as he pleased.

“Is there no way to break off the engagement?”

That was the betrothal formed with the Villette ducal house, a central noble family whose influence rivaled that of the Millers.

A political marriage that could not be undone by Noah’s will alone.

“Hmm? My capable aide, come up with a plan.”

“……I don’t believe this is the sort of thing you should be saying to me in a place like this.”

The place Noah had summoned Albert to was a social club brimming with liquor and indulgence.

Outwardly called an investment club, it was in truth a place where all manner of debauchery took place.

“I can’t even enjoy myself because of that damned letter.”

Noah furrowed his brow. He loosened his tie, looking suffocated, and a woman offered him a cigar.

He thr*st his face toward the woman sitting on his knee. He twisted his chin and took the cigar between his lips as though going in for a kiss. His downcast lashes were long. The mole set just beside his eye was sensual. When he lifted his eyelids and met her gaze, the woman’s cheeks flushed pink.

Flick.

Noah bobbed the cigar in his mouth up and down. It was a signal to cut it. Realizing belatedly that she had been staring blankly, the woman snipped the end of the cigar clean off.

“Thank you.”

His sharp eyes curved and folded into a smile. At the eye smile that bewitched women’s hearts, the woman’s eyes went hazy without fail.

Pfft. Noah let out a scoff.

Good for one day, at most.

To him, women fell into two categories. Women good for a single night, or women good for ongoing, no-strings fun.

Since Noah had Celia as a convenient s*x partner, this woman was nothing more than someone to have a rowdy night with.

There was, of course, one exception.

Adeline Villette.

That woman, whose very name was enough to bring on a headache, did not fall into either category. She was, how to put it? Less a woman and more a simple organism. Something whose mere existence was enough to set a fire blazing in his chest, something he couldn’t bear to lay a finger on.

Ah, right.

A leech.

Adeline Villette was a leech he couldn’t shake off no matter how hard he tried, one that clung to him and sucked the life right out of him.

“I apologize, but at present there are no grounds for breaking off the engagement. In fact, Duke Villette has been in contact, saying he will offer the western mines as a dowry.”

“Does Duke Villette not know of my reputation?”

“He must. How could he not?”

“Right. Which is exactly why I can’t make sense of it. After Duke Villette lost his first wife and remarried, didn’t Adeline Villette go down to the countryside?”

“Yes. That is correct. You remembered all that…….”

Hoooh.

Noah blew out a stream of smoke and scratched at his brow irritably. Deliberately exhaling in Albert’s direction was a warning to watch his tongue.

The young lord remembers everything about his fiancée, yet whenever it is pointed out, he flies into a rage.

Honestly, he was so touchy. While Albert clenched his fist to hold back the surge of wounded feeling rising in him, Noah sank into thought.

“Right. If Adeline has been living down in the countryside all this time, she’d have no way of knowing about my reputation. But then why is Duke Villette trying to send his own daughter to someone like me?”

“Well.”

“Well?”

“Was it not a political marriage made when you were both children? Back then, the young lord was far more distinguished than he is now. You weren’t living so dissolutely, either. And besides, ever since Duke Villette remarried, they say he cares even less for his stepdaughter. My lady Villette is a puppet with her strings cut, so what does it matter who her husband is…… Ah, I misspoke.”

It was common knowledge that Duke Villette had sent his daughter off to the countryside with her grandmother in order to pursue a new marriage for himself.

He had brought it up naturally enough for that reason, but Albert held his tongue, for those already cold eyes were gleaming with a particularly piercing chill.

“Setting Duke Villette aside, why does Adeline…”

This time, Noah’s question turned in a different direction. Adeline Villette. It had not been so long since he had last seen her.

Even when Noah did not go to her, she always came to him.

“What sudden whim has gotten into her, pushing for marriage like this?”

Just what was she scheming?