‘Honestly, it was reckless.’

In between monitoring Sinclair, during nights when she felt deeply depressed or couldn’t sleep, Eloise would solve the puzzles in the book her godmother had left.

At first, the problems weren’t particularly difficult, so she could solve them with ease.

But as the problems gradually became more challenging, puzzles that once took only an hour or two began taking a day or two to solve.

Still, Eloise didn’t give up and continued solving the problems.

Partly because she had little else to enjoy, but also because the places mentioned as puzzle locations in the book actually existed in the mansion.

‘The red curtain in the basement storage, the secret space in the maid’s room floor… they all really existed in this mansion!’

So when she solved the final puzzle in the book, her heart was pounding.

The final puzzle in the book involved the protagonist hiding in a secret space in the mansion to escape pursuit.

She couldn’t remember how many days she had spent on that puzzle, wanting to know the exact location of that space.

She didn’t give up because she was certain this too must exist somewhere in the mansion, and she desperately wanted to find and confirm it.

When she finally solved it, Sinclair had prevented her from entering the mansion, so she couldn’t go and verify it herself.

As soon as she left Sinclair’s mansion, she had headed straight to the cathedral.

So she had been incredibly worried while running up the stairs to find this place.

Until now, all the puzzle answers had existed in the mansion.

But since the book mentioned that a great treasure was hidden here at the end, she wondered if the final puzzle might just be fiction created for the novel’s entertainment.

‘Besides… I didn’t know such a space would actually be empty!’

In the novel, it was described as a space so narrow that when two people entered, their bodies would be pressed against each other.

But as far as Eloise could remember, it didn’t seem likely that there would be such a space between the mansion’s walls.

So she had considered leaving the mansion and hiding in another house nearby, but then she heard Sinclair’s group dismounting their horses outside.

They truly had no escape now.

There was only one path left—to find that secret space from the novel.

It was located between two rooms on the first floor.

When she first ran to look at the part described in the novel, the wall looked no different from any other.

Just as Eloise’s face was about to cloud with despair, Ryan said:

“Step back for a moment.”

Then he pushed the wall that Eloise had been feeling with all his might.

Suddenly, what they thought was a wall moved sideways with a creaking sound.

“This is a very old-fashioned false wall, and it’s installed here. I’ll explain later…”

Ryan reached in to clear away the old cobwebs inside the wall, then immediately pushed his body in and stood between the walls.

Then he pulled Eloise in, positioning her against the wall like himself, and pushed the wall closed with all his strength.

As the wall closed with a creaking sound, they heard Sinclair’s subordinates entering all at once from below.

If they had been even slightly later, the others would have heard the sound of the wall closing and found it suspicious, immediately coming to investigate—it had been a close call.

Fortunately, having missed hearing it by a hair’s breadth, they began searching for the two from the basement upward.

And even after searching the entire mansion, they still hadn’t found them.

Eloise remained anxious as she listened to the footsteps of Sinclair’s group moving around near the wall where they were hiding.

She wished they would give up and leave the mansion, but they seemed convinced that Eloise and Ryan were inside and were searching the mansion even more thoroughly.

Though they hadn’t found them yet, she couldn’t feel at ease.

If Sinclair fired at the wall in anger, as she had done toward the attic earlier, they would certainly be injured.

‘Hurry, hurry and leave…’

Having failed in their terror attack, they should be fleeing to Lensk, but it seemed Sinclair’s anger toward Ryan was greater than her desire to escape.

Meanwhile, suddenly, at a call from downstairs, Sinclair’s group rushed down.

Still, the two had to remain in the space between the walls, holding their breath.

After Sinclair went downstairs, Eloise’s tension eased slightly, but she shivered as she felt the cold chill.

The space where the two were wasn’t completely sealed.

Perhaps it was designed that way to prevent suffocation.

Light was seeping through a gap in the wall to Ryan’s left.

From outside the mansion, that gap might look like a crack, but it seemed to be hidden by ivy.

In any case, the cool outside air was coming in through that gap.

It was fortunate they could breathe, but because of it, her body, which had barely slept and had been busy since morning, belatedly felt the cold and began to shiver.

Noticing this, Ryan quietly reached out and took Eloise’s hand.

Perhaps due to his own tension.

She could feel his pulse beating rapidly under his rough palm, full of thick calluses.

Eloise took his hand.

But only for a moment—she pulled her hand away as if burned.

Ryan, who had expected her to keep holding his hand, reached out again in confusion.

But as if to confirm it wasn’t a mistake, Eloise firmly pushed his hand away.

“Why are you doing this?”

Ryan whispered in a very small voice, carefully controlling his breath.

Fortunately, Sinclair’s group had gone downstairs, and the wall somewhat muffled sound, so his voice wouldn’t be heard outside.

Eloise turned her head with difficulty and glared at him.

“Are you shameless?”

She whispered in a very small voice, just as he had done.

Nevertheless, Ryan could clearly feel the resentment permeating her voice.

“At least pretend to be surprised that someone you thought was dead has returned.”

At Eloise’s biting words, he bit his lip.

In the chaos, he had focused solely on escaping, but now with a moment’s respite, he suddenly realized their situation.

“That… was unavoidable because of my mission.”

“I doubt you went to Feltham on a mission?”

At Eloise’s increasingly sharp words, Ryan could only bite his lip again.

He realized that her anger wasn’t just about his sudden departure from Feltham and subsequent lack of contact.

From the beginning, Eloise had been angry that he had lied about being Ryan Thornton instead of Ryan Wilgrave.

“That…”

“Was it fun?”

“Did you enjoy playing with the stupid country girl who hung a fake ancestral portrait on the wall, thinking, ‘She’s so ignorant, let me have some fun with her’?”

“…It wasn’t like that.”

Ryan, who had almost raised his voice, desperately lowered it again and answered with difficulty.

“Lies. You…”

Eloise, who was about to continue speaking, bit her lip.

Was it because she felt the cold again, or was it the stale air in the narrow, enclosed space?

She felt pain in her chest and the sensation of another coughing fit approaching.

Desperately holding back the cough and clutching her trembling body, Eloise whispered:

“You said you’d return before the first snow…”

There was much to confront him about, but right now, that was what she resented most.

Eloise had never enjoyed winter because her body always weakened during that season.

Yet for the first time, she had eagerly counted the days until winter arrived.

Despite that, Ryan hadn’t returned.

Just then, a cold wind blew strongly through the gap in the wall.

It wasn’t just the wind that entered.

Eloise widened her eyes as she saw something fall at Ryan’s feet.

The sky had been cloudy since morning, and now an incredibly large snowflake had entered through the gap with the wind and fallen between them.

“The first snow…”

The moment she said that, another coughing fit threatened to overtake her.

And the sound of Sinclair’s group coming back upstairs could also be heard.

If she coughed now, they would certainly be discovered.

Just as she thought this, suddenly Eloise’s head tilted, and something warm touched her lips.