“So why do you think she did it, brother? What’s your take?”

But the one Julian actually wanted an answer from was not Margie but Frederic.

“How would I know what happened between the two of you.”

“You might.”

Julian’s green eyes took on a sharp gleam even at Frederic’s flat reply.

“Are you finished?”

Scrape.

Expression clenched tight with barely contained impatience, Frederic rose from his chair.

Everything about him was steeped in elegance. He was incapable of making noise when he moved. Whether dragging a knife across a plate, setting a teacup onto its saucer, taking off his clothes, putting them on, swallowing a single sip of tea, he was always quiet, as though sound itself did not apply to him. Frederic Graham was, in short, a nobleman who held himself to an exacting standard when it came to the noise he made.

That same man deliberately scraped his chair across the floor with a loud, grating sound, drawing the attention of every servant in the room. Margie was still staring, mouth dropping open at the thoroughly uncharacteristic behavior, when,

“We have plans, so we’ll be taking our leave. Come along, darling. We said we’d go to Boutique Street.”

Frederic bent toward Margie and murmured against her ear.

D, darling……? Frederic just called me…… Darling…… Darling? Darling!

Margie’s blue eyes went round.

“Y, yes, Frederic…… I mean, darling……”

Her voice trailed off as she bit down on both lips at once. Her mouth kept tugging upward and she simply could not make it stop.

“Wait, I’m not done talking yet. Sit back down for a moment.”

Julian reached out and grabbed Frederic’s sleeve, flustered.

“I’d appreciate it if you saved the rest for tomorrow.”

Frederic peeled the hand off quietly. His voice was cool.

“No, I’m literally about to get to the most important part.”

This time Julian grabbed what he could reach, and that was Margie’s slender wrist as she rose uncertainly from her seat.

“Do you remember, brother? About six months ago. An Oslande naval vessel in training spent roughly a week in Scotrian waters. You and a few other officers attended a party during that time. I’m fairly sure that was when it started, when Princess Steinhaur began asking me your name and started going cold on me……”

“Come to think of it, I believe I’ll be terribly busy tomorrow as well, Your Highness.”

Frederic looked at that hand with eyes full of quiet menace and pried Julian’s grip off without hesitation.

“I’ll instruct the servants to ensure Your Highness is well attended.”

“Where do you think you’re going, leaving me behind!”

“If you need anything, call for my aide immediately. He’ll look after you in my place.”

“Your aide? Ugh, no! That man can’t follow a joke or a turn of phrase to save his life, he’s ancient! I’m bored! I said I’m bored!”

Frederic turned and walked away without looking back once. Julian wailed and shouted after the back of his head like a child throwing a tantrum. Margie stole glances between the prince and her husband as Frederic practically dragged her out of the room.

They crossed the modest garden, passed through the front gate, and climbed into the four-wheeled motor car waiting for them.

“Um.”

Torn between Frederic and darling, Margie could not settle on what to call him.

“Where exactly are we going?”

“Have I not been saying since yesterday. Shopping.”

His voice was gentle, but his eyes were still fixed straight ahead.

“Still, we have a distinguished guest inside, how can we just leave him there……”

“You matter more to me than he does.”

He answered without hesitation. Still not looking at her.

The driver pulled out of the lane and onto the main road.

A road traffic act had recently been established, an unfamiliar piece of legislation. The kingdom’s academies and the royal research institutes operating under them had calculated the appropriate road widths for motor cars, built signal systems, and were pressing forward on developing new materials to minimize friction between tires and road surfaces. The narrow lanes where people and horses and carriages had once passed were being widened. The uneven stones jutting up from the roads were cleared away all at once. This was also around the time that pedestrian paths and motor vehicle lanes began to be formally separated.

The motor car belched dark exhaust and drove briskly along the newly laid two-lane road. Margie and Frederic had not exchanged much between them since getting in.

“Um.”

Margie spoke first.

“Earlier…… what His Highness said.”

Margie hesitated, and Frederic gave a small nod to signal her to continue.

