6. Wait, Don’t Wash

Frederic’s return date to the navy was nearly upon them.

“……The design is really lovely, but the ruby cutting around the pendant border bothers me somehow……”

Margie and Frederic finished their holiday in the Graham duchy and returned to the Flynn family estate.

“This ring suits my usual wardrobe well enough, but it’ll look undignified at formal occasions.”

The first thing they did after arriving in the capital was visit the most luxurious jewelry boutique in the city.

“Black pearl earrings? Good heavens. These would suit my grandmother perfectly, God rest her soul thirty years ago. I even purchased a pearl set one grade above this last spring. Don’t you remember, sir?”

The boutique had always satisfied Margie’s exacting taste, carrying only the finest jewels in Oslande, yet today, strangely, not a single item passed her judgment.

“What happened while I was away from the capital? Has your eye gone dull, after all the trust I’ve placed in you? Hmm, perhaps it’s time to find a new regular shop……”

“I do apologize, Your Grace the Duchess. Let me bring out some other pieces. Would you give me just a moment?”

The boutique owner, with his long waxed mustache, shuffled about frantically and barked at his staff, sweating over the thought of losing a VIP to a competing shop.

“Where are the pieces that came in this morning? The brand-new arrivals, still in the packaging. Bring all of them out, now!”

“Yes, sir!”

“She used to ask me to ring up everything I showed her, and today she’s being this particular……”

He grumbled under his breath, stealing glances toward Margie.

“What do you think, Frederic?”

Margie was holding an in-line bracelet with dozens of one-carat diamonds set in a row against her wrist, asking the man beside her.

The Frederic she knew would have said something like, I’ve counted at least ten identical bracelets rolling around on your vanity. If he said that, she had a perfectly reasonable reply ready. The ones you’ve seen are 0.5 carat, not one carat.

If that didn’t land, she had another. I feel sorry for you, not being able to tell aquamarine from opal from diamond.

Her sharp resolve counted for nothing, though.

“It suits you.”

Frederic said it immediately. His eyes were on Margie’s face, not the bracelet.

“No, look at the bracelet, Frederic! If you only stare at my face, how can you possibly tell whether it suits me or not?”

Tired of his hollow answer, Margie set the bracelet down on the glass counter with a sharp click.

“Frederic. I’ve wanted to say this for a while now.”

She let her irritation show.

“Why aren’t you paying attention? Every single thing I ask you about, you say yes, it’s lovely, it suits you, and you haven’t looked at the jewelry once.”

At least if you criticized my spending the way you used to, that would be better than this empty praise!

Margie shot him a look.

“You’re right. I haven’t looked at the jewelry.”

“Excuse me?”

My, the nerve!

Margie snapped. She had to check herself a moment later, though.

“I’ve only been looking at you, Margie.”

“Pardon? Why……?”

“I was going to pick whichever one made you smile the brightest.”

Frederic tilted his head slightly, the corner of his mouth lifting.

“Th, that’s……”

Look at this man! Awful man! What a wicked thing to say!

Margie flushed and spluttered and pressed her lips shut. She was reminded, freshly, that when a handsome man is also charming, no defense in the world holds up.

˗ˋˏ ♡ ˎˊ˗

They spent a long stretch of time in the boutique and left without a single piece that made her happy.

“Welcome back.”

The driver waiting outside the shop opened the rear door. Margie and Frederic settled into the back seat side by side.

“This can’t be right. Something has gone very wrong. Failing to find anything even at the finest boutique in the capital.”

Margie leaned her head against Frederic’s shoulder and closed her eyes.

“What am I going to do. I came away with nothing.”

Frederic shifted his shoulder close so she could lean against him fully, then drew her face gently toward him.

“I’m upset.”

“I know. That must be so upsetting.”

“If it sparkles it looks vulgar, and if it’s understated it looks outdated. Going out wearing a hair ornament or earrings or a necklace or bracelet or ring like that would invite mockery. A duchess being made to look ridiculous, for the sake of your honor and your ancestors’ honor, absolutely not……”

“Right. Absolutely not.”

“……”

“……”

“Don’t agree with everything I say, Frederic.”

“……?”

“I can tell you’re trying, and I appreciate it, but it feels like a wooden puppet clattering along.”

“Ah, I see. It feels like a wooden puppet clattering along……”

“……”

“I’m sorry. I’ll stop.”

