Raymond tapped the armrest of his chair with his index finger. Charlotte felt as uneasy as a prisoner awaiting a verdict.

Should she have just said she’d do it without all the fuss, after all? It was a chance to pay off fifty gold in one stroke. But if she were to run into someone who’d heard the rumors about her—if, because of that, not only Charlotte but House Spencer, and beyond that even Raymond, took undeserved talk… Charlotte hadn’t the confidence to endure it.

The moment Charlotte forced down a dry swallow, Raymond’s finger stopped.

“It seems to me the lady is worrying needlessly.”

A flicker of light sparkled in Charlotte’s blue eyes.

“The people of Glasko won’t even know a town called Sandem exists. I don’t mean to speak ill of it, but Sandem really is such a terribly small town, isn’t it. What would anyone here care to know about whatever happened there?”

“But if, just as you came to know, Mr. Bayen, someone else has come to know as well…”

“I’m an unusual case. I’m acquainted with the Duke, after all.”

“Even so. Bad rumors travel fast, and on the off chance that—”

“Then let’s make a little wager.”

Raymond’s smooth lips curved into a leisurely smile.

“If anyone steps forward claiming to know about what happened back then, I’ll give you a hundred gold.”

Raymond brought up a hundred gold as casually as if it were the name of some household’s puppy.

“Ah—it wouldn’t do to give it only to you, my lady. I’d have to give some to House Spencer as well. As far as I know, three people live there, so that would be a hundred gold per person—four hundred gold in total, then.”

His eyes curved into an elegant shape.

“…You’re joking, surely?”

“How could it be a joke. Over a simple little wager like this.”

“…”

How could a wager staking four hundred gold ever be a simple wager. Just what sort of sense of money did he have? To someone who owned a colossal hotel and threw lavish parties as though it were nothing, was four hundred gold or so a mere trifle? No—if his circumstances were so comfortable, then how about mercifully writing off the fifty gold?

Hmm, no, that’s not it…

His feeling was probably this: it wasn’t that he begrudged the money, but that he couldn’t forgive his precious pottery being broken.

“You’ll do it, won’t you?”

Raymond asked with a tilt of his head. When Charlotte hesitated, his lips soundlessly mouthed something.

Fifty gold.

Reading his lips at once, Charlotte nodded with the heart of a rat driven into a corner.

“Very well.”

Raymond wore a satisfied smile. Charlotte looked at that face with a slightly surprised expression, and then—

Ah. I stared too openly.

Just as Charlotte turned her gaze away, Raymond said something that drew her eyes back to him once more.

“Then starting tomorrow, let’s keep ourselves busy going about.”

“Busy…?”

“Yes. Now is the finest time for getting out and about, isn’t it?”

A few days ago Elena had lamented that it had grown rather chilly…

Charlotte swallowed the words circling in her mouth. She was in no position to do anything but follow along without complaint if he said they would. Ah, but—

“We’ll be meeting outdoors, won’t we?”

Wanting to confirm his intentions once more, Charlotte asked in a very careful tone.

“I imagine we might drop by a shop or so. Would indoors, inside a building, be a problem for you?”

“Ah, my question didn’t mean it in that sense…”

“Then?”

“…Um, I just asked because I was curious where we’d be going.”

Charlotte decided to trust Raymond. Honestly, what would he be lacking that would drive him to make such a proposal?

But Elena, on hearing this account, couldn’t help going pale.

“He said he’d write off fifty gold if you went on dates with him?!”

“Not dates—just looking around Glasko together. I suppose you could call it a sense of my accompanying him on his holiday?”

“No, that’s—no!”

Elena, her command of language lost, tore at her hair as she spoke.

“Charlotte, don’t misunderstand me, just hear me out. This situation right now, it’s, well—aah…!”

“I know. It does look strange at a glance, doesn’t it.”

There existed, in this world, beings who took money to go out with gentlemen or attend parties. Namely, courtesans. They always made their way to bed once the pleasant outing was over. Not to rest, but to pay off in full the value of the money they’d received.

“What gentleman asks such a thing of a lady? When sending gifts and requesting a date wouldn’t even be enough!”

“As I said before, it isn’t a date request. And we’re in a situation of repaying a debt.”

“A-anyway! This is an extremely distasteful business! In the first place—that man, did he really need someone to keep him company? What if he’s just using this as a pretext to take liberties with you—!”

A dreadful imagining blooming in her mind, Elena clapped a hand over her mouth.

“This isn’t right. I’ll go and turn it down this very instant. Why should you have to go through something like this when I’m the one who was at fault?”

“Calm down, Elena. It isn’t like that. If that man truly needed ’that’ sort of woman, he wouldn’t go out of his way to choose me, would he? He’d go to someone far prettier…”

“Charlotte!”

Elena, her face flushed bright red, cried out. And then, as if shocked at having raised her voice at Charlotte, she touched her lips with a trembling hand.

“I-I’m sorry.”

“No. I misspoke.”

Letting the tips of her eyebrows droop into a smile, Charlotte went on.

“In any case, you needn’t worry too much. Because when I said I’d do it, that man’s expression…”

How tender it had looked. Enough that she couldn’t take her eyes off it.

Why did he look at me with a face like that?

