Chapter 9

Chapter 9

“All right. Since you insist, I’ll try to bear it, darling.”

“Dar…”

He nearly bit his tongue and hastily shut his mouth.

Meanwhile, Irenea, pretending to wipe the tears gathered at the corners of her eyes, rose to her feet and glared sharply at the attendant.

“Whether you were bribed by someone to humiliate my fiancé on purpose is something we shall now find out. Daymond!”

“Yes, Marchioness.”

The head butler, who had been nearby, hurried over and bowed his head. Before him, Irenea pointed at the attendant with her chin.

“Lock this man in a solitary room. And don’t forget to keep a close watch on him so he can’t slip away!”

“I shall follow your instructions.”

“M-Marchioness. It really was an accident, please forgive me just this once! Marchioness!”

But Irenea’s mercy was never going to be directed at him.

Helping Leonard to his feet, she brushed the liquor off his formal coat with an upset face.

Then, as if only now realizing how heavily the mood had sunk, she looked around with a startled expression.

“What a commotion this is. I’m sorry, everyone. You must have been quite shocked. As an apology, I’d like to give each of you a small gift. Daymond!”

“Yes, Marchioness.”

Daymond, who had left the disposition of the attendant to the ordinary butlers under him and returned, hurried to Irenea once more without even a moment to catch his breath.

“Open the cellar in the basement of the main building and bring out all the wine there. Wrap one bottle of each guest’s choice prettily and present it to them.”

“Which cellar door shall I open?”

“My collection cellar, of course. It’s an apology to our guests, so I can’t give them just anything, can I?”

Marchioness Blair’s collection cellar?

The guests began to murmur in astonished voices.

“Good heavens, what sort of wines could be in there?”

“There might even be Illum’s snowall wine, mightn’t there?”

“I hear Parodia’s cactus-blossom liquor is famous too!”

The thoroughly excited guests seemed to have forgotten all about Leonard, a mess because of the liquor, and kept their eyes fixed only on the banquet hall doors.

Should he laugh at those people as snobs, or admire Marchioness Blair, who had thrown a spark of greed at them with the single word “collection”?

Meanwhile, Irenea approached Viscount Calio, who stood looking down at the broken glasses with a hollow face, and spoke to him with a look of regret.

“What a pity, after you brought such a precious wine. I’m sorry, Uncle. But my collection has the Latvi ’67 too, so please enjoy it to your heart’s content in my place.”

“…What? What do you have?”

“I think there are three bottles, or was it four… So please don’t feel any burden, and enjoy it at your ease.”

It was a smile so innocent that no one could have thought she was mocking him.

Was there anyone else in this empire who applied the saying “you can’t spit on a smiling face” as thoroughly as she did?

While Leonard inwardly marveled, Viscount Calio, his face crimson and his temper boiling over entirely, shouted before he knew it.

“You said you’d never seen such a precious wine, and now you dare insult your uncle!”

“Oh my, did I ever say I’d never seen that wine? …Ah, was it my asking for the whole bottle that made you think so?”

With her index finger against her chin, Irenea tilted her head with an innocent face.

“But Uncle, people are… the more they have, the more they covet, aren’t they?”

Just like you, Uncle.

The words that followed were not spoken aloud. Of course, not even her lips shaped them.

Yet, strangely enough, Leonard could tell. That she had swallowed those words inwardly.

“Well then, everyone, do enjoy yourselves!”

“Oh, Marchioness. Are you leaving already?”

“Hehe, I’m afraid it will take my darling far too long to freshen up and change his clothes. I’m telling you in advance so you needn’t wait.”

“Weren’t you saying earlier that you’d call him Sir, since he’s the knight who protected you?”

“Oh dear, my mistake! Look at me. That’s the pet name I only use when we’re alone.”

With a smile in her eyes, Irenea looked at Leonard as if to say this was all his fault.

By now, all he wanted was to… go home, so Leonard weakly lifted the corners of his mouth at her.

* * *

When Leonard, having washed, changed his clothes, and even put medicine on his wounded finger, stepped into the guest room assigned to him, a guest who had arrived earlier was sitting confidently on the sofa.

“You’re a little late? Come, sit down. You must be very tired today.”

Irenea offered him a seat as though she were the host, and Leonard sat in the seat opposite without a word of complaint, because she really was the mistress of this house.

“Do you still have business with me? I believe I’ve done all that was required of me.”

