Chapter 4

Lachesis chuckled softly as she dipped the quill in ink. She had complained, but she had never disliked Marel’s way of showing affection, so she had no intention of blaming her further.

More importantly…….

Considering the Deate household’s chief attendant would be startled upon receiving it, Lachesis began with an overly long preface, easing into it.

“By the way, Marel.”

“Yes.”

“About Duke Marutia. Doesn’t he look completely different from yesterday? He seemed like a different person. You felt it too, right?”

“Is that so? I’m not sure I noticed.”

“No. He’s definitely different. Try to remember. Yesterday he was radiant like sunlight, smiling so purely like an angel. His eyes were cleaner than a dawn lake, and his face practically sparkled. But today he looks kind of dark, his gaze is scary, and even his atmosphere is a bit…….”

Lachesis paused and thought carefully about Kadenic as she had seen him earlier.

His complexion had been clear, yet there was a hint of fatigue around his eyes. It was far too dense a weariness to dismiss as merely the aftereffects of a sleepless night.

And that fierce gaze—what of it? It wasn’t the gaze of someone nursing a broken heart, but closer to the gaze of someone holding the poison of betrayal.

But why would Kadenic have such eyes at all? And toward an extra he had never met in reality—someone not even mentioned in the original work?

‘There’s no way he was angry at me, someone he’d just met. Did something bad happen last night?’

As she tapped her chin with the tip of her quill, Marel—who should have delivered her opinion crisply by now—was quiet.

“Marel?”

Before she could even ask what was wrong, Marel blurted out,

“No.”

“……Huh?”

“Even if you can’t help yourself around beautiful things, you must not get intoxicated by people the way you do by art. A person’s character matters more than their looks. You mustn’t fall for a face after seeing it once. You understand what I mean, right?”

“……Of course. I know that much, Marel. What do you take me for…….”

She was only worried, that was all. Lachesis protested, but because she had a history, she couldn’t win Marel’s trust.

Pouting, she didn’t plead her case further and instead hurried to finish the letter.

“I’m done writing! Then I’m counting on you, Marel.”

Perhaps eager to leave the ducal residence as quickly as possible, Marel swallowed any further words and dashed out of the room. Of course, she didn’t forget her repeated admonition to be careful right up until she closed the door.

‘As if there’s anywhere safer than the place where a war hero resides, yet she worries so much.’

Chuckling, Lachesis shook her head—when thud, thud, a heavy knock echoed through the room.

There was no way Marel could already be back. 

Did she forget something? 

Without thinking, Lachesis flung the door open and froze on the spot.

“Ah…….”

The person standing outside was not Marel. It was Kadenic.

He gave a light greeting with his eyes, then strode into the guest room.

Lachesis hovered awkwardly with her hand still on the doorknob.

Of all times, he came when she was alone. The timing was so precise it was as if he had waited for Marel to leave the room.

She didn’t know how to deal with Kadenic, who was still giving off an aura so overwhelming it was hard to bear.

Was this what it felt like to stand before a gigantic monster?

A visceral fear—one she had never even dreamed she would feel in front of a romance genre’s second male lead—made her heart pound violently.

Kadenic, perched lightly on the table in the middle of the room, tilted his head.

“I came because I have something to tell you. Why are you so tense?”

“Tense? I’m only a little startled, Your Grace.”

She had tried, but it seemed her expression control was sorely lacking.

Kadenic’s vivid blue eyes slid down from Lachesis’s face. Only then did Lachesis let out a large breath she hadn’t even realized she was holding.

Where his gaze stopped was her hand gripping the doorknob. Her fingers were trembling in tiny shakes—click, click—making a thin, faint noise.

She hadn’t even registered that sound. Lachesis noticed his gaze a beat late and quickly hid her hand behind her back.

“I thought it was Marel. I mean, my maid. I didn’t expect you to be standing there, Your Grace.”

As she fumbled up a clumsy excuse out of embarrassment, the air in the room—like it had been choking her throat—shifted in an instant. The brutal presence that had made her body shrink vanished as if it had never existed.

Lachesis’s gaze, which had been wandering the floor, snapped up. The blue eyes she met were checking her pale complexion as if to ask whether this much was all right.

Having thoroughly refined and reined in his force, Kadenic looked like the very sort of protagonist she had imagined alone from a romance novel—beautiful, gentle, and somehow unreal…….

“I didn’t mean to startle you like that. You look like you might collapse at any moment. Come sit.”

Lachesis didn’t refuse and sat in the chair Kadenic pulled out for her.

“Thank you. But you said you had something to tell…….”

Kadenic, seated across from her, didn’t answer at once. He looked as though he were weighing which words to offer first.

She had assumed he would bring up having clothes made to replace the ruined dress, so this was unexpected. What else could he possibly have to say to someone he had never met before?

The longer Kadenic deliberated, the longer the silence stretched. It wasn’t hostile, but it was a trial in its own way.

In the end, unable to endure the awkwardness, Lachesis spoke first.

“Oh. Thank you for lending me such a precious outfit. It’s such a pretty dress that just wearing it makes me feel better. I’ll wear it carefully, then have it washed clean and return it.”

“Then how about touring the Long Gallery?”

“……Pardon?”

Lachesis slowly blinked.

She couldn’t understand why her thanks for the dress was met with an invitation to tour the Long Gallery. And his words sounded less like ‘something to tell’ and more like a spur-of-the-moment suggestion.

“You’ll like it. I guarantee it.”

Without even waiting for an answer, Kadenic rose and held out his hand. With a face more sculpted than any statue right before her eyes, her body followed him before her mind could catch up.

Trailing after Kadenic as if bewitched, Lachesis left the guest room and realized why she had, without intending to, climbed into his carriage and come all the way here from the imperial capital.

It was similar to how she had, unintentionally, become a workshop head. Her instinct—so easily drawn to beauty—had shone through.

‘I have nothing to say to Marel…….’

But truly, she couldn’t help it. This time, the destination she knew perfectly well was none other than the Long Gallery of the Marutia Dukedom.

Since she had no noble acquaintances, she had never once seen the collected works of an old, prestigious house. Surely she would be able to view high-quality pieces on a level entirely different from an auction hall.

This was a golden opportunity she had to seize by any means necessary.

Even if some kind of trap lay hidden.

‘Well, of course, there’s no way Kadenic set a trap.’