4. A Button Fastened Wrong From the Start

One year ago. A night balanced on the knife’s edge between spring and summer.

“Good heavens. Look over there! Isn’t that Graham?”

The original guest of Ian Flynn’s invitation had been Fleet Commander Bradley Lancaster. Around midnight, news of his second daughter-in-law’s difficult and premature labor reached him and he left for the family estate in a hurry. The duty of attending the party and representing the navy’s standing was passed on to Lieutenant Frederic Graham.

“Oh my! It really is! To think we’d encounter the real Duke Graham in person here!”

“Look at that golden hair. Pure gold, not a murky tone in sight.”

“And those green eyes, like the finest aquamarine.”

“The brow, the nose, the chin…… like a sculpture carved with everything a great artist had.”

“He must be under twenty-five. He looks younger than I expected.”

“The charisma alone is something, though.”

“The overall impression is almost obsessively precise, but the eyes are wild and sharp, there’s something oddly captivating about them……”

“He has the boyish quality and the dissipated beauty and the intellectual air and the raw earthiness all at once……”

“So looks like that do actually exist.”

“I’d only heard he was well-built, but he’s so much larger and more solid than I imagined. Like a character out of a romance novel……”

“Did you see the author’s note at the end of 〈The Grand Ducal Household’s Lewd Wedding Night〉? They said the hero ‘Agnus’ was based on a real person, and readers have been guessing the model was Duke Graham.”

“That makes sense. The physical descriptions were so specific.”

“Right? The moment I read it I thought of someone……”

“Should we go over and speak to him?”

“Oh, please. You’d be lucky to escape without being put in your place.”

“Having to just stand here drooling over a man with thighs like that. What a waste.”

“Oh my. The things you say! Have some dignity! ……Though thighs and stamina…… hmm. What does one have to do with the other?”

“You didn’t know? The theory about a man’s thigh circumference?”

“Not a thing. Tell me everything.”

“There are a few ways to gauge a man’s general manner in bed, and one of them is that thigh circumference and bedroom performance are proportional……”

“Oh!”

“Miss Whitmore! Where do you learn these things?”

“Years of field research, naturally.”

“Oh, you’re terrible!”

“I haven’t read 〈The Grand Ducal Household’s Lewd Wedding Night〉 yet. Would any lady lend me her copy?”

Behind spread fans, the women’s bold gossip and bright laughter never let up. Their unsubtle gazes stayed fixed on Frederic’s handsome profile and refused to move. Only Frederic himself knew how hard he worked to ignore them.

Insufferable.

He pressed his jaw tight and creased his brow.

His instinct was to kick free of this nauseating gathering on the spot, but he was standing in for Admiral Lancaster. In the military, the only punishment for insubordination is death. Losing the only life he had at a vanity parade of a party rather than on enemy ground seemed like a waste. Even if he had nothing to lose, dying a disgraceful death for nothing was never something he had wanted.

He turned his head slowly and scanned the room. He was looking for Ian Flynn. Finding the host, fulfilling his superior’s order, and leaving this place as fast as possible was his only goal.

“Oh, Sir Flynn. Congratulations.”

“Raising a daughter on your own must have been hard work, and she’s turned out this lovely. You must be so proud.”

“She grows more like her late mother every year, it seems. Lucky for her she didn’t take after her unremarkable father.”

In the middle of the crowd, the man with the brightest face and the most extravagant pocket square was receiving the flattery of his guests with boisterous ease.

Not a large frame, but a likable face. Smooth speech. Unhurried gestures. A sense of superiority and self-satisfaction that was different from the kind nobles wore when flaunting their refinement……

Frederic recognized instinctively that the man with the silver pocket square folded into a neat roll was Ian Flynn, the owner of this enormous estate. He walked toward him without hesitating.

“Congratulations, Sir Flynn.”

Closing the distance in a few wide strides, Frederic extended his right hand.

“And you are……?”

Ian Flynn’s eyes narrowed with suspicion. A young man this handsome offering goodwill was more than enough reason to be on guard. Especially from the perspective of a father with a daughter of marriageable age.

“A pleasure. Frederic Graham, attending on behalf of Supreme Naval Commander Admiral Lancaster……”

“Ah. Young Duke Graham, then.”

The moment Frederic identified himself, Ian Flynn’s sharp eyes softened into something more agreeable. A rapid calculation had completed itself: royal bloodline of distinguished lineage despite empty coffers, a promising officer in the navy, the eldest son who would inherit the dukedom, an acquaintance worth keeping close. A businessman’s instinct.

