‘May I ask how you came to know Ricky?’

Walking ahead of me, Cincy’s eyes didn’t rest for a moment. The villa on the hill was kept under the care of the family, with a hired gardener coming to tend it every week. Cincy had been pressing her nose into a red rose and sniffing when she startled and jumped back as I stopped walking.

‘You have trouble concentrating.’

Cincy flushed as though the remark embarrassed her greatly. Her flustered movement sent a nearby rose petal drifting to the ground. She hurried over and took her place behind me, clutching her straw hat tightly. I picked up the thread of the interrupted conversation.

‘So then. You and Ricky.’

‘Ricky……’

‘I mean Razy.’

‘I only gave young master Razy a ride on a horse once.’

Standing at the path leading to the villa’s garden, I looked down at the top of Cincy’s head. Most of what she said made little sense to me.

Cincy had wilted, as though I were scolding her. Being called away from her father and brought here seemed to feel less like a reward and more like a punishment.

I loosened the strings of my wide-brimmed hat a little and let out a breath. A horse ride. It was too dangerous, and I had never permitted Ricky on a horse without a professional instructor present.

‘Ricky rode a horse?’

‘Yes.’

‘Alone?’

‘No. I gave him a ride.’

The phrase ‘gave him a ride’ grated on me considerably. Ricky could handle a horse on his own, albeit under a tutor’s supervision. The idea that the eldest son of the Milo family couldn’t ride properly was absurd.

I considered the possibility that Cincy was lying, but the girl clutching her straw hat didn’t seem the type to make things up.

‘So you’re saying he sat behind you?’

‘Yes. The young master sat in the back.’

In other words, Ricky had ridden as a passenger behind a girl his own age on a horse at the manure-filled Restin farm. I couldn’t fathom what was so wonderful about that to make him completely besotted with her.

My bewilderment didn’t end there. Near the close of our conversation, our feet brought us to the garden table laden with pies. Ricky, who should have been sitting quietly in the rose-scented garden, was hiding behind a tree.

The maid walking into the garden to bring berry juice stopped dead in her tracks. All three women entering the garden fixed their eyes on Ricky crouching behind the tree.

The first to collect herself was the maid. She pretended not to see and set the glass bottle of berry juice on the table before leaving.

‘Razy.’

Ricky knew that when I called him Razy, I was in a very bad mood. Even so, at the cold summons, he stayed hidden behind the tree and glared at Cincy. Inviting her had turned out worse than not inviting her at all.

‘Hello.’

Cincy, however, walked straight to the empty chair and sat down as though none of this was unusual. She quickly picked out the chocolate she wanted from the pile she’d been eyeing and popped it into her mouth. Ricky had been glaring at Cincy’s single braid when I beckoned him over, and that was the moment he finally came out.

The moment she said hello to him, he yanked her hair. Cincy, happily eating her chocolate, was pulled nearly halfway off her chair by Ricky’s tug on her braid.

‘Razy Milo!’

I cried out in horror. Cincy hid her flustered expression and smoothed the hair Ricky had pulled loose. Any ordinary girl would have burst into tears and screamed. I had thought her a naive, bashful little girl, but she glanced at me and straightened herself. Her face was one of someone desperately holding back tears.

I wasn’t so much disappointed in Ricky’s thoroughly ungentlemanly behavior as I was baffled. Anyone watching could see it was the sulking of a boy whose favorite girl wasn’t paying attention to him.

Ricky left the garden immediately after. The bell on the villa’s front door jingled and rang. He had gone inside. The maid came rushing toward the garden, confirming my suspicion. I removed my hat and let the throbbing in my head rest in the breeze for a moment.

‘Cincy.’

‘Yes?’

‘I’m sorry, but you’ll have to come again another time. Ricky doesn’t seem to be feeling well today.’

Cincy didn’t look particularly disappointed. She grabbed a few chocolates in her fist, stood up, and left. I instructed the stable hand to call the carriage and see her home, then went straight inside.