It wasn’t as though Charlotte knew Raymond well, but in any case, the Raymond she’d seen up to now was a willful, prickly idler who could spend money freely in the name of amusement and fun. One more apt to wear a displeased look than a tender gaze.

No matter how she thought about it, he wasn’t a person who had any reason to look at her with so tender a gaze. No—they weren’t even on the sort of terms for that in the first place.

“What was his expression like?”

Unable to bear Charlotte’s silence, Elena asked, fretting and anxious. Charlotte wore a faint smile.

“…It wasn’t bad. And besides, if I’d sensed that sort of current to begin with, I’d have shoved my chair back and walked out on the spot. And if I ever do sense some strange current going forward, I’ll run away at once. So you needn’t worry too much.”

“Charlotte. I just wish you wouldn’t meet that man at all. I find this whole situation objectionable!”

Honestly, Charlotte’s mind wasn’t entirely at ease either. It wasn’t so much that she suspected Raymond, but that meeting someone outdoors was quite a burden. But when he was writing off a full fifty gold…

“It’ll be fine. Oh! Let’s promise never to tell Madam Spencer, whatever happens. If she found out, she’d surely fly into a rage and then worry herself sick over it.”

“Charlotte…”

Tears welled up in Elena, who hated herself for having saddled Charlotte with such a burden. Was this really going to be all right?

With her fretting and groaning before her, Charlotte turned the man’s smiling face over in her mind. She wanted to stop recalling it, but it kept coming back to her of its own accord, which was a little troublesome.

* * *

The day before, Derik had laughed at Raymond for a good long while. Charlotte didn’t remember Raymond? What that meant was that a memory others would easily forget, Raymond had spent his whole life chewing over. How utterly ridiculous a thing.

Having teased him with a lifetime’s worth of teasing all at once, Derik left the seemingly conflicted Raymond to himself and slept happily. And when he woke after sleeping a solid day or so like that, Raymond was talking nonsense.

That in exchange for writing off Charlotte’s fifty gold, she would, with him—

“A date?”

“A date, my foot. Talk sense, would you.”

Raymond raised one eyebrow. Derik said with a dazed look,

“No… isn’t that what that amounts to?”

“It’s different. How does saying let’s spend a holiday together turn into a date?”

“When a man says that sort of thing to a woman, it’s the same as asking her on a date…”

“A woman? Her?”

Raymond let out an incredulous laugh. Even when she’d said she was getting married, he’d thought what’s a kid like that doing getting married, and now that he’d actually met her, he knew for certain. Charlotte hadn’t finished growing up.

“She’s still a child.”

She’s a mere four years younger than us, though…?

Derik decided that, rather than raising petty quibbles like this, he’d best start by sorting out the things that clearly needed sorting.

“Why on earth did you go and do something like that? Just writing it off would’ve been fine, wouldn’t it?”

“The kid’s in a bad way, isn’t she.”

Quite apart from your not remembering me, I still wish for you to be happy. But leaving you be felt like it would only mean you’d go on shut up in that house, living watchful of others’ eyes.

“The idea that things’ll get better with time is completely wrong.”

Of course, he had no intention of leaving Charlotte be forever, but… in any case, the fact that his own mistaken judgment had made her suffer alone for so long didn’t change. And he would take responsibility for that failure.

“Hmm. But anyway, the lady did come all the way here from Sandem, didn’t she? And she agreed to come meet you, too. Seeing that, hasn’t she gotten somewhat better?”

“If she were better, would she have stayed cooped up in the Spencer manor all this time? This time too, she only moved because it turned into a forced situation. Otherwise she wouldn’t have budged an inch from that manor.”

Derik mulled it over a moment, then nodded. It did seem Raymond was right after all.

Raymond heaved a deep sigh and went on.

“I’m going to use this situation to get Charlotte into a better state than she’s in now.”

Slowly, if he kept making the effort together with her, she’d be able to reclaim something like an ordinary life—going out on her own and making friends even without some forced situation.

And if he made a little more effort, she might come to laugh, happy and untroubled, the way she had as a child.

Raymond didn’t bother to voice this thought aloud. Letting Derik in on it would only earn him some remark that grated on a person’s nerves.

Then Derik, who had been groaning like a man who’d bitten down on something bitter, parted his heavy lips.

“I understand what you’re saying. But… it seems the situation isn’t entirely rosy, thanks to a mistake of yours.”

“A mistake of mine?”

“Think it through properly, from the standpoint of Lady Prairie, who knows nothing. I’ll write off fifty gold in exchange for you meeting with me. What do you suppose that sounds like?”

“…”

What on earth is he talking about? Just as Raymond was turning the thought over, a dizzying notion surfaced in his mind.

Could she have thought I was treating her like a courtesan?

Raymond’s skin crawled.

No. Charlotte wouldn’t have misunderstood my meaning.

Just as Raymond was denying reality, the moment came back to him—when Charlotte had asked whether he’d really write off fifty gold merely for spending ordinary time together. At the time, Raymond had assumed she was asking because she couldn’t believe so great a debt could be repaid for so simple a thing, but…

She’d asked twice, too, whether they’d be meeting outdoors. That, as well, he’d taken to be a simple question about their upcoming schedule.

Now that he thought about it…?

Aaah, d*mn it!

Raymond clapped a hand over his mouth.