“Um…”

For some reason, his face looked unfamiliar as I suddenly found myself looking up at him from such close proximity.

Perhaps because I’d never been held in someone’s arms like this, my heart seemed to drop to my toes and disappear.

“I told you it’s not necessary.”

The Grand Duke’s eyes, once piercingly blue, had darkened, and my body involuntarily stiffened.

“But…”

“Keep your mouth shut and don’t tell anyone.”

“……”

“Do you understand?”

Though his face remained expressionless, I could clearly feel the intense heat radiating from his chest as it rose and fell.

Having followed him in just my chemise, his high body temperature was unmistakably apparent through the thin fabric.

“…But you need disinfectant, and your fever is rising.”

The Grand Duke, staring down at me practically cradled in his arms, let out a scoffing laugh.

“How long are you going to stay like that?”

“I-I was about to get up!”

“Move.”

You’re the one who pulled me down!

When he released my wrist as if discarding something bothersome, I quickly stood up and dusted off my chemise.

“So you just don’t want others to know?”

“I wish you hadn’t found out either.”

“Then I’ll make sure no one else knows.”

He laughed bitterly.

“You expect me to believe you?”

He tried to maintain an unaffected expression while swallowing his pain, but he clearly needed painkillers urgently.

“I know you don’t trust me. I know everyone here thinks I’m the culprit who orchestrated the attack on Your Highness.”

The sharp gaze watching me subsided slightly.

He was clearly recalling the ransacked grand duchess’s bedroom we had encountered that night.

“Even so, this time is different. I won’t let anyone know that Your Highness is injured. I can even swear to it. Then will you get treatment?”

Knock knock—

Following the cautious knock, the bedroom door clicked open.

“You called for me, Your Highness.”

Butler Norbert, seemingly startled by the sudden dawn summons, had rushed over with his gray-brown hair less groomed than his otherwise proper attire.

“The grand duchess is unwell.”

Norbert momentarily faltered at the unfamiliar term from Carlo’s lips. After briefly considering whom the Grand Duke meant, his eyes widened in sudden realization.

This was understandable, as the Grand Duke had never properly addressed the grand duchess before.

Until now, hadn’t he referred to the grand duchess as “that woman”?

Norbert quickly composed his expression and asked Carlo in a rather serious tone:

“Is it a problem with her head injury?”

“Cough, cough!”

Before Carlo could respond, timely coughing sounds began to emerge from under the blanket.

It was the grand duchess, who had been waiting for the butler’s appearance, moaning from beneath the covers.

She made a show of slightly lowering the blanket, then weakly opened her eyes to look at Norbert.

“Yes… I have a bit of a fever. I’m also feeling chills. And my injury is stinging. Ugh. Cough! Cough!”

While she might have thought she was giving the performance of her life, even trembling her hands, to Carlo it seemed utterly amateurish.

However, fortunately or unfortunately, her act seemed to have clearly convinced the flustered Norbert.

This was because Norbert knew nothing of what had transpired between the two, and with dawn not yet broken, he couldn’t clearly see the grand duchess’s face in the dark bedroom.

“I’ll have medicine brought immediately.”

“Yes. Painkillers and disinfectant, and… oh, towels to bring down the fever would be good too… like gauze towels? Hack! Scissors too! Keck! And tweezers!”

“Y-yes, my lady.”

“Oh, right! And His Highness will treat me himself. Keck! I’m shy around others, so it’s difficult with anyone else, cough cough!”

She was ridiculous, adding precise instructions while making sounds as if she might collapse at any moment.

Carlo unconsciously furrowed his brow and turned his head away dismissively.

“Let’s do it this way.”

Just a few minutes earlier, the grand duchess’s determined expression had seemed quite bold, especially since he had never seen such a side of her before.

“I’ll pretend to be very sick now. Then we can ask for treatment supplies right away. We can’t wait until morning to treat you. That wound needs to be disinfected immediately.”

“Your Highness’s wound looks deep, so the dressing should be changed every two days. We’ll need lots of bandages and disinfectant. But would it seem strange if we asked for all those supplies right now?”

She didn’t seem to be directing the question at him specifically.

It was closer to talking to herself, as she was looking up at the air while deep in thought, rather than looking at him and asking.

“No, I can pretend to be sick every two days. There are plenty of reasons. I hit my head in the previous attack. I could say I’m suffering from nightmares due to trauma, having severe headaches, and feeling like my wound is getting worse?”

What bothered him wasn’t her attitude. Carlo simply couldn’t understand why she was so determined to treat him.

