Chapter 28

Chapter 28
Letting out a harsh sigh, the man sifted through the meager items in the bag and pulled out a red-covered book.

Elio’s eyes went wide. She thrust out her arms, scrambling to reach for the book in his hands.

“Sir! S—Sir!”

Carlos caught the woman tumbling into his chest with his forearm, bracing her as he sank back down.

“Give it back! How can you just look through someone else’s things like that? Give it to me, give it back!”

Elio planted her hand on Carlos’s thigh and yanked hard on the red book held in his right hand. Carlos pulled up one corner of his lips in a crooked smirk, raising the book even higher as he flipped it open.

“The Noble Knight’s First Kiss and What Lies Between Her Thighs?” he read aloud. “Quite an intense title.”

“I’m studying! Hand it over! Seriously, touching someone else’s belongings… Where are your manners?!”

“Studying what? This kind of book?”

“I’m going to have a real marriage soon! Since my nanny never taught me properly, I’m self-studying! Ladies are supposed to receive this kind of education!”

Carlos stared down at her flushed face with eyes as sharp as a blade.

“For a commoner who’s lost her immunity, you sure skip studying the Scriptures to study your wedding night instead?”

Elio barely managed to snatch the book from his hand. She scrambled off his rock-hard thigh and shuffled backward on her rear, hastily retreating.

“…D—Don’t discriminate against learning! The Scriptures and the wedding night carry equally important value. If not for the wedding night, could the God Himmel have even been born? The wedding night comes first, not the Scriptures!”

Elio babbled rapidly in a tone of utter desperation, hurriedly shoving the spilled grapes and bread back into the bag.

Her face burned red with anger. Why was he prying into someone else’s private hobbies?

“…God Himmel was born from light itself. As the God of Love,” Carlos said, pressing a hand to his temple.

As Elio went to close the crumpled book, her fingertips froze. A sudden wave of panic washed over her as she caught sight of the provocative, explicit text on the page he had opened. She bit down hard on the inside of her lip.

She wanted nothing more than to dissolve into a handful of sand and vanish.

“E—Even if He was born by Himself, He must have spent His wedding night as an adult to give birth to the archangel! This isn’t something to be ashamed of or treated as taboo! Everyone possesses carnal desires, and from a lady’s perspective, it’s just cultural knowledge—”

“Carnal desires?” Carlos interrupted. “Ah. So you dislike a man’s power and wealth, but you have sexual desires?”

Elio looked at his fiercely narrowed eyes. She stumbled over her words before lifting her chin with proud dignity, acting like a modest matron giving a lecture on the birds and the bees. Though her entire body burned crimson, she didn’t avert her eyes from his dark gaze.

“I am talking about innate human instinct and its value! Everyone possesses the urge to reproduce, and expressing passion toward the person you love is entirely natural! It should never be tabooed—”

“Toward whom?”

Carlos wiped a hand roughly across his face, muttering low through gritted teeth.

“Pardon?”

“Who did you feel that toward that made you think to study this?”

She flinched at the slightest touch, yet just because she turned of age, she was…

Suppressing the chilly edge in his voice, Carlos tried to steady his breathing, like a guardian trying to reason with a rebellious teenage girl.

He wasn’t ignorant of the fact that ladies usually received bedchamber education around sixteen, or eighteen at the latest. It was true that a twenty-year-old lady of age should have already learned about intimacy with a man, whether from her nanny or her mother.

Though the strict doctrines of the ascetic Himmel Church tightly controlled daily ethics, it had ironically sparked a thriving underground culture of secret balls and free love.

In truth, few women kept their purity until the priest’s first-night verification ceremony—which was nothing more than a scripted ritual anyway. Since most had their first nights before their debutante period, he knew education was completed by eighteen at the latest.

At least, rationally speaking.

“Who are you interested in? Are you exchanging letters with those skinny, pretty little bastards from the carriage? Do you think men who hit on a child sexually are normal?”

He asked again in a voice that sank dangerously lower, as if fighting to hold back something surging inside him.

“Why are you suddenly reading this? I asked you who made you care about that crap.”

“What do you mean, who?!”

Elio caught a glimpse of his chiseled chest muscles heaving beneath his thin tunic and whipped her head away.

“I—I don’t think that’s any of your business, Sir! You told me to become trash to other ladies anyway, so why do you care?”

Bright red to the tips of her ears, Elio heaved up her bicycle—which was nearly as large as her—and turned around so fast she almost tripped. She felt deeply humiliated, as if her innermost thoughts had been turned inside out like an emptied plastic bag.

“…Stop interfering in my private life. You’re just using me anyway, Sir. How are you any different from my father or the Council? Everyone is the same. No, you’re the worst of them all!”

She shot him a glare, but he remained silent, his face terrifyingly grim. Elio’s steps faltered like a toddling infant, but she forced herself forward without looking back.

