Let me say it once more. I am prepared to do whatever it takes for Marie’s health and happiness. So let Your Grace’s long naval training remain a secret between the two of us, and may our Marie never know……]

The smile on Frederic’s face faded, degree by degree. The ease that had softened his eyes turned cold and sharp.

His gaze moved back to the opening of the letter.

[……I beg you most earnestly not to mention Your Grace’s long-term naval training. I will keep her in the dark about it on my end as well.]

“……!”

Sir Flynn had not breathed a word to his wife about the training schedule, not since she lost her memory.

[Marie does not even know her husband is a naval academy graduate. No one has told her since she was discharged from the hospital.]

His wife had heard nothing from her father about the long-term naval training. She did not even know her husband had come from the naval academy.

And yet his wife had said……

‘From July through December, half a year to Scotria? ……Of course Father told me!’

Tap-tap, tap-tap, tap-tap.

The anxious tapping against the fine-grained walnut surface grew louder.

The probability that Sir Flynn had simply been mistaken?

“None.”

He could stake the Graham name on it. Ian Flynn was the sharpest mind he knew. The royal family had acknowledged as much. His Majesty had personally presented Sir Flynn with a commendation, praising his contribution in transforming Oslande into a central maritime trade hub among the Allied Nations. A king stepping forward to award a commoner without a title was unprecedented in the history of the Oslande royal family. It had caused an enormous stir among the kingdom’s people for some time afterward, and Frederic had no reason to have forgotten it.

A man that sharp forgetting what he had said and done with the daughter he loved, and rambling nonsense to his son-in-law?

Out of the question.

Which left only one answer.

Those guileless eyes that had asked who he was, whether she had been married……

Thwack.

The restless tapping finally stopped.

“Ha……”

He exhaled heavily and bit down on his jaw. A brief pause of thought, then his hand reached for the drawer below the desk.

Creak. The drawer slid open with a rough sound, the hinges rusted at the joint.

Inside the drawer, wrapped in fine green velvet, a rectangular case lay sleeping without a sound. Frederic ran his fingertips slowly over the velvet cover and opened the lid.

Inside was a wristwatch.

The watch Margie had given Frederic as a wedding gift, the one he had sold without a second thought to a fence for next to nothing, to fund a card game.

“……”

He exhaled again. Slower and heavier than before. Then he flipped the watch face over. If his memory was right, there should be an engraving on the underside of the metal dial.

His memory was right.

[To the esteemed P, with faith, admiration, longing, and devotion. Little M.]

The exact wording he had first read, not a single character different.

There was no word called love anywhere in it, yet he understood. Every expression, faith, admiration, longing, devotion, each one carried affection to the full.

˗ˋˏ ♡ ˎˊ˗

“Hm? What’s this?”

In the small garden of Cottage Garden, someone dragged a chair over noisily and sat down beside Margie, who had been drinking Camille.

“My expression looks terrible here.”

Frowning at the morning paper, it was Julian.

“Good morning, Your Highness.”

Margie set down her teacup and greeted him politely. Her eyes drifted briefly to the newspaper spread open on the table. The front page was the photograph of Margie, Frederic, and Julian together.

“A newspaper that hires a photographer this incompetent really does say everything about the standard of this region. I should have whoever took this tracked down and taught a lesson.”

Talk of incompetence aside, the photograph was not far off from real life. Honestly, and this was purely by Margie’s exacting standards, it had managed to capture Julian Windsor’s pleasant but unremarkable face with far more presence than he actually possessed, which made it less a failure and more proof of genuine skill. Frederic’s golden hair and his uniformed shoulders and broad chest in particular came through fantastically even in black and white, producing a frame that bordered on a masterpiece.

“……You’re right. It doesn’t quite capture the real thing. Still, please show some mercy, Your Highness.”

There was no argument to be made that the real Frederic was a hundred, a thousand times more beautiful than the one in the photograph. Margie nodded, conceding part of Julian’s complaint.

“You think so too, don’t you? I’m far better-looking in person, wouldn’t you say?”

“Pardon? Yes……”

Julian leaned in so close she nearly bumped foreheads with him. Margie startled back and quickly shifted her chair in the opposite direction.

“Where is Frederic?”

A maid appeared silently and refilled the empty cup. Savoring the pleasant aroma of the Camille, Julian asked Margie.

“He’ll be in the study. A lot of letters arrived for him yesterday as well.”

Frederic’s day began in the study. He was probably working through the stack of greetings and invitations that had piled up for the ducal household right now. He didn’t enjoy socializing, so most of his time would be spent composing polite refusals.

“The self-important nobility will have been falling over each other to send invitations. Just the name Frederic Graham and they swarm like bees to honey.”

Letters and invitations had been arriving at Cottage Garden even before the Graham couple reached the duchy.

“They can invite him a hundred times. A stone wall like Graham going to something like that.”

Julian seemed to know Frederic’s temperament well. He lowered his voice and clicked his tongue with a laugh.

“Attending your coming-of-age party was probably the first and last party my dear brother ever went to in his life. Ah, not the last, I suppose. He did show up to his own wedding.”

Quite pleased with his own joke, Julian let out a loud laugh.

“You have the wrong idea, Your Highness. Frederic didn’t come to my debutante.”

Rather than laughing at the unfunny joke, Margie contradicted him directly.

He had not attended Margie Flynn’s nineteenth birthday and debut party. That much she could say with certainty. At the time she hadn’t even known Frederic Graham existed, and on top of that he had been in active military service. The moment she had fallen for him was a full year later, at the naval review held for the king’s birthday. She had been completely captivated by his beauty and authority that day, watching him stand at the front of the formation and issue sharp commands to his soldiers. That was unmistakably their first meeting……

“Hmm? I don’t think I’m the one with the wrong idea.”

Julian twitched both eyebrows, actively insisting on his version of events.

“I saw my brother at a Flynn family party. I was there too. I passed out from too much champagne before I ever got a look at your face, but still.”

“Your Highness must have had too much to drink and gotten confused……”

“What? No. I’m telling you, before I passed out I saw Frederic walk into the banquet hall with my own eyes!”

Frederic had never once mentioned Margie’s coming-of-age party. She had never asked, either.

“The moment he walked in, every woman nearby started whispering! How could I forget that? It was the first time in my life I learned just how much women talk!”

“Th, that can’t be……”

“Wow. You really didn’t know.”

Julian stared at Margie’s faintly trembling lashes and her lost, uncertain eyes, and murmured.

“We’ve never talked about anything like that…… Frederic couldn’t possibly have had any interest in something like my debutante……”

“Hm. I always knew my brother keeps things close to his chest, but this much?”

Julian’s jaw dropped, watching Margie trail off in confusion.

“It’s not keeping things close to his chest, it’s just not talking at all. Are you two actually married?”

Julian shrugged both shoulders broadly and swallowed a mouthful of Camille.

“Your marriage is worse than I thought.”

The long-cooled Camille had gone bitter and faintly flat, yet he wore the expression of someone experiencing a culinary revelation.