“Oh no, Frederic, what if the car breaks down suddenly……”

“I’m better at repairing cars than I am at driving them.”

Frederic smiled warmly and reassured her, adding a patient explanation that having entered naval life aboard warships from a young age, he had no aversion to machinery, and had in fact personally replaced and repaired key components aboard ships where no professional mechanic was available.

Frederic, the thoroughbred aristocrat who walked with his chin raised in a perfectly pressed uniform without a single crease, crawling under a car in oil-stained work clothes? Frederic Graham…… driving? Doing his own car repairs?

Imagining Frederic disheveled, raw, untamed, Margie’s mouth curved at the corners.

Good lord. That’s…… so attractive.

“Even so…… if other people saw you like this……”

If it got out in society that Duke Graham had driven himself instead of using a chauffeur, it might invite needless trouble. The hidebound nobility were always ready to find fault with those more accomplished and better-born than themselves.

“What does it matter what other people say. What matters is my wife being a little happier today.”

A simple answer that made her worry feel foolish.

Dignified, arrogant, carrying that peculiar aristocratic sense of election, he had chosen what was practical over what was proper. All for Margie, the wife he loved.

“A world where skill matters more than birth is coming. Advancing technology will break down the rigid class system. And sooner than anyone expects.”

Class lines were blurring, but the unspoken wall between the newly wealthy and the nobility was still firmly in place. Inherited rank still outweighed capital in this era. Wealth built over a lifetime could not overcome the nobility of birth. It was why even Ian Flynn, who held the kingdom’s wealth in his hands, was referred to at official functions by the vague title of ‘Sir’ and kept from direct participation in politics.

In a world like this, Frederic’s words about the noble class losing its power sounded nothing short of absurd.

“Who would believe that coming from Duke Graham himself……”

And yet here was the very man making that prediction, the master of a ducal house steeped in long tradition.

Unable to find the right reply, Margie hesitated and pursed her lips.

“I don’t need anyone else to believe it. Only my wife.”

Hearing that, she understood something dimly. She and Frederic, from different stations, were slowly coming to resemble each other, moving toward each other, for each other.

The car Frederic drove arrived at a waterside garden, far from the estate.

A naturally formed environment rather than an artificial lake always brings a particular joy. That held true even for Margie, who had grown up surrounded by only the finest things.

“I can’t believe there’s a lake this beautiful inside the capital!”

Watching the surface shimmer orange in the setting sun, Margie couldn’t stop marveling.

“Whenever I imagined meeting someone I loved and getting married, building a home together, having children there, living happily…… I always dreamed of living somewhere like this!”

“I’ll have to look into a villa nearby.”

“Really! Oh, that would be wonderful!”

Margie was genuinely moved by Frederic’s care and the fact that he had found a place so close to the paradise she had dreamed of since childhood.

“Is your mood better now?”

Frederic asked gently, looking at his wife who had been downcast after spending half a day in the boutique without buying a single thing she liked.

“Hmm. Well, a little……”

The truth was that the moment she saw the lush greenery at its peak and the glittering ripples scattered like gemstones, she had forgotten entirely about shopping. But rather than showing all of that, Margie tilted her head with a prim expression.

“That won’t do. Only a little.”

Frederic read her perfectly and performed a convincing display of distress.

“How can I lift my wife’s spirits completely. Should we go back to the shops.”

The expression he wore, as if he could not forgive himself for his own failure, was flawless acting from start to finish.

“We can’t go back after spending hours there already……”

Margie waved a hand and answered without much feeling, conveying in the most aristocratic possible terms that if the finest boutique in the capital had nothing to offer, there was no point visiting anywhere else. A poise entirely worthy of the title Duchess Graham.

“I wanted to buy you something today, no matter what.”

Frederic drew her left hand onto his knee and stroked her slender index and middle fingers in turn.

“Don’t worry about it. Thank you for bringing me somewhere more beautiful than any jewel.”

Margie tried to play the sensible wife and match his mood. The Frederic she used to know would have looked at her warmly or failed to hide how pleased he was, but right now, strangely, he seemed not to be paying attention at all.

“No. That’s not enough.”

“Your fingers are so slender.”

