Chapter 1 – Reunion After 10 Years

Some time earlier.

‘It has been 12 years….’

Eleanor stood before the Beaufort Grand Duchy in order to attend the funeral of the late Grand Duke Lorenz Beaufort.

It was her first time coming here since she was eight, when, around the time her mother passed away, she had briefly stayed at the Beaufort Grand Duchy at the suggestion of the Dowager Grand Duchess Marguerite Beaufort, her mother’s friend.

“Lady Marguerite.”

“Ella? My goodness! How long has it been!”

Even though it had been over ten years since they had seen each other, Marguerite recognized Eleanor at a glance, seized her hands, and warmly welcomed her.

The mysterious woman who had appeared before Marguerite—with platinum-blonde hair and eyes like they held the sky itself—looked exactly like her old friend Helena.

Seeing Marguerite welcome her so fondly, Eleanor felt as though she had finally returned to the homeland she had long missed.

“You still haven’t seen Kars, have you? Come, let’s go say hello. He’ll be happy to see you!”

As though she had forgotten her grief upon seeing Eleanor, the Dowager Grand Duchess Marguerite took her by the hand and led her toward Kars Beaufort. Kars Beaufort was smiling as he stood surrounded by women gathered thick as clouds.

Despite it being the funeral of his father, the late Grand Duke Lorenz Beaufort, he did not seem especially submerged in sorrow.

The sight of him smiling at every woman around him seemed to prove the rumors that he had become the greatest womanizer in the Empire.

People did not usually say a man resembled a flower, but Kars Beaufort was an exception. Even among women, his face was so striking that he seemed more splendid than any of them, drawing every eye.

The sight of him called to mind a rose that drew not only butterflies and bees but all manner of insects. A rose carrying poison, at that.

Kars Beaufort stole the hearts of all women, yet never truly gave his own, only making it seem as though he might, and so he left nothing but tears in the eyes of the women of the Empire.

A man like that—had Sylvia Dirois, the one rumored to be romantically involved with him, truly won his heart?

Eleanor, who had expected to see the innocent boy who used to smile only at her, felt bitter for some reason.

“Don’t they really seem to have something special between them?”

“Do you think the two of them will actually get engaged?”

“She acts as if she’s already the lady of the Grand Duchy, so if he says he won’t, I doubt the lady’s side will stay quiet.”

At the voices drifting from around her, Eleanor barely smoothed over the stiffness on her face and walked closer in that direction.

“Kars!”

At the sound of his mother calling him, he turned his head.

His mysterious blue-green eyes, in which blue and green blended together, framed by jet-black hair like his father’s, turned toward the unfamiliar woman approaching him together with his mother.

At the place his gaze landed, the dozens of eyes of the women around him gathered there as well.

“Kars, an old friend has come to pay her respects.”

The woman beside Kars looked at Eleanor, standing next to the Dowager Grand Duchess Marguerite, and whispered something softly to him.

With a faint smile on his face as he listened to the woman, Kars looked quite affectionate, like one half of a pair of lovers.

Especially when Eleanor discovered that the woman standing close beside Kars was none other than that ‘Sylvia Dirois,’ the Marquis’s daughter, her heart grew uneasy. Without realizing it, Eleanor drew her brows together neatly.

Kars’s heavy brows, thick lashes, and sharp nose might have given a severe impression, but together with his gentle expression they harmonized pleasingly and completed a gentlemanly look.

When his blue-green eyes turned toward her, Eleanor drew in a breath without realizing it.

“…Hello, I am Eleanor Grace.”

“Kars Beaufort. Thank you for coming, Lady… Grace.”

While Sylvia glared, Kars lifted his eyes and, holding Eleanor’s gaze, kissed her hand.

The way he smiled, his lips as red as a woman’s curving in a languid way, created a somewhat sensual air that did not suit a funeral.

“It is a pleasure to see an old friend again, even under these circumstances.”

Perhaps because Kars smiled so radiantly, Eleanor could not quite hide her discomfort even after receiving his greeting.