The runaway Razy was exactly where I expected, shut in his room with the blanket pulled up over his head. This visit, which Ricky had lost sleep over in excitement, had been ruined in an instant, and I felt the loss keenly too. I had finally dared to hope Ricky might become a proper gentleman.

‘Razy Milo. Get up.’

Ricky usually didn’t dare defy me out of fear of the switch I kept. But he lay in bed still as a mouse until I finally reached over and pulled him up by the shoulder.

‘What on earth is the matter.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Ricky. I told you not to act like a child. I told you to say what you want plainly.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Do you dislike Cincy? You’re the one who wanted to invite her.’

He didn’t answer the question about Cincy. He just jutted out his lower lip and said, almost in tears……

‘She likes the chocolate more than she likes me.’

It felt like lightning striking inside my head. I had no idea what it was about Cincy that had captured him so, but I felt I had found the thread I needed to make Ricky into a perfect man. I couldn’t leave my son a child forever.

So he can’t resist a woman, just like a true Milo. I swallowed that scoff and reached out to stroke Ricky’s cheek.

‘Ricky.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Shall I invite Cincy again?’

Ricky had been the most upset by how badly things had gone. He glanced at the clock on the wall and asked……

‘What time?’

‘Not today.’

‘Then when?’

‘When you get praised in your mathematics lesson.’

The expectation that had been shining in Ricky’s eyes collapsed into disappointment at once. He pulled off his socks roughly, and though he couldn’t bring himself to throw them at me, he slammed them against the floor. I had expected exactly this.

‘But while you’re attending your mathematics lessons, I’ll teach you a method.’

Ricky had been slamming his socks against the floor and wrapping them around his wrist when he looked up at me.

‘Don’t you want to become close with Cincy?’

I had come down to Port Mary half-fleeing the Milo family and their vulgar relatives, and instead of rest, I chose discipline. This was my path.

* * *

Reading the diary, Doosi was piecing together her own memories. In her recollection, Razy Milo had been a timid young master who never appreciated his lady’s efforts.

But reading the diary, the past looked different. Lady Milo was too parched a person to rest among the beautiful daisies that blanketed this place. So parched, in fact, that she didn’t realize she was parching her son along with herself.

* * *

April 11th

Ricky hated mathematics. Even in that, he took entirely after his father. The Milos were poor at figures and emotional, finding their pleasure in spending whatever they’d accumulated without restraint. They lived comfortably enough off the family fortune, but to me it always looked like a sandcastle waiting to crumble.

I had no interest in how miserably or poorly his father might end up living, but the dowry I had brought into the marriage and the inheritance that had passed to Ricky as the Milo family’s eldest son needed to reach Ricky intact. And Ricky had to protect that considerable fortune from his dim-witted cousins. From the countless fools who would attach themselves to him for the money.

‘How far have we gotten?’

‘Not as far as with the Romance languages, but his attitude in class has improved since last time.’

‘Please push the material a little further even if it’s a stretch. Boarding school enrollment isn’t far off.’

‘Ah, but my lady.’

‘Yes.’

‘It seems young master Milo doesn’t want to enroll in boarding school.’

Just then Ricky opened the parlor door and walked in. I had been withholding Cincy’s name as leverage for over three months now, keeping him from seeing her or going out, and he was growing desperate. The day before, he had tried to bolt in the middle of dinner and only just been stopped by the stable hand Paul.

Today was the day the tutor was to give a progress report, but everyone in the house knew they were all helping Ricky get outside. The results were terrible by my standards, yet they were lying and saying this was more than enough for boarding school.

‘Come in, Ricky.’

‘Can I go out now?’

‘Come in.’

It had only been a few days’ outing. Whether those few days in early summer had stirred something in Ricky, or whether the child he’d met during that time had made him feel something, it didn’t matter. Port Mary was a place Ricky needed to pass through. Not a place to settle and give his heart to.

‘Your mathematics marks are terrible.’

‘My lady.’

The tutor looked quite flustered, glancing once at Ricky and once at me before rubbing his face with his hands. Occasionally the tutor would tell me that even without trying to be perfect, Ricky was doing well enough for his age and would be fine.