The bedroom, the sleeping quarters, but also the kitchen, the storeroom, the balcony, the bathroom…… The moment their eyes met, apparently, they’d be going at it shamelessly. Even when an exhausted heroine pushed him away from time to time, he’d spout filth like ‘you have no right of refusal, so relax. You’re too tight and I can’t get in’ and force himself upon her slender body. All the heroine could ever manage to say was things like please stop, my legs won’t hold, I can’t do this anymore.

And yet……?

My husband, Frederic……?

“Please sleep comfortably alone in the wide bed, Miss Flynn.”

Why?

“I will sleep in the study.”

How is this possible?

“Would you hand me that pillow on the bed? ……No, I’m perfectly comfortable on the sofa. Truly.”

Is this right?

“Do not wait up for me. The council of elders is expected to run long. It would be a problem if I came into the bedroom late at night and woke you, Miss Flynn. So I plan to sleep separately in the annex drawing room……”

No matter how she thought about it, this wasn’t normal. There was no way this was what a married couple was supposed to be.

Margie was beginning to sense that her honeymoon life with the excessively abstinent Frederic had strayed far beyond the bounds of anything normal.

“My darling Marie!”

“Father!”

“Have you been well in your father’s absence? Please tell me you haven’t. Rail at me and throw a tantrum for abandoning you! That is why I earn money!”

“I hate you, Father! Why did you take so long to come back! Do you know how long I waited for you! You’re terrible, waah!”

“That’s my girl. Oh, my precious. Now I actually feel like earning money.”

Ian Flynn, returning from a month-long business trip, couldn’t hide his broad smile at his daughter’s playful pouting.

The moment his only daughter Margie’s wedding was over, he had traveled abroad to oversee the opening of the ‘Royal Flynn Company Allied Nations Branch.’

Ian Flynn was always busy, as befitted a great merchant, spending far more time abroad than at home. The number of politicians who sought meetings with him and wealthy men proposing partnerships was beyond counting. He was so occupied fulfilling a packed schedule in distant foreign lands that he even missed his own wife’s funeral, which should be enough to convey just how busy a man Ian Flynn was.

“Welcome back.”

A few steps away from Margie, who was clinging to Ian Flynn with all her playful affection, Frederic offered a greeting.

“Ah…… Yes. I hope the Duke of Graham has also been keeping well…… Looking at that rather improved physique of yours, I’d say you’ve been doing more than fine……”

Ian Flynn gave a somewhat awkward nod of his head.

His daughter’s husband ought to have been his subordinate by any reasonable measure, yet he still couldn’t bring himself to speak informally. Part of it was the weight of the ducal title, but part of it was also that the aura radiating from his son-in-law was unlike that of an ordinary man. That unspoken hierarchy was the survival instinct of the law of the jungle, the kind only men understood between themselves.

“Ahem, ahem. Dr. O’Brien!”

Ian Flynn, who had been stealing glances at his son-in-law’s sharp nose and broad chest, cleared his throat and called for the Flynn family physician.

“Master. Did you call for me?”

“Please examine our Margie.”

“Yes. I will carry out your instructions at once, sir.”

Ian Flynn’s air of authority truly came into its own only before a doctor he had hired and paid.

“Hmm? Father, there’s nothing wrong with me?”

Margie looked back and forth between the doctor pressing a stethoscope toward her and her father’s face, asking with a bewildered expression. But Ian Flynn said nothing. He simply savored the warm tea a maid had brought out with unhurried elegance.

“Father? Why the examination at all……”

“Sir. There are no signs of pregnancy yet.”

It was not Ian Flynn but the doctor who answered Margie’s second question.

“Pregnancy?”

Margie repeated the doctor’s word in a daze. It was the first time she had ever heard it in her life, and both the pronunciation and the intonation came out strange.

“Are you certain?”

“Quite certain, sir.”

“Hmph!”

Ian Flynn let out a displeased breath and set down his teacup the moment the doctor finished speaking.

Clang!

The force with which he slammed it down sent the saucer beneath it cracking with a sharp, resounding sound.

“Eek!”

Startled, Margie let out a short scream.

“Doctor, you may leave. No need to stay any longer. What are you standing there gawking at? I said go.”

Ian Flynn waved his hand with an irritated voice, brow furrowed. It was a crudeness utterly devoid of anything resembling refinement.

“Father, what is all this about?”

Watching Dr. O’Brien’s back as he gathered his bag and left, Margie turned to Ian Flynn with her question.

“I told you I wasn’t ill. Yet you called a doctor out of nowhere to examine me, then practically shoved him out before he’d even been offered tea. What kind of rudeness is that……”

She seethed at her father’s complete lack of decorum.

The days of being a mere merchant’s daughter were over. Margie Flynn, no, Margie Graham, was now the mistress of the Graham ducal household, a family of true Imperial nobility, and that meant she had to conduct herself accordingly. So of course it grated on her to have her father behave so boorishly in front of her husband.

“Duke Graham. What do you make of this?”

Even under his daughter’s scolding, Ian Flynn’s furious gaze shifted not to Margie but to his son-in-law, Frederic.

“……I am not sure what you are referring to.”

His father-in-law’s tone was openly aggressive. Even so, not a flicker of disturbance passed through Frederic’s composed demeanor and innate elegance.

“It has been a full month since the wedding and there is still no news of a child! That is what I am asking, Duke Graham!”

Bang! Bang!

Ian Flynn slammed his clenched fist against the table twice in quick succession. Only Margie, his wife, would have caught the flash of red that surged across Frederic’s handsome brow.

“Admiral Lancaster tipped me off that a long-term deployment to Scotria is being scheduled due to emergency training! Which means you need to put in the effort so our Marie gets with child as soon as possible!”

Her father’s outburst startled Margie twice over.

The first time, because no matter that he was her father, he was speaking far too carelessly about something so deeply private between a husband and wife. And the second time,

“Emergency training…… a long deployment?”

Because she was learning of her husband’s extended absence not from her husband’s own lips, but through her father’s ranting.

The Kingdom of Oslande operated on a volunteer military system rather than conscription, and its defense capabilities ranked among the finest in the Allied Nations. Oslande, with its active maritime trade and diplomacy, placed particular weight on naval strength among its land, sea, and air forces. The navy was one of the most honored professions, and graduates of the naval academy were all but guaranteed a bright future.

Frederic Graham had graduated from the naval academy with distinction. A nobleman of royal blood, enlisting as a volunteer. And not just any nobleman but the most beautiful golden-haired young man in the kingdom, the young duke of Graham himself. The day he reported for duty, countless women of the Empire had gathered and wept outside the naval academy gates as though the world were ending, and the story was still told as legend.

Even after being assigned to his unit, Frederic continued to earn promotion after promotion. Yet while he served faithfully, his father Harry Graham had gambled away every house and plot of land they owned. Around that same period, divorce papers were thrust upon the household by the second duchess, a stepmother who had entered the family after Frederic’s birth mother, the first duchess, died of childbed fever shortly after delivering him. The second duchess had spent years neglecting her young stepson while helping herself to the ducal family’s wealth, yet she demanded an enormous division of assets.