“Ah…… yes……”

The atmosphere shifted back to Iris. At some point Evelyn Spencer had simply disappeared. By the time Iris surfaced from the conversation, she found people had gathered around her without her noticing.

Carlyle handed Iris the fresh glass of champagne a staff member had brought, a faint smile on his lips.

He was rather pleased with the picture he had painted.

The emerald resting at the center of Iris’s chest caught the chandelier light and reflected it with quiet elegance.

❖ ❖ ❖

The party stretched on until the early hours of the morning, and Carlyle, as the host, remained until the very end. Naturally, Iris stayed with him throughout.

“Oh, I’m exhausted……”

It felt like she had spent hours alone handling a flood of school parents. She dropped into a chair and slumped forward onto the table, Carlyle’s presence beside her or not.

A moment later she sensed someone sit down next to her.

A heavy musk laced with tobacco. The clean metallic ring of a lighter told her it was Carlyle without her needing to look.

Sure enough, thick cigarette smoke curled through the gap beside her face. Iris pushed off the floor with her feet and scooted away from him, turning her face to the opposite side.

“……I didn’t know you disliked cigarettes.”

“Who likes them?”

“I do.”

“……”

The sheer audacity of it. Iris’s scowling face turned toward Carlyle before she could stop it. He smiled at the sight of her glowering, fairy-faced expression, which carried not a trace of actual threat.

He looked down at her and took another deliberate drag.

“……”

Is he teasing me.

Just as Iris’s face was about to turn away again, Carlyle spoke.

“Would you like me to put it out?”

Iris’s head snapped back toward him. Still displeased.

“You’ll do whatever you want anyway.”

“Ha ha ha.”

Only then did Carlyle’s hand drift slowly down and meet the crystal ashtray. The motion of grinding out the cigarette, the soft hiss of it, was as graceful as a swan.

“……Thank you.”

Iris watched him for a moment, then pushed out her lower lip. She sat up and pointed to the necklace.

“How do I go back……”

“You did well today.”

Carlyle’s words cut across hers.

Iris’s brow twitched, uncertain how to take the compliment. Carlyle opened the drawer of the side table and wrote something in his checkbook.

He rose from his seat, came to stand beside her, and set the torn check down.

“A tip.”

“……”

Iris picked it up slowly and checked the amount. A year’s rent in exchange for a few hours of conversation, yet her eyes darkened.

Should I be grateful? Did I actually do well?

She was still staring at the check, turning a quiet mockery on herself, when Carlyle’s hand closed around the emerald hanging at the center of her chest. Iris recoiled so sharply her back pressed flat against the chair. The necklace chain pulled taut.

“Y-you said there would be no physical contact……”

Her voice trembled as she raised the contract terms like a shield. Her light brown eyes, brimming with alarm, were fixed on Carlyle with a fierceness that was quite new. The fact that her trembling hands were still clutching the check tightly was somewhat funny.

The tip is the tip, but the original terms of the contract are to be honored. The boldness in her eyes was enough to make one wonder who had hired whom.

That meant the power dynamic of this contract needed to be made clearer.

“I hope you’ll continue to honor that contract, Miss Mora.”

Carlyle pulled the necklace toward him, bent forward, and smiled crookedly.

“……”

Up close, his blue eyes blazed like a wolf’s in the dark, and Iris went rigid. One wrong move and he would surely bite through her throat. Right now he looked far more like a pr*stitute’s son than a duke’s heir.

“……I w-will.”

Only after reading the fear written in Iris’s eyes did Carlyle release the necklace.

“Then consider it a gift for the good work ahead.”

The emerald slipped from his hand and landed heavily against Iris’s chest.

❖ ❖ ❖

The next day, when Iris opened her eyes, the sun was already high in the sky.

She had arrived home in the early hours and collapsed into bed, managing only to kick off her shoes before falling asleep. The thought of having to change her clothes brought a fresh wave of exhaustion, and she pressed a hand to her forehead.

Still lying down, she began feeling around her body for the fastenings of the dress. The moment her hand closed around the large, heavy thing on her chest, she bolted upright.

“The necklace!”

Something this expensive.

Her hands worked quickly to unclasp it.

But the real problem came after. She had absolutely no idea where to keep it in this cramped, shabby room. Not just the necklace, but the other jewelry and the dress as well. Everything posed the same problem.

“Ha……”

Iris looked around the room and let out a long sigh.

The color Carlyle had dressed her in had vanished overnight like a spell. In this room, it was nothing more than a shiny stone and some soft fabric. Even so, Iris found that far more comfortable. There was no chandelier here, but warm sunlight came through the window, and narrow and worn as it was, it was her own space.

Abandoned in Volterra, she had obtained her nationality thanks to the Mother Superior, and had spent her whole life as a stranger who belonged neither to Lafreia nor to Volterra. Through that loneliness, she had fought alone to protect Henry, her only family. Henry, into whom she had poured her entire life, would graduate and marry before long, and when that happened Iris would need to start growing accustomed to a life on her own.

That was why this single room, her own space, held so many meanings for her.

“……Ugh! Why did you give this to me!”

Iris growled at the expensive uninvited guests spread across her bed.

Things she couldn’t even sell, nuisances that would have been far easier not to have. She took out an empty box and put Carlyle’s things inside. He had called them gifts, but she couldn’t bring herself to think of them as hers.

She pulled off the dress last, stuffed it into the box, and kicked the whole thing under the bed with a thud.

“It’s already this late…… I need to get ready.”

It didn’t take long to wash up and change into her going-out clothes. Iris gathered her sketchbook and art supplies from the drawer and left the house.

The contract with the President had settled the problem of a side income for now. The time that freed up needed to go toward building her own life.

The horse-drawn omnibus brought her to a university. Something must have been going on, because for a weekend the campus was unusually crowded. Iris blinked, looking around in puzzlement.

“Miss Mora!”

She was trying to push through the crowd and make her way forward when someone called her name loudly from behind. She turned to find Daniel Dupree running toward her.

“Miss!”

He was carrying Eden, Iris’s student and his son, in his arms. The moment Eden saw his favorite teacher’s face, he broke into a wide, gap-toothed grin.

“Hello, Mr. Dupree. Hello, Eden.”

“Why are you so late today, Miss?”

But apparently looking like a child in front of his teacher was not something he could accept. The moment they reached her, Eden tried to leap out of his father’s arms, and Daniel caught him quickly.

“It’s dangerous.”

“I’m big now, I want to walk by myself!”

The boy had found out by chance that his teacher came to the riverbank running through the campus to paint every Saturday. Eden, who seemed to cling to Iris more than most, perhaps because he had no mother, had come to find her whenever he had the chance ever since.

There was only a rumor that the boy’s mother had given birth to him young and passed away. Worried about whether growing up without a mother might affect his son, Daniel Dupree was always attentive to Eden’s wellbeing. He was the most frequent parent visitor to Iris’s classroom, and the only male parent at that, which had already made him something of a known figure among the teachers.

“I overslept…… Having Eden here today will make painting more fun.”

“I want to come every week, but I have to spend time with Grandma too, so I’m very busy.”

Perhaps because of that care, Eden was a lovable little troublemaker who had never caused any real problems. Iris laughed softly at the sight of him sighing with an adorable air of exhaustion, then looked up at Daniel.

“You weren’t waiting for me, were you, Mr. Dupree?”

“I was, I’m afraid. Eden kept insisting we couldn’t start without you.”

Daniel set Eden down carefully and gave a quiet laugh.