Chapter 60

Chapter 60

“What is all this?”

“Who knows when we’ll get to see each other again once you leave? I thought the two of us could enjoy tea together for a change.”

Leonard had personally arranged everything on the tea table: a teapot and teacups made of fine materials, sugar, milk, and refreshments.

Hot coffee poured from the gold-embossed teapot. Jenis inhaled deeply the aroma rising from the nearly black liquid, then spoke in a slightly surprised voice.

“Coffee?”

“Why? Don’t you like it?”

“It’s not that I don’t like it…”

Jenis trailed off, wrapping both hands around her teacup.

That was all she did. Watching her hold the cup without bringing it to her lips, Leonard couldn’t help smiling to himself.

‘She must have been the same way in front of Elly.’

He had suspected as much, and it turned out he was right.

Rather than point it out, Leonard casually looked around the room to get the conversation started.

“Looks like you’ve finished tidying up. Have you packed everything?”

“Yes. I just finished. When I left home in such a hurry, almost as if I were running away, I could barely manage to bring one suitcase. But in just one month, it’s somehow grown to four.”

A self-deprecating smile lingered on Jenis’s lips as she looked around the room.

Leonard pretended not to notice her expression and poured a little milk into his own coffee.

“Four suitcases?”

“Yes. Two were gifts from the Marquis, including the one Sir Hawk bought for me when I first arrived in the capital. Another was bought by Madam Sara with the allowance my brother gave me. And the last one is the bag Miss Elizabeth gave me.”

As Jenis counted them off on her fingers, Leonard tilted his head slightly.

“Wouldn’t that make five?”

“It’s four. Madam Sara threw away the suitcase I originally brought with me. She said it was time to get rid of it.”

“Madam Sara wasn’t wrong about that.”

It wasn’t just the suitcase that was worn out. The dresses inside it must have been just as shabby.

He didn’t need to open the suitcase to know that. Leonard was well aware of the state of Jenis’s wardrobe.

To pay off even a little more of their debt, she had sold all her expensive dresses. As for the clothes that wouldn’t sell, she had removed their jeweled buttons and lace and sold those separately. Then she had cut the remaining fabric into pieces, made handkerchiefs out of them, and sold those, too.

Jenis had been left with only the awkward pieces of clothing that couldn’t be sold, and she had worn them in rotation for three years.

“To be honest, Brother, I still don’t quite know what to think. I don’t know if I can really take those suitcases I’ve packed, the ones filled with my belongings, and consider everything inside them mine.”

Jenis looked down at the dress she was wearing.

The fine satin, evenly dyed purple, rested softly against her skin. It had been tailored to her measurements, so it fit her perfectly.

And yet, why did it feel so uncomfortable, as though she were wearing someone else’s clothes?

As Jenis absentmindedly fiddled with the lace at her cuffs, Leonard replied in an amused voice.

“That’s a coincidence. I was thinking something similar until a few days ago.”

“Really? You too, Brother?”

“Yeah. But if you think about it, we went through something similar three years ago.”

After the Countess died, there was no way to recover her inheritance, and the enormous debt was left for the two of them to bear.

It had taken them a full month to adjust to a daily life that had changed overnight. If they hadn’t been faced with the immediate problem of how to survive, it would probably have taken them several more months.

“Now that you mention it, you’re right. I think reality felt just as unreal back then as it does now.”

“It took a little time, but we eventually got used to it.”

“Otherwise, suicide really would have been our only option.”

The rather extreme remark made Leonard burst out laughing. Looking at his face, where not a trace of gloom could be found, Jenis suddenly realized something.

Everything that once tormented us has become nothing more than a subject for jokes.

It was proof that the suffering which had utterly ruined her life as Jenis Elpiers was truly over.

Whether she had fully come to terms with it or not.

“You can’t quite believe they’re yours because you’re only looking at them, as though they belong to someone else.”

Just then, Leonard picked up the milk jug himself and poured milk into Jenis’s coffee. Then he took the tongs and added a few sugar cubes.

Aware of Jenis watching him with wide, startled eyes, Leonard smiled warmly.

“Give it a try. It’ll taste good.”

Finally, he even picked up the teaspoon and stirred her coffee himself.

As the milk and coffee blended, the once pitch-black liquid lightened to a soft brown.

Seeing the much gentler color, Jenis hesitated for a moment before lifting the cup to her lips.

“How is it?”

“……It’s delicious.”

Of course it is.

Rather than say that aloud, Leonard simply pushed the milk jug and sugar bowl toward her, telling her to add more if she wanted.

From the moment Elizabeth told him that Jenis hadn’t drunk the coffee she had served her, Leonard had immediately pictured this very scene.

Just as he had struggled to drink the cold liquor served to him at Count Miles’s estate, Jenis must have found it difficult to reach for the milk jug and sugar bowl.

Fresh milk, let alone sugar cubes molded into neat little squares, had become luxuries to someone like Jenis.

