Still whispering, he bit lightly at her earlobe.

“Ahh!”

Margie gasped softly and shivered.

“Hnn, mmph……!”

Then she clapped both hands over her own mouth. Just as he had said, she wanted to preserve some dignity as mistress of the house in front of the Graham household staff.

Shlck. Shlck.

The sound of her husband moving in and out of her had grown almost intimate.

“Still as stubbornly tight as ever, but…… today you’re not pushing me out entirely.”

“Hnn, ah!”

“Here too, and below…… gripping me in like this, hah…… You’ll be full before the morning is even done.”

“Mm, mmph! Mmph!”

Margie actively sucked at the index and middle finger Frederic pressed against her tongue. Her lower half she surrendered to him entirely, sobbing without sound. She had no desire for the household staff to use her moans as a wake-up call.

“Hah!”

“Mm!”

Each time Frederic snapped his hips upward, Margie’s slight, pale body rocked violently across the sheets.

Gritting his teeth against the edge of climax, Frederic held back and whispered against her ear.

“I want to come.”

“Do it, on me! Ahh!”

The moment she begged, he pulled out fast. His ragged release spilled across her back and hips instead of inside her.

That split-second act had required an enormous amount of restraint. He had forced down a man’s selfish instinct through sheer consideration for his young wife. If his friends had ever learned of it, they probably would have been stunned. You felt that good and still didn’t finish inside her? You can actually control that? Frederic is terrifying, the man is unhinged! He might have earned that kind of blunt commentary.

Of course, Frederic was not the sort to go around broadcasting such things, so none of his friends would ever know the scale of that restraint.

In short, that extreme act of patience was an expression of love and respect for his precious wife, Margie.

“Ha, Margie. Ahh.”

This was the love Frederic Graham had always dreamed of. The kind of rapture that could only exist between himself and the woman he loved.

A love without conflict, without conditions, without the weight of superiority or inferiority. All of it was possible only because she had lost her memory and erased every trace of the discord between them.

“Kiss me.”

Frederic tipped her chin toward him, his voice full and satisfied, still unmistakably commanding.

Margie, may you never remember me for the rest of your life. May you always look at me like a man you’ve just met.

Margie, for her part, had wanted to receive everything he had inside her. But through every round since the night before, he had not allowed himself a single slip.

I want a baby soon. A sweet little child who looks like him. That has nothing to do with Father ranting about heirs. I just want to know what a tiny Frederic looked like, through a child I carry myself. He’s already this perfect and this attractive, so how impossibly adorable must he have been as a baby? But Frederic, why on earth won’t you finish inside me……!

Is he planning to leave me after all? Like those awful noblemen who bed their maids and then say, where’s the proof that child is mine? Is he just playing with this pretty young body before throwing it away……! Is he being kind to me now because he pities me? Because he feels sorry for me? Then the moment I get my memory back, he’ll discard me all over again, this inconvenient wife. And having a child would complicate that, so he’s making sure not to take on any responsibility from the start. Awful Frederic, terrible Frederic! I am never letting you go. I will never, not for the rest of my life, remember a single thing!

His release had done its work without ever finding its way inside her, only warming her skin. Margie turned her face away, disappointed again.

She had no idea it was an act of consideration for a young wife who had only just celebrated her twentieth birthday. The care she had never asked for stung without her understanding why, and before long she had begun to doubt his love entirely.

“Why……?”

My wife is…… turning away from my kiss?

“Margie?”

Frederic parted his lips, thrown off, the words unsteady at the edges.

“Your Grace.”

A manservant who had been waiting for exactly this moment knocked at the bedroom door.

“A message has just arrived from His Highness the Prince’s private residence.”

“Why would anything come from there!”

Frederic snapped. Though the one he was truly furious at was not the manservant who had interrupted their time together, but himself, for failing to read his wife’s mood and earning a refused kiss.

“Th, that is……”

Duke Graham was not a man who lost his temper with those in his employ. He was not warm, but he had always been fairly lenient about minor mistakes from those beneath him. His raised voice startled the manservant badly enough to make him stumble.

“His Highness Prince Julian Windsor heard that Your Grace was here and is on his way down to the duchy now……”

“D*mn Julian Windsor!”

“Oh, Your Grace. If anyone were to hear you say that……”

“Has that man nothing better to do? What kind of prince spends every waking moment scheming to escape the palace!”

“How can you say such things……”

“He was stubborn and impossible from the moment he was born and he has only gotten worse! What does he think he’s becoming! Running wild like this, no wonder His Majesty worries day and night……”

“Please compose yourself, Your Grace.”

The manservant fretted and bowed, quietly stepping back at his master’s indignation over a grown prince’s future. He shot a hurried glance around the hallway, anxious that someone might have overheard his master’s careless words.

˗ˋˏ ♡ ˎˊ˗

Flap.

The royal banner rippled in the open air, commanding in its presence.

“Marriage suits you well, Duke Graham. You’re practically glowing.”

Julian Windsor stepped down from his gleaming carriage with a wide smile.

Warm, easy eyes. A good-natured smile. A healthy complexion and clear skin shaped by a well-kept diet. The bold pauses mid-speech that carried the particular grace and arrogance of someone born to power……

“I suppose a live-in son-in-law from a wealthy family really does have something different about him. A penniless duke who’s had a taste of capitalist indulgence. Looks like the comfortable life suits you.”

His orange-toned hair caught the afternoon light and gleamed pleasantly as he laughed.

“It would have been better if you had sent word ahead.”

Frederic’s voice was nothing but courteous, in sharp contrast to Julian’s easy slyness.

“Even a fourth prince with essentially no chance of inheriting the throne is still a prince.”

“Oh? A sudden provocation? Is this a challenge to royal authority, from you?”

“That is not my meaning.”

Frederic exhaled. The sound was thoroughly irritated.

“You arrived with minimal escort, dropping in as casually as a neighbor paying a visit, so I wondered whether you might have forgotten your own station. I raised the point again to be sure. It seems you do have a clear grasp of your role as a prince, so I will continue to speak plainly, with all due respect.”

“Ha?”

“We will do our best to receive Your Highness properly in our duchy, though there may be shortcomings in how we attend to you. We ask for Your Highness’s generous understanding.”

You’ve shown up so I’ll do something, but don’t expect anything impressive. If that’s what you came for, you’re welcome to leave right now.

The one whose eyes went wide at Frederic’s elegantly cutting tone was Margie, standing at his side with a polite bow.

“……!”

He’s unhinged! Speaking to His Highness with that kind of impertinence! Anyone listening would think His Highness was the subordinate! Technically, His Highness did start it! His Highness’s remarks had not a penny’s worth of dignity in them! Even I wanted to flick him on the head for it, it was that irritating! But still……! He’s a prince regardless! The fourth son of the Windsor royal family of Oslande!

Margie would have gladly threaded a needle and stitched Frederic’s mouth shut right then and there. She had no interest in being beheaded for contempt of the royal family alongside a man who hadn’t even opened his mouth yet.

“I came to see my dear cousin’s face, not to be wined and dined. I’m not that rigid, brother.”

Julian, for his part, seemed entirely unbothered, as though Frederic’s looseness had been going on for years.

When Julian said dear cousin, the expression of revulsion on Frederic’s face was truly something to behold, and Margie felt the urge to do something about that face of his all over again.

“If I’d wanted proper hospitality I’d have gone somewhere else. What is there even to see in this miserable Graham duchy. Isn’t that right, Frederic? Hahahaha!”

Julian fired back without missing a beat.

What is with these two…… Something’s off……

Caught between their precarious clash of wills, Margie trembled all over, not knowing where to look.