“I’ll do it. You don’t need to give me money.”

At the quiet reply, Cora lifted her head in disbelief. The boy spoke to her.

“Teach me to read instead.”

Cora cleared her throat several times. Then she asked in a flustered voice.

“To read? You want me to teach you?”

Until now, the boy had shown no particular reaction to anything Cora said beside him. He simply sat like a cactus planted in the sand, spine up, unmoved. His expression never changed, and he never offered small sounds of agreement.

The only moment he ever spoke to Cora Babineau was near the end of the siesta, when he bid farewell to the master’s daughter and left the garden without a backward glance. Even then, the boy was expressionless.

So any trace left on the surface of that dry desert was bound to feel like a gift. It felt like a sign that she was on the right path. To Cora’s eyes, the faint crease of expression on the impassive man’s face looked like footprints left in smooth sand, guiding her forward.

“Yes.”

The boy answered simply. A clear, unambiguous agreement. Cora hid her tingling hand beneath her dress and opened and closed it several times.

“Alright.”

“……”

“Once you’ve learned to read, I’ll send you to the capital.”

“The capital, Miss?”

“I could ask Father to arrange work for you at Maison Babineau, or if you’d rather not, you could get a letter of recommendation and find a position elsewhere.”

Maison Babineau was a residence located in the 3rd arrondissement of the thirteen that made up Lutes. It had originally been a mansion belonging to the distinguished Duke Charlotte family, but the moment the revolution broke out, the owner had fled to Ingrind, leaving it empty for years, until Cora’s grandfather purchased it more than a decade ago. He then had it renovated to a level of luxury that could not be surpassed.

The interior decor, which used dark oak to create a grand atmosphere, was considered the residence’s defining feature. Robert Babineau had charmed the Emperor into allowing him to use timber felled from Tronche Forest to furnish the house. It was an extraordinary privilege that most families could not even dream of.

Tronche had been a region under strict government control over the number of trees felled for hundreds of years. The trees there were carefully tended for use in the construction and restoration of the royal palace. A home adorned so lavishly with such precious oak was, in every sense, a testament to the Babineau family’s standing.

Having worked as a servant in the Babineau household, a family so generously favored by the current Emperor, would be of great benefit to the boy in the future. Cora felt a quiet swell of satisfaction imagining him at Maison Babineau, dressed in proper attire and carrying himself with polish.

“And you, Miss?”

The boy asked then. There was something vaguely dissatisfied in his tone.

“Me? I’ll probably be here.”

“……Why?”

“The physician recommended I convalesce.”

“Convalesce? Are you unwell?”

“Oh, no. It’s not like that,”

Cora Babineau waved her hand in a fluster. She went on quickly.

“The weather in Lutes isn’t very good…… It’s nothing like Cappera. It rains often, and it’s overcast…… The air is terribly polluted too. So my parents think it would be better for me to stay here……”

“Then will the young master be staying at the villa as well?”

“François?”

“Yes.”

“No. He’ll probably go back to Lutes with our parents.”

François Babineau was Cora’s half-brother. Their father Mathieu had taken Eloise Majimelle as his new wife less than three months after Cora’s mother died, and at the time, Eloise already had a four-year-old son. He was Mathieu’s illegitimate child.

Eloise had briefly been a ballerina with the Lutes Imperial Ballet, and after retiring she worked as a private ballet instructor for daughters of the nobility. Cora Babineau had been one of her students.

For families of means, enrolling their daughters in ballet lessons was considered essential. Repeating the movements of dance naturally cultivated feminine grace, instilled proper posture, and produced an upright figure.

One day, Eloise Majimelle finished a lesson with Cora Babineau at Maison Babineau and was on her way out when she encountered Cora’s father, Mathieu Babineau, on the beautifully patterned oak floor. A young woman with a healthy body had little difficulty making a man her own, a man worn down by his wife’s long illness.

Up to that point, it was no different from any other such story. Mathieu, too, indulged in Eloise with passion. But there was one thing that set Mathieu Babineau apart from other men. He craved love from Eloise.

Nobles generally did not expect a woman who opened herself in exchange for money and gifts to also open her heart. But Mathieu was different. He found Eloise a home, gave her 3,000 francs a month for living expenses, and crucially, had a child with her.

Eloise gambled on securing the position of Mathieu’s second wife. His wife was barely clinging to life as it was, and once she died, the seat beside the Count would be vacant. That was the opening she had been waiting for.

Mathieu Babineau presented a five-carat diamond ring to Eloise, who had been stringing him along and keeping him at arm’s length. He turned his back on the former Count and Countess Babineau, who were vehemently opposed to their son remarrying a pr*stitute into the family, and proposed to Eloise immediately after Cora’s mother closed her eyes.

When news of the marriage appeared in the papers, Lutes society was thrown into an uproar. A dancer, an opera singer, an actress, the best any of them could hope for was to become the cherished mistress of a noble gentleman. But Eloise had become an official wife, obtained the title of young countess, and her illegitimate son had become an heir.

Gallia was a country tolerant of love. But love was love, and marriage was marriage. If Eloise had become Mathieu Babineau’s official mistress, it would have caused no issue whatsoever. Becoming his official partner, however, was a transgression that exceeded the bounds of the national spirit of ‘tolerance.’

In the midst of all this, the son born between Eloise and Mathieu, François Babineau, was diagnosed with hemophilia. There had been no such history of illness in the Babineau bloodline before. Eloise was an orphan of unknown parentage, and the general consensus was that her rootless bloodline was the cause of the disease.

Because of this, the former Count and Countess Babineau turned their backs entirely on their son and daughter-in-law. They withdrew to Villa Efrysia in Cappera and never set foot in Lutes again. For Eloise, it was something of a relief. Managing François alone was already more than enough to bear. He had frequent nosebleeds that took more than half a day to stop, leaving him white as a sheet again and again, and he was irritable and highly strung.

Cora Babineau was a thorn in Eloise’s side. It wasn’t simply the common, straightforward reason of being the first wife’s child. The vitality in those pink cheeks, the suppleness of those slender arms as they extended with precision, the spring in those legs leaping off the oak floor, the composure that kept its balance through dozens of pirouettes. It was nothing like François, who mostly lay sprawled in bed wailing. That was what she envied to the point of madness, and so she hated it.

Cora endured her stepmother’s cold gaze without understanding why. The perceptive servants sided with Eloise, who had become the true power of Maison Babineau through Count Babineau’s favor. Even Maya, Cora’s own personal maid, had gradually begun to disregard her.

Even so, Cora harbored no ill feeling toward François. She saw her own mother overlaid on the frail little boy. Long years of illness destroy a person. Cora’s mother had been no different. She had watched her mother weep and rage at frequent intervals for a long time. That was why Cora had no choice but to be gentle with François.

“……I see.”

The boy nodded without much comment. Cora liked that about him. She didn’t need to offer cumbersome explanations.

“I look forward to it.”

Cora folded her parasol. Then she smiled brightly and held out her hand. Her golden hair, so radiant it shimmered with a hint of amber, rippled like a wave. Faced with the girl’s complete lack of guard, the boy swallowed the hollow laugh that nearly escaped him.

He took her hand and shook it slowly. His throat burned with the gritty taste of salt. Perhaps the truly unguarded one was the boy himself.