What remained between them was not love alone. Hatred and affection, pity, tenderness, the ache of watching from a distance what could never be fulfilled. They were not a connection that simply passed each other by. Something so easily forgotten……

But the words Emily spoke next drove a shock straight through him.

“Right now, the Miss is with Grand Duke Visconti. It seems to already be common knowledge all over Solean. Apparently it’s no secret at all. Word is even going around that it’s the first time Grand Duke Visconti has been with a woman for nearly two months, and that he might actually marry her.”

It felt like falling into a bottomless pit.

“……That’s a lie.”

Louis shook his head, muttering, and Emily asked,

“You know it isn’t, Louis. Even now, you won’t go?”

Something surged to the edge of his throat. Over Emily’s faintly smiling face, Anais’s face rose in his mind. The sweet girl she was in their earliest years grew and grew inside his memory. Into a noble, beautiful lady he could never touch.

She took shape as the kind of beautiful noblewoman who belonged to a world beyond his reach, one he could never stretch his hand toward. She prepared herself, all along, to drift further and further away.

Grand Duke Visconti.

It was a name Louis knew well. In terms of rank alone, he was no inadequate match for Anais. If anything, he was more than enough.

But.

“Why would Anais……”

“Because of you, Louis. Miss always had her heart set on you. She could never take her eyes off you. And even so, she never made things difficult for me. She always looked after me.”

“……”

“Miss is a good person.”

He knew. Anais was a good person. That made it worse. Because he realized what she expected of him. She was someone who would have said yes, even if Louis asked her to run away with him.

What they shared was clumsy, but it was sincere. Louis loved Anais sincerely. He wanted to grow up alongside her, marry her, and cherish her for the rest of his life. He wanted to have children who looked like her and live happily.

Louis believed, even well into adulthood, that he could find a way to marry her. That there had to be a way. But there was not. Anais became someone he could never stand beside, no matter what he tried, no matter what he did.

From the moment the Rossetti family lost their title and Louis stepped down from his place as her fiancé, that was how it was.

The moment Grand Duke Visconti’s name came from Emily’s lips, Louis felt a defeat so crushing it nearly broke him.

“Grand Duke Visconti is not a good man.”

Emily gave a small nod, as though she agreed. There was no one in all of Fiorenza who did not know his reputation.

“That’s exactly why you have to go, Louis. Go and speak honestly. While it can still be undone…… it has to be undone.”

“……Can it still be undone?”

“Yes. Of course it can.”

Emily was right. It could still be undone. Anais, heartbroken over his marriage, impulsively left for Solean and got involved with a man like that.

Whatever his rank, Anais should not be with someone like him. If he knew she would end up with someone like that, he would never have fled the way he did. Grand Duke Visconti could not possibly love Anais sincerely. If she truly married him, Anais would spend her entire life in loneliness. He would spend his life with other women and leave Anais alone.

That beautiful, noble woman he could not even dare to look at directly.

In that case, she would be better off with him……

Louis squeezed his eyes shut before the thought could go any further.

“Tell her we were never married, that nothing happened between us. That it was all arranged just to get away. Say it honestly. You understand, Louis?”

“……I will.”

He could see her breathing growing shallower.

“You’ll do as I say, so stop talking now, Emily. You’re exhausted.”

“No, it’s all right. I’m…… grateful that you stayed with me at the end. So…… so I hope you find happiness too, Louis.”

“Yeah, yeah. I will. I promise, so……”

Emily’s hand went slack before she could hear the rest of his words. She drew one long, deep breath, and her eyes slowly closed.

Louis stayed at Emily’s side, holding her hand, through the night and into the following morning. Emily, unlike Anais, was someone who understood him completely. He could not bring himself to turn away from her. To care for her properly, and to leave Anais, the pretense of a marriage was the only way.

Soft-hearted Anais would come around if he was honest with her. Louis truly believed that. The two of them only ever had each other, and if anything, having been hurt by Grand Duke Visconti, she might even be ready. It could be the right moment.

First he would need to give Emily a proper send-off, then go to Anais. He looked at Emily’s face, quiet and peaceful, looking like she simply drifted into a comfortable sleep, and whispered,

“Emily, thank you. Truly, thank you.”

Louis said his last goodbye and left the room. There was much to be done. For Emily’s sake, and for his own.

* * *

A death notice arrived.

It was the notice of Emily’s death, Louis’s wife. She expected it, but the death came so soon that Anais’s expression fell.

You send me news I cannot ignore. Anais would never have done the same. If she were the one who married first and left Louis’s side, she would have disappeared from his life completely. A deep sigh passed through Anais’s red lips.

Lily stayed silently at her side. The silence stretched on for a long time. Unable to bear it any longer, Lily drew close. She clasped her hands together and spoke.

“……Miss, you’re not thinking of going yourself, are you?”

Anais sighed at Lily’s worried question and shook her head.

“What would I do going there myself? Send a few servants to help with the funeral arrangements. It needs to be handled without any shortage.”

He must feel like he lost the whole world. He loved her knowing she was ill, and married her anyway. He must have loved her enough to marry her, staking everything on the short time they could share. So nothing good would come of her going.

The truth was…… she did not have the courage. Her feelings were faded now, but she did not have it in her to actually see Louis broken apart.

“Yes, Miss.”

Lily left after receiving Anais’s instructions. Anais stared blankly out the window for a long while, then raised a trembling hand and unfolded the death notice again.

She knew it would come to this.

It was always going to happen someday. She just did not expect it to be this soon. She was sure he recovered his health to some degree……

The face of Louis at sixteen, the day the Rossetti family lost their title and their engagement was broken, rose painfully over the death notice.

Louis, who refused Anais as she gripped his hand and begged him not to leave, saying they would find a way, saying they should not part, stepped back from her and bowed his head with quiet formality. Not like a gentleman. Like a servant. Just let me go like this. We can no longer walk the same path.

Anais had no choice but to let him go.

The knuckles of the hand clutching the death notice went white. A single tear fell onto the back of that hand, spreading like a stain.

You said you would live well.

You said you were happy. You said that once Emily recovered, you would have children who looked like her and Emily and live happily…… you said that. And you said you hoped I would live that kind of life too.

After all that, you send me news like this. What am I supposed to do? Did Emily mean so much to you that you married her knowing the time you had together was this short? After all the precious time you spent with me, how could you……

You knew I still cared for you. You knew I was watching you. You knew my eyes stayed only on you. And even knowing that, how could you be this cruel to me? Louis truly, to the very end, never spared a single thought for Anais. Her first love was, truly, a disaster.

Feelings she consciously buried burst open like a broken dam, pouring out without end.

From the moment Louis was reduced to a servant in the household, these were feelings she had to erase and pretend not to have. He wanted that, and Anais was willing to go along with it.

Because she was foolish enough to believe that when the time came, when the moment arrived to accept it again, they would be able to walk side by side once more.