Frederic apologized quickly at her displeased silence.

From the moment he learned Margie hadn’t actually lost her memory, Frederic had been trying. Constantly.

The bare possibility of being left by her genuinely terrified him. He had nightmares every night about her handing him divorce papers, and the moment she stepped out of his sight, he ran outside to find her. Barefoot, in his indoor clothes. Things unimaginable given the usual Graham dignity.

His aide, watching him pale and spiral into panic, eventually grasped the severity of it and forced him to see a doctor. Dr. O’Brien, the Flynn family’s private physician, diagnosed him as showing early symptoms resembling separation anxiety and prescribed a mild sedative, recommending psychological rest.

Separation anxiety? Good lord. The things people get up to……

Ian Flynn had expressed deep concern upon hearing of his son-in-law’s unfortunate condition.

Regardless, becoming the man Margie wanted had turned into the most important goal of Frederic’s life, whether others called him unhinged or not. He wanted to belong to her. He wanted to be claimed by her exclusively. He was ready to grant her every wish, with one exception. If she ever said goodbye, he would refuse until his dying breath and would willingly make a show of wringing his own neck to stop it.

The result was that he spent his days watching her anxiously, reading her every mood. He had even picked up some advice somewhere about how to win over a woman you liked, specifically that you should respond actively and agree with everything, mirroring her sentence endings to show unconditional support, and had started applying it in exactly this way. He hadn’t anticipated the side effect where the listener found it more uncomfortable than the speaker.

Winning her over was this difficult. He felt an urge to go back and apologize to every person he had ever treated carelessly across his twenty-four years.

“……I like you, Frederic.”

After a short silence, Margie spoke first.

“Your natural dignity, your polished manner, the authority that commands every room, the noble ease that money can’t buy, the composure…… All of that, Frederic has all of it.”

Of course, what I like most is your flawless face.

Margie pressed her lips shut and swallowed the embarrassing truth to keep it from slipping out.

“So don’t strain yourself trying to be someone you’re not. I love you exactly as you are.”

My taste runs more toward s*xy than cute, after all.

Margie was debating whether to say that aloud when Frederic answered first.

“……I thought I’d found a wife as beautiful as a doll. That was only my own illusion, it seems.”

“She’s this wise on top of everything else.”

His voice had returned to its natural low, refined register, though it trembled slightly with feeling he couldn’t quite hide.

What are you talking about. I just like handsome men with a touch of ruin about them.

She was still wondering whether to correct his grand misunderstanding when the car rolled into the Flynn estate garage.

The driver stepped quickly out of the front seat and opened Frederic’s door with a polite bow.

“The day’s schedule is finished, so feel free to head in and rest. Ah, leave the car keys with me.”

“Pardon? The keys, Your Grace?”

Frederic held out his gloved hand, and the driver went visibly flustered.

A nobleman who’s never touched a gear lever, asking for the keys?

Even so, he dug into his pocket and handed them over without argument.

“Come to the front seat, Margie.”

Frederic took the keys, sent the driver home, and slowly pulled off his gloves. He reached a bare hand toward Margie, still sitting in the back. She hadn’t caught on to what he intended and looked at him with a puzzled expression, then took his hand and moved to the front seat before she quite knew what she was doing.

“……?”

Vroom.

Frederic started the engine with a low, heavy roar, sitting behind the wheel.

During their roughly two weeks of rest in the duchy, every time they went out in a car driven by the chauffeur, Margie had found herself murmuring, ‘wouldn’t it be nice if just the two of us could enjoy this together, without the driver?’

“You said it yourself. That you wished we could go for a drive alone, just the two of us.”

Frederic had remembered that offhand comment and gone ahead and gotten his driver’s license.

“You didn’t.”

Margie stared at her husband’s profile as he worked the ignition with practiced ease, and her eyes went wide.

No wonder. In Oslande, a nobleman personally taking the wheel was rare to the point of being nearly unheard of.

Nobles had no interest in driving. More precisely, that kind of task belonged to those below their station, not to them.

The number of nobles who could actually drive a vehicle was vanishingly small. Margie was quite certain there wasn’t a single one in her social circle. And it wasn’t just the nobility. Even the newly wealthy thought of driving as something their hired hands did, not themselves. Driving was one of the defining markers of blue-collar work.