“Have you ever met the Scotrian princess who was His Highness’s fiancée……?”

Before Margie finished the question, a sharp vein jumped across his brow. The eyes that had been fixed straight ahead finally moved to her.

“……Yes. I have.”

A straightforward, honest answer.

“Did you…… speak with her?”

“Yes.”

He had been about to add that it was a brief exchange, nothing but trivial small talk he no longer even remembered, hardly worth calling a conversation, but the question that followed made him close his mouth.

“Could the reason His Highness was broken up with be…… because of you, Frederic?”

“Ha.”

A short, humorless laugh escaped him, and a thick vein rose on the other side of his brow as well.

Margie wanted something from him.

A firm denial. Open displeasure at being doubted by his wife. Even a performance for her sake, if it happened to be true.

He gave her neither. He simply watched her trembling lashes in silence.

“Tell me, Frederic. Answer the question I just asked.”

Please tell me no, Frederic. Please, please.

Her wish went unanswered.

“Why should I have to tell you that.”

He bit the words out, irritable and sharp. The tone and expression of a man you’d expect to find in a back alley, not a duke’s drawing room.

The conversation ended there.

The motor car cleared the duchy entirely.

“Turn back, please.”

Margie spoke after a long silence.

“Pardon? Turn back, you say……?”

The driver glanced at Margie in the rearview mirror and asked in a hurry.

“I don’t want to go shopping.”

She answered in a trembling voice, leaving out the words in this state.

“But, Your Grace the Duchess, we’re nearly at Boutique Street. If you could just wait a little longer……”

“I want to go home. I don’t care anymore. I…… don’t want any of it.”

Margie murmured flatly, staring out at the meaningless scenery passing by.

“Oh dear.”

The driver’s anxious eyes moved to Frederic in the seat beside her.

“……Let her have what she wants.”

“Pardon?”

“Going home seems best.”

“Ah, yes…… Understood, Your Grace.”

The driver, having inadvertently witnessed a marital dispute between his employers, broke into a cold sweat and turned the wheel sharply.

˗ˋˏ ♡ ˎˊ˗

The one who raised his voice the moment they arrived back at the duchy’s villa was not Margie but Frederic.

“What you said earlier.”

“……?”

“That my appearance is not to your taste.”

“What are you……”

‘You are…… not my type.’

“Ah, that…… No, well. I mean……”

He’s still bothered by a lie I’d already forgotten. More sensitive than he looks, maybe……

Remembering the awful thing she had blurted at Frederic the moment she woke up in the hospital, Margie trailed off. Then, out of nowhere, irritation surged up in her.

Frederic. Do you not know, or are you pretending not to know, that you are a beauty of the century whose looks transcend the realm of preference entirely? Isn’t actually not knowing worse than knowing and pretending otherwise? What on earth did the late duke do to raise you so thoroughly humble about your own face. Being modest about your looks is a form of deception toward others, do you understand that?

Margie glared at his sharp nose and the handsome philtrum below it leading down to his red lips, and crooked both eyebrows upward.

“Is your type perhaps the Windsor sort?”

Frederic’s lips had been moving silently for several seconds before he finally said it, with the expression of a man who had run out of patience.

“Excuse me?”

Margie let out a sharp sound. It was more than enough to enrage her, a woman with discerning and exacting taste.

“You smiled at him with such genuine warmth.”

“What? Ha!”

Missing the mark this spectacularly is an achievement. Does he think I have no eyes, no taste at all!

More furious at having her judgment underestimated than at being suspected, Margie raised her voice before she could stop herself.

“I never knew you were a woman who could smile like that. You’ve never smiled at me that way, your own husband, and yet at some man you have no reason to be so warm with, you were so……”

“And what about you, Frederic!”

Margie’s outburst cut him off, and Frederic fell silent.

‘Do you remember, brother? About six months ago. An Oslande naval vessel in training spent roughly a week in Scotrian waters. ……I’m fairly sure that was when it started, when Princess Steinhaur began asking me your name and started going cold on me.’