Chapter 2

Earl Grace was still alive, but after Eleanor’s biological mother died of illness around the time Eleanor was eight, he sent her to Saint Agnes Boarding School at the northwestern edge of the Empire.

Painful memories connected to her biological father, which she had wanted to forget, came back to mind, and the scandal about her struck noisily at her ears.

The funeral hall was painful to remain in for a meaning entirely different from what she had expected. Her face, already white enough to look pale, flushed hotly.

Just as she was thinking that as soon as the funeral ended, she should head back to the capital at once.

“If it is not that you must hurry back, how would it be to stay at the Beaufort Grand Duchy?”

“…Pardon?”

At the wholly unexpected suggestion, Eleanor asked back with a dazed face.

“Even if only for a little while… could you not stay here? Without my husband, it feels so empty.”

Marguerite took Eleanor’s hand and looked at her steadily. Just then Kars appeared, bringing Sylvia and several other ladies with him, and as though he felt the same as his mother, he too asked her.

“Yes, if you were to stay by my mother’s side, Miss Eleanor, I think my mother would find a great deal of comfort in it.”

Eleanor could feel Sylvia’s displeased glare from beside Kars. It was almost as though she could hear what Sylvia wanted to say to her.

‘Absolutely not! Say no!’

From the moment Sylvia first faced Eleanor earlier, she had already been standing by Kars’s side, sweeping Eleanor up and down with eyes full of displeasure.

Looking at Sylvia, who aimed to become the next lady of the Grand Duchy, Eleanor knew she ought to refuse this offer, but Marguerite seemed to have no intention of letting go of her hand.

Hesitating under the hostile gazes pouring toward her, Eleanor opened her mouth.

“But… if I stay, would your fiancée not feel uncomfortable?”

At Eleanor’s careful question, Marguerite wore a puzzled expression, as though this were the first time she had heard such a thing. Then she answered firmly and decisively.

“Fiancée? Kars has no fiancée. Is that not so, Kars?”

“Yes. I do not have a fiancée.”

When the man himself even stated it clearly, the people around them stirred as though thrown into confusion.

Did that mean they were not yet engaged? But judging from Marguerite’s attitude, it did not even seem like an engagement was planned.

Then what was Sylvia Dirois, the Marquis’s daughter, who had been behaving like a fiancée?

Even Sylvia looked flustered, as though struck on the back of the head by those words. Amid the disturbance around them, only Marguerite, who had spoken the words, and Kars, the center of the rumor, remained calm.

“It seems there was some misunderstanding. Now that the misunderstanding has been cleared up, it is all right, isn’t it?”

Now that there was no fiancée, Eleanor no longer had any grounds to refuse Marguerite’s request. This was not just anyone’s request, but that of Marguerite, her unforgettable benefactor.

When her friend Helena had been gravely ill, Marguerite had brought Eleanor, who had no one to trust or rely on, and cared for her like her own daughter.

Above all, in a situation where Marguerite was already suffering after even holding her husband’s funeral, Eleanor could not refuse her benefactor’s request.

At that moment, she felt Sylvia’s gaze boring into her with all its force. The blazing stare was, to anyone, plainly telling her to refuse.

Feeling Sylvia’s stinging gaze pouring onto her face, Eleanor lowered her head so their eyes would not meet.

Holding firmly to Eleanor’s hand and not letting go, Marguerite asked again.

“You will stay at the Beaufort Grand Duchy before you leave, won’t you?”

Unable to refuse Marguerite’s request, Eleanor gave a small nod without meeting Sylvia’s eyes.

“…Yes. I’ll do that.”

Though Sylvia Dirois glaring at her with blazing eyes would not leave her mind, for this one moment Eleanor decided to ignore it.

At Eleanor’s decision, Marguerite smiled in satisfaction.

For Eleanor, who had been meant to stay at a small hotel in front of Carsen Station, Kars provided a black carriage bearing the crest of the Grand Duchy.

“Allen, what are you looking at so intently?”

Crown Prince Andreas asked Prince Allen, who had been carefully watching the exchange between Eleanor, Kars, and Marguerite for some time now.

“I found something interesting….”

Allen murmured slowly, stroking his chin. Andreas turned his eyes to where Allen’s gaze rested and saw the woman riding away in the Grand Duchy’s carriage.

‘Allen, the Beaufort Grand Duchy, and an unknown woman….’