“Is the head of house keeping well?”

Taking Frederic’s offered hand readily, Ian Flynn asked.

By that time, the rumor that Frederic’s father Duke Harry Graham had fallen into ruin through womanizing and gambling and was going around borrowing money from anyone who would lend it was no longer fresh news among those who enjoyed gossip.

Ian Flynn, that well-fed middle-aged man, certainly knew all about his father’s difficulties and the shameful behavior that came with them. Asking after the head of house at a moment like this, with the young Duke Graham standing right in front of him, was a kind of opening move to establish dominance.

A commoner daring to look down on royalty. Flynn, of all people, looking down on Graham.

“……Well enough, thank you.”

Frederic pulled the corners of his mouth up gently and answered.

“Thank you is too much. The gratitude is mine. Lieutenant Graham’s dedication to the kingdom is always appreciated. I sleep soundly at night because of men like you.”

Ian Flynn laughed, open and loose. Not the laugh of a man who meant what he said about gratitude.

Up to this point, Frederic had no intention of abandoning the dignity that had been bred into him. But unfortunately……

“The trouble is, all the talk about you around the capital has me worried that the young duke’s own patriotism and honor might get dragged down with it.”

Whether he had grown too animated in the festive atmosphere, Ian Flynn’s provocations simply would not stop.

“……I should be the one thanking you, Sir Flynn.”

Frederic lost his composure.

“Pardon?”

“Citizens like you, without even the right to stand for election, work so diligently and earn such honest wages that men like me, the nobility and those in office, are able to maintain our dignity. I can only express my gratitude. In fact, it deserves more than gratitude.”

Frederic Graham was twenty-three years old, full of hot blood and wrapped in arrogance from head to toe.

“What do you mean by……”

The tone was the kind used to praise a subordinate’s charming show of loyalty. Ian Flynn trailed off with bewildered eyes.

“Your diligent attitude, his willingness to adapt to reality and seek his own path rather than set himself against the nobility, is something I am always grateful for.”

Frederic repeated Ian Flynn’s own words back at him, turned into mockery.

He would return to this moment hundreds of times in the years that followed. If Sir Flynn had stopped there. If I had been a little less reckless. Would Margie and my marriage have turned out differently……

“Well, now……”

Ian Flynn’s face had gone pale, the skin beneath his eyes trembling faintly.

“My goodness, proposals are going to come flooding into the Flynn household the moment the coming-of-age party is over.”

“The young men simply cannot take their eyes off Miss Flynn, they’re beside themselves!”

A cheerful group, oblivious to the tension between the two men, wedged themselves into the space with broad smiles. The gap between Frederic and Ian Flynn widened.

“The lady with the dark hair in the pale apricot chiffon dress, that’s Miss Flynn, isn’t it?”

“She looks like a princess out of a fairy tale.”

“The dress with the skin-toned base and all those rainbow beads, and the diamond headband sitting neatly at the crown over those perfectly pinned curls, and those skin-toned leather mid-heels that neither stand out nor fade into the background…… She really does set the trends. The most elegant look here by far.”

“By next week we’ll see a hundred women dressed just like her around the capital. Hohoho.”

Dark hair pinned up. The most elegant woman in the room. Like a princess out of a fairy tale……

Following the stream of chatter, Frederic’s gaze landed on a woman and stopped.

He would have found her just as quickly without any of those descriptions. She was, without question, the most luminously beautiful person at the gathering.

‘This is the debutante of Margie, Ian Flynn’s only daughter. Go in my place and be the first to dance with Miss Flynn.’

Frederic recalled, for the first time, the purpose of this grand party and Admiral Lancaster’s request that had brought him here.

“Sir Flynn, just look over there. They’re still circling her like that, eyes going every which way……”

Watching the young men compete desperately for the privilege of escorting her, Ian Flynn launched into a commentary as enthusiastic as a sports announcer.

“At this rate Miss Flynn will be in a wedding dress before my daughter, who had her coming-of-age party two years ago!”

“Oh dear. Poor Sir Flynn, having to part with his daughter.”

The audience around the running commentary had grown by two or three.

“How could I hand my precious girl over to just anyone?”

“If you want to keep your daughter, Sir Flynn, you’ll have to keep her by your side for the rest of your life. Hahaha.”