“Mmph! Hah! Huk!”

“Ah, good. Hot…… and soft.”

Not even fully undressed, just freeing what was necessary and going at it in a rush.

Like an animal!

Even better for it.

“Ahng! Mmph!”

Margie forgot entirely about being a pretty and well-behaved wife. She started crying out as loudly as a creature who had just discovered what mating was.

“Why are you so light. It’s not as though I’ve been starving you.”

“Hnn, I’m, going, to, Frederic!”

The heat sparking between them traveled up into Margie’s head. Her vision blazed like something had caught fire.

“No! Ah! Frederic! That, hnah! Save, me!”

The abyss of pleasure ran deeper than she expected.

“Something’s wrong! Hahng! I’m going, to, lose my mind! Hahk!”

Her two slender legs, swimming in the air, went rigid.

“I’m going to come inside you.”

Kissing her, Frederic pressed his lips to her ear and panted as he cradled the body of his wife, bucking in rhythm with him.

Not finishing inside her had been the one complaint Margie had when having s*x with him. She had been mulling over how to bring it up, and when he said it so willingly, she felt both overjoyed and completely thrown off.

“Margie is, mine, isn’t she, mm?”

“Ah, ahh!”

“Your dark hair, your pretty blue eyes, your soft skin, the scent of your wet p*ssy…… No one else will ever touch what’s mine, all of it, hah, all mine……”

Wait. Could it be……?

‘Is your type perhaps the Windsor sort? ……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……’

Could it be. Jealousy?

This is unbelievable. Who was it that chose a loveless marriage while burying an impossible love deep in their chest? Truly awful. A terrible man. Frederic!

Resenting a husband who loved someone other than her, while despising herself for somehow welcoming even his selfish obsession, Margie snapped her eyes open.

“……Mm?”

She felt the weight of him, still full inside her.

“Ah, d*mn it……”

Frederic let out a low, animal growl at the same moment.

I hate men who swear…… but being held this roughly by a husband blind with desire is so good it’s making me lose my mind……

Moved by his murmured curse, Margie clung to his neck and whimpered.

“Hnn! Ahng!”

“Mm, ah……!”

Frederic left every trace of himself deep inside her.

After the intensity of it, sleep came fast.

“I want to wash up……”

Wanting to rinse away the mess of them both, Margie murmured like someone already half-dreaming.

“Shall I wash you.”

Catching the words, Frederic asked gently.

“Mmm…… but…… I’m so sleepy, Frederic……”

Margie fell deeply asleep without ever making it out of bed.

“How adorable.”

Frederic listened to the soft sound of her breathing and let out a quiet laugh.

“I love you, Margie.”

He pressed his lips to her cheek and whispered.

“I love you.”

So low and quiet that even she could not hear it.

˗ˋˏ ♡ ˎˊ˗

The following morning. The study and private office of Cottage Garden.

Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.

The sound of a right index finger tapping lightly against an old walnut desk rang out at steady intervals.

The hand belonged to Frederic.

‘From July through December, half a year to Scotria? The emergency training is just a pretext! To enjoy a secret meeting with her, the woman you truly love……!’

He knew the contents of the conversation they had shared before his wife lost her memory.

‘Of, of course Father told me!’

What had her expression been like in that moment.

Those blue eyes, bright and clear as sapphires, had been trembling without end.

Tap. Tap-tap.

Tap.

Tap-tap, tap-tap……

The rhythm lost its regularity and fell apart. His patience bottomed out at the same time.

Something had been nagging at him. Clearly there was something, but he couldn’t put his finger on what. The unease sat thick and unresolved.

Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap……

The sound found its rhythm again. Faster than before, and less steady.

Then came the knock.

“Your Grace, I’ll step in for a moment.”

Frederic’s older aide knocked and appeared.

“A letter from the capital.”

In his hands were the local daily, printed every morning in this region, and a letter bearing a large, familiar seal.

Julian Windsor had called him an old man who couldn’t follow a joke or a turn of phrase, but the aide was in fact only a man in his mid-forties. A thin sympathy crossed Frederic’s mind, the idea that forty might genuinely look ancient to a Julian who had just turned twenty, followed by a vague dread of reaching forty himself and being dismissed as an old man by twenty-year-olds. The thoughts tangled together without order.

By then, I hope she’ll still be with me.

She’ll probably still be lovely at forty, fifty, sixty. I hope she never loses that brightness, that charm she has now……

A meaningless smile crept out alongside the pointless musing.

“……?”

The aide looked at his employer and couldn’t quite hide his surprise.

What’s gotten into him? This man doesn’t bleed when you poke him.

Concluding that something in his employer’s head had well and truly broken, the aide resolved the immediate crisis by removing himself from the room promptly.

Frederic turned his attention first to the newspaper the aide had left on the desk.

[His Highness Prince Julian Windsor to Enjoy Holiday at the Graham Couple’s Villa]

Below the headline sat a grainy photograph of Margie, Frederic, and Julian in the same frame.

Paparazzi everywhere he went. He had assumed it was only a city problem, but they had followed him out to this countryside as well. Frederic clicked his tongue in disgust and shoved the paper aside.

His hand moved next to the letter the aide had brought.

[Ian Flynn, Master of Royal Flynn Company]

The sender was his father-in-law.

Scientific progress had brought telephone lines into common use alongside motor cars. Not everyone had access to electricity anywhere they pleased, but the Graham study and the master of Royal Flynn Company both had the means and standing to use one. They were not just anyone.

“He could have called. Yet he chose a letter.”

Someone that impatient picking such an old-fashioned method must have had a reason. Frederic murmured to himself and tore open the envelope without hesitation.

[……I ask nothing particular of Your Grace, Duke Graham, but I beg you most earnestly not to mention the duke’s long-term naval training to Marie until she has fully recovered. I will keep her in the dark about it on my end as well. For your reference, Marie does not even know her husband is a naval academy graduate. No one has told her since she was discharged from the hospital.
I understand Your Grace’s patriotism and have no intention of meddling in your decision to return to duty, but causing my daughter pain is an entirely separate matter. Hearing that the husband she married a month ago intends to leave for another country for six months while she is still unwell? How devastated do you think Marie would be?
In any case, should Your Grace cause any problem that harms Marie’s recovery, I will use every means available to me to make things very difficult for you, Duke Graham. I may lack honor, but I do not lack money.]

A letter brimming with fatherly love, in its own way.

“He intends to make things difficult for me. I had better treat my wife well, if nothing else out of fear of her father.”

Frederic let out an undignified laugh at the passage that amounted to a threat against his son-in-law. He thought he understood now why a letter had been chosen over a phone call. The man wanted that terrifying warning preserved in writing, for all time.

He should have been irritated. The fact that he was smiling instead made no sense. Perhaps her charm was something inherited from her father. He let the thought settle over him and read on.

[……I would be grateful if you would consider this the anxious fretting of an aging father with only one daughter to his name. When Your Grace has children of your own, you will understand how I feel.]

Will my first child be a daughter or a son.

A daughter who takes after Margie. That would be my preference. Though if I had the certainty she would take after her mother, a son would make me just as happy. Two children at the very least, more the better, but…… if Margie’s health does not allow for it, growing old with just the two of us would be perfectly fine. I’m certain that would be its own kind of happiness. All I want is Margie.

[By the schedule, the return to duty is about a fortnight away. Please come back to the capital with Marie next week. I will find some way to explain your long absence. If you had been planning to tell her the truth, I urge you to abandon that plan as soon as possible. A perfect lie sometimes does more for a person’s happiness than a clumsy truth.