His fingertips moved to her ring finger.

“They’re so fine, I wonder if it will fit……”

“……?”

“I should have checked the ring size for the fourth finger beforehand.”

Margie’s blue eyes went wide.

“Frederic……?”

On the fourth finger of her left hand sat a ring set with a gemstone cut in the exact color of her eyes.

“Ah. It fits perfectly. I was so worried.”

“What is…… this?”

The most beautiful jewel I’ve ever seen in my life.

The words left her entirely.

“It was my mother’s ring, given to her by my father. Before that, my grandmother received it from my grandfather, and before that, my great-grandmother from my great-grandfather……”

“Frederic……!”

The blue diamond, to be passed down to the legitimate heir of the Graham ducal family.

Margie had heard of it, in passing.

After the first wife of the late duke died, the second wife seized the mistress’s position and the ring’s whereabouts became a mystery. The second wife stripped the Graham household of everything of value when she divorced. Most assumed the ring had gone with her. Even so, brazen as she was, she couldn’t very well wear it openly as a divorced woman, so people assumed she had sold it through back channels.

The second wife, well aware of how she was portrayed as the villainess of the age, had insisted loudly and bitterly that whatever else she might have taken, she had never once laid eyes on that ring. Her reaction didn’t read as a lie. People said the ring had recognized the unworthy woman and fled. And so the Graham family heirloom vanished into history.

Every time Margie thought about a ring she had never seen, she felt a tightness in her chest. The ring seemed to know people, just as they said. She felt she had no right to claim it.

She was the Duchess Graham in name only. For someone of common birth like her, it was a title without substance.

Each time that thought came, she blamed herself for coveting legitimacy and nobility she had no claim to, and felt sad about that very impulse.

“How did you……”

“She gave it to me before she died. She said when I found a woman I loved, I should put it on her hand myself.”

His mother had seen through Harry Graham’s dissolute nature long before the end, and slipped the ring to her son Frederic in secret before she passed. The second wife’s claim that she had never seen it was the truth, after all.

“Margie Graham.”

Frederic reached toward her, her eyes still fixed on the blue light of the diamond.

“Thank you for becoming my wife.”

He drew her neck gently toward him with one large hand and kissed her.

“Frederic, hnn……”

“I love you, Margie.”

“I love you too…… mm.”

“Ah. What am I going to do. I want to hold you, right now.”

Slowly drawing her lower lip between his, Frederic let out a low breath.

He untied the small ribbon knotted at her shoulder strap, and with a soft rustle, the full swell of her came into view. Her chest had always been generous for her frame, but today it seemed to overflow his hand endlessly.

“You’re fuller than usual. I want to taste you……”

Frederic pressed his thumb into the valley between her br*asts and worked it slowly. Then he pressed down on the left br*ast he was holding, a little harder.

“Ha, hnn.”

Margie’s flushed lips parted slightly, and a faint m*an slipped through.

The tip of her tongue moved restlessly between her parted lips. Her mouth looked indecent, almost obscenely so, enough to call to mind the swollen bud between her thighs.

Frederic had been stroking her lips gently. He slid his index and middle finger inside her mouth.

“Hnnh……?”

Margie looked up in surprise, but Frederic said nothing. Only watched her with heavy, languid eyes.

“Mm, mm.”

Before long she was entirely surrounded by his two fingers.

They moved along her lower molars and the inside of her cheek, then found the tip of her tongue. A gentle tickle. Saliva pooled in her mouth. Slick and sweet, like the arousal that gathered between her thighs.

“Mmnh……”

Margie closed her eyes without meaning to and gave herself over entirely to his fingers.

That didn’t last. Frederic drew his fingers out of her mouth and took her stiffened n*pple and *reola fully between his lips, sucking slowly.

“Mm, hnn!”

“Hah.”

“Ah, hnn!”

Five or six red marks bloomed across the pale swell of her chest, and Margie wrapped her arms around his neck and cried freely. Frederic understood exactly what that crying meant.

“Darling. Do you want to go?”

He was the only one who could read her.

The fingers that had been working inside her wet mouth moved now between her soaked thighs, finding the swollen bud and pressing into it with teasing intent.