The image of her making a fuss, claiming his injury or illness would be a disaster for her, flashed through his mind.

“……”

Carlo looked down at the grand duchess, whose cheeks were flushed red like someone with a fever, with only her head poking out from under the blanket.

Just moments ago, she had pressed her face close to the fireplace, saying she needed to look feverish to get fever reducers.

After turning her face tomato-red, she had rushed to the bedroom. She had insisted on moving quickly, worried the flush might fade on the way to the bedroom.

At this dawn hour, in an unlit bedroom, who would notice whether her face was red or white?

Either she was stupid or she had volunteered for needless effort.

“I’ll prepare everything promptly.”

As Norbert hurriedly left the bedroom, the grand duchess sprang up from the bed and threw back the pristine white blanket.

Even a rabbit couldn’t have bounced up better than she did.

“Didn’t I do well?”

She met his eyes immediately and asked with a smiling gaze.

It was a secretive, playful smile, as if they had successfully completed a clandestine plot together.

At that moment, Carlo felt an inexplicably heavy, unfamiliar sensation wash over him.

It was something difficult to shake off and unsettling, yet simultaneously gave him an ominous feeling that he would dwell on it repeatedly.

“It wasn’t obvious, right?”

He wasn’t so insensitive that he failed to notice how this woman, claiming memory loss, displayed an attitude completely different from before.

The problem was that he had momentarily reconsidered his conviction that all her actions had ulterior motives.

That couldn’t be.

Carlo maintained his usual cold expression and quietly rebuked the woman before him.

“You call that acting?”

“Was it that bad?”

“Of course…”

“Come on, it was fine. I’ll go back under now.”

What? Did she just dare to interrupt me?

From earlier, this woman had been acting as if she hadn’t heard a word of his cold remarks, as if she were deaf to them.

Carlo’s mood soured, and he could have ripped off her blanket and scolded her severely, but for some reason, he found it difficult to do so.

It must be because she was so insignificant that he could kill her without lifting a finger, making any further wrestling with her clearly a waste of time.

“……”

Yes, that must be why he was keeping her alive.

“Why are you covering yourself with the blanket? Norbert already saw your face.”

The grand duchess, covered with the blanket up to her head, continued:

“The sun will rise soon, and if light comes in, my face might be visible. Please tell him to leave the medicines over there.”

After briefly making eye contact with him, poking her face out from under the blanket just a little, she ducked back under with a very self-satisfied expression.

What on earth was her motive for acting this way?

Carlo, leaning against the headboard and looking down at her indifferently, eventually closed his eyes.

“Is that really how you disinfect a wound?”

No matter how I looked at it, he seemed more likely to widen the wound than help it heal.

“That’s not how you treat it. Would you like to give me that?”

I approached the chair where the Grand Duke sat and held out my hand, but the man, finding me annoying, silently tried to continue what he was doing without responding.

“Give it to me. I’ll do it for you.”

Deciding I needed to block his view, I spread my palm wide and waved it in front of his eyes.

The man’s gaze, which had been disinterestedly disinfecting the wound, immediately rose to me. An irritated look came with it, but I was used to that by now.

“Move your hand.”

“You can’t do it that way.”

“You’re noisy.”

“Don’t you want it to heal quickly?”

“I’m doing it.”

Anyone would agree that what he was doing couldn’t be called disinfection.

“You’ve never disinfected a wound before, have you?”

“……”

“I thought so. Others have always done it for you. Let me see it, okay?”

“For someone with no memory, you seem to know a lot about disinfection.”

“Just because I lost my memory doesn’t mean I can’t use my brain.”

When I grinned broadly at him, he seemed to lose the will to argue further and placed the tweezers down on the silver tray with a clatter.

Judging by how he slightly winced whenever he moved, he was clearly still in pain, but looking at his seemingly insensitive expression and attitude, one would think he wasn’t injured at all.

“Take the painkiller first.”

I brought over a packet of powdered medicine the servants had left, poured water into a cup, and handed it to him.

“This is medicine that Norbert brought himself, so you don’t need to be suspicious.”

“……”

“Or should I taste a tiny bit first?”

“That’s enough.”

He quietly looked at me before reluctantly accepting the medicine.

He silently poured the powder into his mouth and swallowed the water, his prominent Adam’s apple visibly moving up and down.

Morning sunlight streamed through the open window on the gentle breeze, highlighting his well-defined muscles wherever the light touched his body.

It felt like facing a giant statue created by a master artist in a museum.

“Why.”

His low voice snapped me back to reality.