Surely it was also because, over the past ten years or so, she had attended a girls’ boarding school run by nuns and kept far away from men.

But more than that, the main cause was Sylvia Dirois, the Marquis’s daughter, who stood beside Kars staring at her as though she were an unwelcome guest.

Perhaps because they had been long-standing enemies since their school days, even though it had been a long time since they last met, merely being looked at by her made Eleanor’s hair stand on end and a chill run down her back.

Whenever she stood before Sylvia, Eleanor had always felt like a mouse facing the snake that was its natural enemy. Without realizing it, Eleanor’s body, along with her face, stiffened rigidly, making it hard to answer Kars’s words.

Besides, she had already heard the rumors of Kars Beaufort and Sylvia Dirois. Eleanor was inwardly appalled by Kars’s behavior, which seemed almost like he was flirting at a funeral with his lover standing right beside him.

She did not want to mishandle herself and risk causing any misunderstanding. Eleanor hurriedly withdrew her hand from Kars’s grasp.

At Eleanor’s reaction, Kars too seemed inwardly rather flustered. As if hiding his awkwardness, Kars softened his mouth into a gentle smile.

Though Eleanor and Kars seemed placed at opposite ends, the thoughts both held inwardly about the other were the same.

Changed, and changed a great deal.

Kars seemed to think Eleanor’s reaction was strange, as he arched one eyebrow. Just as he was about to say something, someone who appeared to be a servant of the Grand Duchy came and urgently called for Kars.

“Your Highness the Grand Duke! The Bishop is looking for you!”

“Ah, dear me. I must go. Would it be all right to ask you to keep my mother company for a moment?”

“Yes….”

“Then let us finish catching up later. Please excuse me. Don’t go anywhere—wait for me.”

With his trademark dazzling smile, Kars Beaufort left his place. As he departed, the cloud of women surrounding him moved with him.

Sylvia still stayed attached at his side, speaking to him. Kars nodded with a smile playing on his lips. They looked just like an affectionate married couple.

“Those two, the rumor that they’re getting engaged seems true, doesn’t it?”

Hearing people whispering about Kars and Sylvia, Eleanor felt a sharp pain in her chest spread outward like ripples.

‘Why did it have to be Sylvia Dirois of all people!’

To think the woman people had marked as the fiancée of her first love was Sylvia Dirois, the very girl who had tormented her in school….

Looking at the backs of Kars and Sylvia walking side by side, her chest tightened.

“Ella, the Beaufort Grand Duchy is as good as your home. Come back whenever you want!”

Those words he had spoken to her when she was crying at her mother’s funeral were still vivid in her ears, and yet the image of Kars Beaufort she remembered from childhood, like a true elder brother to her, could no longer be found.

That boy, who had been her first love from childhood for no short time, no longer existed now. Perhaps she had only wanted to deny that the rumors of his becoming a rake were true.

‘How foolish… it was so long ago, and I’m still thinking about that time!’

The moment she realized that, it felt as though something inside her heart had collapsed. A sudden ache rose in her chest, and she bit her lip tightly.

“But then… who is that woman standing beside the Dowager Grand Duchess Beaufort?”

There were eyes following Eleanor, who was staying by Marguerite’s side like a daughter. One by one, people who seemed to recognize the woman at the side of the Dowager Grand Duchess Beaufort began to appear.

“Isn’t she the ballerina who joined the Imperial Ballet not long ago?”

“The Imperial Ballet?”

“Yes! She was in an imperial newspaper article, and I remembered her because of her striking looks.”

“What sort of relationship could that ballerina have with the Dowager Grand Duchess Beaufort?”

“Could she perhaps… be that girl she once tried to take in as an adopted daughter?”

“The one the Beaufort Grand Duchy quarreled with the Grace Earldom over?”

The sound of people whispering reached Eleanor’s ears as well.

The first noble young lady to join the Empire’s Imperial Ballet. Many titles followed her, but the words that described Eleanor best were, after all, the abandoned daughter of the Grace Earldom.