“When you get home, put everything in your wardrobe and drawers, then try each piece on and use everything. Once you do, you’ll gradually begin to feel that it’s all really yours.”

“Does that mean you already feel that everything you have belongs to me, Brother?”

At Jenis’s question, Leonard rolled his eyes to one side, as though recalling something.

He let out a thoughtful hum and shrugged.

“Well, at least my wife does.”

“Oh my!”

At Leonard’s unexpected answer, Jenis widened her eyes and covered her mouth with one hand.

Perhaps embarrassed by her reaction, Leonard rubbed the back of his neck and took another sip of his hot coffee.

The one ear visible to her had turned red, so he seemed to realize he’d said something rather embarrassing himself. Jenis couldn’t help giggling.

“You shouldn’t do that, Brother. Is it fair to keep an angel all to yourself?”

“How long are you going to hold me to that slip of the tongue…?”

“Oh? Was it a slip of the tongue? So you don’t really think that way?”

“You’ve really found something to hold over me. That’s enough.”

Leonard frowned and tried to intimidate her into stopping, but Jenis only laughed harder.

“Enough? I should tease you while I still can. Once I return to the county, who knows when we’ll get to see each other again?”

Ah, perhaps I shouldn’t have said that.

The smile had vanished from her lips before she even realized it. Jenis found herself caught in a strange feeling, brought on by her own words.

Perhaps that was the hardest thing of all to accept as reality: the fact that the home she would return to and the home where Leonard lived were now different places.

“Why do you put it like that? As though we’ll never see each other again.”

“Maybe not right now, but…… once next year is over, won’t that be the case?”

After a brief silence, Jenis continued.

“By then, we won’t be family anymore.”

The blood they shared, however partial, was merely an excuse. What bound the two of them together as family was a single piece of paper.

The mercenary contract drawn up by her mother and Leonard.

For better or worse, that document was still in effect.

But even that would become nothing more than a scrap of paper next year, when she came of age and inherited the countship.

“I didn’t know you were thinking that way, Jenny.”

“I didn’t think about it that way until recently, either. But……”

Jenis remembered exactly when those thoughts had first begun to take shape.

When Hawk helped her just before Harry Miles could take her away, all she had felt was gratitude.

But from the moment she was made to accept expensive clothes and jewelry under the pretext that they were orders from the Marquis, she began to feel uncomfortable, as though she had attended a ball without receiving an invitation.

‘Sir Hawk, why are you doing so much for me?’

‘Because you are the younger sister of the man who will become our master’s husband, my lady.’

That was why Jenis couldn’t bring herself to regard the things she had received here as truly hers.

Because she wasn’t Leonard’s real sister.

“Brother, I’ve been thinking about something.”

Jenis’s gaze, unable to meet Leonard’s, settled on the coffee cup giving off a sweet aroma.

“What if you continued…… to hold on to the countship?”

“What?”

As though this were a suggestion made for Leonard’s sake, Jenis offered a plausible excuse.

“Wouldn’t the Marquis dislike it, too? If you pass the countship on to me, you’ll simply become a mercenary again.”

“No, Rin said she’d be happy with that.”

“What?”

Jenis stared at Leonard, her face full of shock.

“Don’t tell me…… you told the Marquis everything about the contract you made with Mother?”

“I did.”

Leonard nodded without hesitation.

“If I hadn’t, it would have been a fraudulent marriage.”

“Ah…… That’s true, but still……”

Too flustered to speak properly, Jenis opened and closed her mouth before finally managing to ask:

“Is the Marquis really happy with that? Really? How could she possibly be?”

“How could she possibly be? Even so, I’m still your brother. Isn’t that a little harsh? Does the fact that I’m not a count mean I have absolutely no appeal?”

“Once you take away your title…… honestly, all you’d have left is your face.”

Of course, looks mattered, but they weren’t an essential requirement when choosing a husband, even if they might be enough for a lover.

After all, she couldn’t exactly live by eating his face instead of food……

“Ah, since the Marquis is rich, I suppose she can afford to have a husband who brings nothing but his face.”

Lucky her.

That was the thought that crossed her mind without warning.

But it wasn’t because Irenea had ‘taken in a handsome husband.’

It was because she had the wealth to marry any man she liked, without having to weigh and measure his circumstances.

‘……Could I do the same if I made a lot of money, too?’

Hadn’t the reason her former fiancé had rejected her been that she was poor?

One experience of being discarded so miserably was more than enough. Next time, she wanted to be the one doing the rejecting, not the one being cast aside.

Completely unaware of the thoughts taking root in Jenis’s mind, Leonard relayed Irenea’s answer to her.

“I’m afraid not, Jenny. Rin is looking forward to the day I become ‘Leonard Blair.’ She even asked about your birthday.”

“Leonard Blair……”

Changing her surname to her husband’s. Jenis had been thinking that it was something she had never heard of before, but then she suddenly realized something.

It wasn’t something she had never heard of before at all. It was an incredibly common practice.

Even now, countless women were changing their surnames to their husbands’ after marriage.