For some reason, Andreas found himself bothered by the strange premonition that the relationship among the three would not unfold in any ordinary way.

*   *   *

“Welcome to the ducal residence, Miss Eleanor.”

Eleanor stiffened at Kars taking her hand and kissing it. Suddenly, the sight of Kars she had seen at the funeral of the late Grand Duke Lorenz Beaufort came back to mind.

Though she wore gloves, she could feel his lips against the back of her hand with painful clarity. At that, a shiver ran down her spine and the hair on the back of her neck stood on end.

This was not Kars’s first greeting, yet even the second time she still could not get used to it. Without realizing it, Eleanor shrank back slightly.

Kars had changed so much from the boy she remembered that he felt nothing but awkward and uncomfortable.

She remembered the rumor surrounding him: ‘Kars Beaufort never turns away a woman who comes to him, so there is no woman he has not been with.’

Perhaps because of those impure rumors, too improper for Eleanor to repeat aloud, it felt deeply uncomfortable not only to face Kars but also to keep holding hands with him like this.

‘A rake who never turns away a willing woman!’

When Eleanor thought that Kars Beaufort had likely behaved this lightly with every woman, she could not hide the disappointment welling up inside her.

Eleanor tried her best not to reveal her feelings, but the emotion she had failed to fully conceal seemed to show openly on her face for a moment.

Seeing Kars’s face seem to stiffen as he looked at her, Eleanor hurriedly changed the subject.

“Thanks to the carriage you sent, I came comfortably. Thank you.”

“I am glad to hear you came in comfort.”

He was smiling, and yet somehow Kars gave off a subtly hollow feeling.

“Come, let us go to your room.”

Following Marguerite, Eleanor naturally refused Kars’s escort. Left behind her, Kars awkwardly clenched and unclenched his hand for no reason, twisting his mouth.

Whether she meant to or not, ever since the last time he saw her, Eleanor had had a way of quietly souring a person’s temper.

At first he wondered whether he was mistaken, but as she continued to show an attitude of discomfort toward him, Kars did not feel particularly pleased either.

Eleanor, who smiled warmly at Marguerite like the sunlight of spring, yet carried a strange chill toward him.

Narrowing his eyes, Kars followed behind Eleanor.

“This room is truly just as it used to be.”

“I left it exactly so, in case you ever came back.”

Seeing that the room she had used as a child still remained unchanged, Eleanor could not hide her surprise.

Marguerite treated Eleanor with the utmost affection, like a daughter who had returned home, and Eleanor followed after Marguerite, smiling warmly and replying with equal closeness.

Kars did not come into Eleanor’s room but leaned crookedly at the doorway, hands thr*st carelessly into his pockets, watching them. It was a posture one could not believe belonged to a Grand Duke, one that would have suited a rogue much better.

Eleanor could feel Kars’s gaze fixed on her and tried to pretend not to notice by focusing on something else. But against her own will, her attention kept turning toward Kars.

She had heard the rumors that Kars had become a rake, but she still could not grow used to the image of him smiling while surrounded by all manner of women.

Eleanor felt a sense of dissonance at how much Kars Beaufort, who had been her first love in childhood, had changed.

“This door is….”

Eleanor, having been assigned the room next to the one Kars had used as a child, discovered the connecting door that led to his room.

“Do you remember? Whenever there was thunder and rain, you used to say you were afraid to sleep alone and would go over to Kars’s room.”

“Ah… then does this room connect to His Highness the Grand Duke’s room?”

At hearing that the next room was Kars’s room, Eleanor’s face turned pale, and Marguerite hurriedly added,

“What do you mean by ‘His Highness the Grand Duke’. Call him Kars, just as you did when you were little. The next room is Kars’s room, but Kars uses the Grand Duke’s study downstairs, so there is no need to worry.”

Click.

After Marguerite and Kars had gone back, while Eleanor was alone changing clothes, a sound came from the connecting door.

‘What is that?’

Eleanor hurriedly finished putting on her clothes and went toward the connecting door where the sound was coming from. Suddenly, the doorknob moved, rattling as though it might open at any moment.

‘Why is that moving? Surely no one is trying to open this door and come in?’

She did not dare gather the courage to call out to Kars, who was probably on the other side.

After living for more than ten years in a boarding school filled only with girls, just the fact that she was in a room next to a man, separated by only one door, made her heart pound uneasily. Feeling anxious, Eleanor hurriedly locked the door without even realizing it.