She shoved the knight romance novel—the tiny joy of her life—into the bike basket as if throwing it in the trash. Hesitating at the silence of the man who didn’t even try to stop her, she turned the handlebars with burning hands.

Clatter, clatter.

She pushed the bike along without stopping, praying the cool breeze would quickly soothe her burning ears.

Swoooosh.

How long had she walked? The sweet and bitter scent of lilacs, which she had been too worked up to notice earlier, drifted to the tip of her nose.

The sound of the stream’s rushing water and the rustling of lush leaves reached her ears. The wind lifted her skirt, brushing coolly against her sweat-chilled skin.

Under a deep purple sky, the dark stream bank stretched endlessly, its waters completely still. Beneath the evening sky that looked like mixed paints, Elio parked her bicycle and slumped onto the ground, utterly alone.

…Mean jerk.

She picked up a pebble and tossed it. With a small splash, ripples spread before settling back into silence.

Staring anxiously at the quiet stream, she rubbed her eyes hard and rummaged through the black bag for the bread. Her fingertips trembled slightly. The cold, rigid expression he had shown at the end made it clear he was angry.

…Angry or not, why is HE angry?

As she struggled to untie the bread bag with trembling hands, a small bird fluttered in circles above her head. Soon, it landed at her feet and let out a soft coo, peering up at her.

When she stared blankly back, it pecked lightly at her instep with its beak. A tiny note was tied to its slender leg.

“…Who sent you?”

Flustered, she couldn’t guess whose carrier pigeon it might be.

…The pigeon my sister sent already arrived at dawn…

Confused as to whether it was even meant for her, she knitted her brows. Seeing the utterly adorable bear pattern on the note, she held her breath, crouched down carefully, and pulled it loose.

Unfolding the paper, a bold, powerful handwriting—strikingly like that man’s—came into view.

The trembling in Elio’s fingertips stopped.

How far are you planning to walk?

Home is in the opposite direction. It’s late, so go straight home.

Don’t wander around when the streetlamps turn on. Don’t go to the inn district or the mercenary district alone. If a stranger talks to you, don’t answer. If someone calls for help, don’t just follow them blindly. If someone offers you food, don’t just take it and eat it.

Don’t let anyone into the house except me. And I suggest you memorize the roads a little.

Pretty lady.

Shall we have dinner together at seven?

Elio stared blankly at the end of the note, reading it over and over, before letting out a dry laugh. Stunned, she fanned her face with her hand.

After fighting like that, suddenly asking to eat together—he was completely self-centered.

Does he think asking to eat dinner first fixes everything?

Baffled, she muttered “pretty lady” under her breath before shaking her reddened face. She pulled her bicycle upright and sprinted all the way home, sweating profusely. Naturally, a sudden shower broke out, soaking her completely. While her mouth kept grumbling insults about that “mean jerk,” her body moved as swiftly as a kingfisher taking flight.

She wiped every speck of dust off the hallway tiles, cleaned the marble in every room, and even scrubbed the crevices of the bathroom until she was dripping with sweat. After bathing, she applied strawberry-scented lotion to the tips of her wet hair.

Nervous about the loose threads on her cheap market dress, she folded the sleeves twice, then thrice, before frantically searching for a pair of scissors in a flutter of anxiety.

“T—To visit a lady’s house, a person should give at least a day’s notice! Why is he coming so suddenly? He always does whatever he wants!”

Elio combed her hair again and put it up, only to wail softly as she picked up the fallen strands from the floor. She turned back to the full-length mirror, anxiously checking her elbows and the zipper along her back.

Just as the note had promised, at exactly seven o’clock, the doorbell rang.

Chirp! Chirp! Chirp!

“Hey, shh! Be quiet…!”

When the carrier pigeon began chirping loudly at the chime, Elio hushed it in a low voice. Her sister’s pigeon, which had arrived at dawn—how she had already found out about the new house was beyond her—screamed frantically at the mere sound of the front gate bell.

Hurriedly feeding a treat to the wailing pigeon, Elio snipped at the loose threads with her scissors, panicking in case he could hear her wildly beating heart, and rushed outside.

She threw open the front gate of the courtyard with a flushed face.

Standing right outside was—

“Lady Elio.”

Grita stood before her.

“Have you had dinner yet?”

Grita’s hazel eyes curved softly.

Elio’s eyes widened at the completely unexpected visitor. Appearing in the middle of the night clad in a crisp, sharp uniform, Grita looked even more striking and statuesque than most men.

“Sir Grita?”

Grita offered a neat smile to the stunned Elio and lifted a rattan basket. Her gentle gaze traveled slowly down Elio’s slender ankles, her narrow waist, her prominent chest, and finally rested on her face.

A smile of unreadable meaning touched her lips.