Perhaps from fatigue, his voice came out a little curt.

But Irenea ought to understand why Leonard was that way. After all, she was the one who had dragged him around without so much as a proper explanation.

Fortunately, as though well aware of it, Irenea smiled apologetically.

“I wanted to offer an apology along with my thanks. I’m truly sorry about today, and truly grateful.”

As if to convey her sincerity, Irenea bowed her head deeply.

Leonard, who had lived half his life as a mercenary, did not much like empty words of thanks that couldn’t even buy a loaf of bread.

But seeing someone as great as Marchioness Blair bow her head like this, he thought that was enough.

Also, he felt a little sorry for her, wondering how desperate she must have been to choose a flawed man like himself as her partner.

“There’s one thing I’d like to ask…”

“Two or three are fine too.”

Her eyes sparkled as she nodded, as if she very much hoped he would.

Following the nod, her long, loose hair swayed along with it. Only then did Leonard realize that Irenea, too, had washed and changed.

Without the corset that had cinched her waist and the petticoat that had flared her hem so widely, she wore an empire dress close to a nightgown, and the lines of her body showed through the thin cloth.

Just then, Irenea leaned her upper body slightly toward where he sat. The faint scent of perfume, which must have soaked into her skin, brushed the tip of his nose.

In an instant, the tips of his ears grew hot, and Leonard turned his gaze to the window behind her and, concentrating all his attention on the tips of the trees outside, tried not to stammer.

“Was there something in the wine Viscount Calio brought?”

“Ah, as I thought.”

As if she had known he would ask, Irenea laughed soundlessly.

“So that’s why you shielded me and took the drink on yourself?”

“Well…”

Having no intention of claiming credit for it, Leonard nodded vaguely.

“To be precise, I noticed the attendant’s movement.”

He didn’t know how it had looked to others, but the movement behind him, sensed purely by instinct, had something quite unnatural about it.

The man who had been walking steadily until he came near suddenly lost his balance. And before that, he had tilted the tray full of glasses toward Irenea.

Yet Irenea, who couldn’t possibly have known what was happening behind him, had tensed her whole body. Like someone who knew what was about to happen.

“Was this arranged in advance?”

“Yes. We agreed that if my uncle handed me a glass, it would be handled that way.”

At Irenea’s easy nod, Leonard frowned.

“Isn’t that too drastic a method? Spilling a single glass would have been enough to excuse yourself to change your clothes.”

However carefully Marchioness Blair had selected the guests, if word got out that she’d been drenched in liquor, even by accident, at the occasion where she announced her spouse, she’d become a laughingstock in high society.

That was why Leonard had shielded her.

If someone was going to take the scandal anyway, wouldn’t it be more efficient in many ways for him, who already had plenty of blemishes, to take it instead? Rather than for her, the star of the occasion, to be left a mess.

“If it were only that, he’d wait for me to come back after changing. I needed an excuse at least as good as collapsing from the shock of being drenched in liquor.”

As though she didn’t care about her reputation being harmed for his sake, Irenea laughed without a care.

At that face, Leonard felt strange and narrowed his eyes to study her.

Even as he looked at her so, Irenea only smiled brightly. As if she simply enjoyed this time.

“Since we’re on the subject, may I ask you something too?”

“If it’s something I can answer.”

Even as he readily nodded, Leonard made it clear there were lines he would not cross, and Irenea answered in a slightly subdued voice.

“That wound on your hand… You made it on purpose, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

It wasn’t even a large wound, yet Leonard answered while fiddling with his finger, which a doctor had come in person to bandage.

“I thought a wound like that would be helpful in that situation.”

“Of course, that wound did help set the mood, but please don’t do that again.”

Irenea spoke in a firm voice.

“I’m not so incapable a woman that I’d need someone’s body to be injured in order to take the lead in that situation.”

“Not incapable…”

Leonard laughed briefly, as if he’d seen a red panda behaving ferociously, to its own mind.

“Then why does someone so capable go along with Viscount Calio’s scheme?”

Honestly, it was too crude even to call a scheme.

Feeding someone a spiked drink in front of that many people? If she collapsed on the spot, the first one to be suspected would be himself.

Above all, Irenea had already known Viscount Calio’s plan.

If he had been her, he would rather have pretended to drink what the man offered, collapsed, and accused him of putting poison in her drink.

There was no way Irenea hadn’t thought of that, and Leonard was simply curious why she hadn’t done so.