Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Regardless, Irenea had not forgotten that kindness. She dismantled the forces of “Silent Swamp,” rescued the alchemist they had been exploiting, and entrusted him to Selen’s care.

Thanks to that, he now lived happily under Irenea’s patronage, pursuing the research he wanted to do.

“Viscount Calio probably means to make my lady drink that potion and marry her off to whomever he pleases.”

“Yes, I’m sure he does. It’s the only method he has left.”

If he could only control the marquis’s consort as he liked, Viscount Calio would gain considerable influence within the marquis’s residence.

Replacing the head butler and the housekeeper would be no trouble at all. Even slipping poison into Irenea’s meals would become very easy.

“That could have been a disaster.”

“It could have, if Viscount Calio’s only way to reach an alchemist hadn’t been through our Woody.”

Somewhere in Selen’s smiling face was a look of considerable pride.

Selen was the sort who took any boasting about her people as boasting about herself, so instead of asking why she was acting so smug, Irenea simply shook her head.

“So what did Woody make for my uncle?”

“A nutritional supplement. Still, avoid it if you can. If someone drinks the potion and nothing happens, our Woody’s credibility takes a hit.”

“Woody said that? That he’s afraid of losing credibility?”

“No? Woody is a nervous wreck that even a single hair on our benefactor’s head might come to harm.”

The dance tune that had felt so very long finally ended. After they parted and exchanged bows, Selen strode over, grinned, and fiddled with Irenea’s bonnet.

Irenea slapped her hand away, saying that a single hair of hers might be harmed because of her, and slumped her shoulders as she recalled Woody’s clear, bright smile.

“Woody must have had a hard time dealing with someone like my uncle.”

“Oh, you needn’t worry about that. As if we’d expose our precious alchemist’s person to just anyone. Naturally, another veteran did the ‘entertaining.'”

The face winking one eye was so playful that she wondered how on earth the “entertaining” had been carried out.

‘And this is someone who was once a cold-blooded person without a drop of blood or tears.’

Giving Selen a pointless glare, Irenea led her to the edge of the banquet hall.

When she stood against the wall with a whiskey glass in hand, the other guild members poured into the center as if they’d been waiting for it and began dancing as well.

There was no uniformity at all. Honestly, it was closer to some kind of movement than dancing, but she could feel from their expressions and gestures that everyone was having a wonderful time, and a smile spread across Irenea’s lips too.

Of course, that smile was hidden by the bonnet’s ribbon and barely visible. But Selen, as though she knew without looking, tossed a piece of chocolate into her mouth and flashed a similar smile.

“You really are a strange young lady.”

“What?”

The glare piercing her cheek was intense, as if suspecting, “You were insulting me again, weren’t you?” Selen shrugged, lamenting that she didn’t know when she had lost so much trust.

“Let’s talk business. Isn’t there one more thing you’re curious about?”

“Ah, right. So what happened to that big talk about relying on you alone? You know the banquet is only two weeks away, don’t you?”

“My lady, you don’t trust me?”

“I do. And because I do, stop dragging it out and just say it. Where is my man right now?”

There was not the slightest hesitation in Irenea’s voice as she called someone “my man.”

If anyone else had heard her, they would have had no doubt that the man was Irenea’s lover.

Selen had thought so at first, too. But after investigating, it was impossible.

‘They’ve crossed paths only once… and they didn’t even properly meet.’

He was, after all, the man Irenea herself had pointedly chosen as her husband. Selen had even summoned the guild’s executives and scraped together every scrap of information she could.

She could vouch for it: there was not a single piece of information about Leonard Elpiers that she had missed.

But no matter how she combined and recombined the collected information, the sole point of contact between Irenea Blair and Leonard Elpiers was one thing. That in the past, on the same day and in the same place, they had made their society debut.

Yet both of them had gone straight home after paying their respects to the Emperor. Being in the same place at the same time, their eyes might have met, but the fact that the two had not exchanged a single word that day, in that place, had already been cross-verified.

Of course, falling in love at first sight from a passing glance might be possible. Even in Selen’s eyes, Leonard Elpiers was a remarkably handsome man.

But this was no one else, but Marchioness Blair, that Irenea.

Had she decided on a man as her husband purely because of his looks?

“This is a bit of a late question, now that I think about it…”

“What?”

Any more of this and poison needles might shoot out of her eyes. The gaze, invisible beneath the bonnet, stung so sharply that Selen hurriedly waved her hands.

“No, that’s not what I meant. You haven’t mistaken the person, have you? The man you had me investigate.”

“You’re asking that now? Do I look like a woman who mistakes people?”

“Of course not.”

In the end, only one conclusion could be drawn.

That at some moment, there had been a point of contact between the two that neither she nor any of Moon Shadow’s informants had caught.

“Ugh… my pride is wounded.”

“Are you going to keep talking nonsense? I asked what happened. Can you arrange a meeting with Leonard Elpiers or not?”

The reason Irenea, someone as great as Marchioness Blair, had to summon an information guild’s master in order to meet Leonard Elpiers.

The answer was simple. After finishing a brief year of social activity, Leonard Elpiers had returned to his domain and never shown his face at any gathering since, shutting himself away.

The invitations, letters, and greeting cards sent there were all being returned as well.

‘I will invite him to the banquet without fail and introduce him as the man who will be my husband. Can you make that happen?’

She had her pride as the master of an information guild. How could she shake her head and say she couldn’t?

And even setting aside that the one asking was a benefactor to everyone in the back alleys, Selen wanted to give some breathing room to this young lady who ran straight ahead as though she would die if she stopped.

If that came in the form of a date with her future husband, so much the better.

Selen put on a proud smile, like the head of a household who had bought beef and come home from work.

“Of course I can.”

“When, and how?”

“Now. Right this minute.”

“What?”

At Irenea’s bewildered question, Selen pulled a pocket watch from her pocket and pretended to check the time.

“Go outside and wait a moment. My kids will herd the rabbit over in no time.”

“…Really? If I go out now, I can see him again?”

Irenea’s dazed voice told her what kind of expression she must be wearing beneath the bonnet.

Selen felt a pang herself, and without dragging it out she nodded, whereupon Irenea gathered up her voluminous skirts and rushed hurriedly out the door.

Selen was very curious about how the meeting between the two, which she hadn’t managed to uncover, had come about, and what form their reunion would take…

But she decided not to disturb Irenea with idle curiosity. She sincerely wished for Irenea to be happy.

* * *

‘I can meet him? Really? Just like that, so suddenly?’

Having slipped out of the building and stopped before the door, Irenea steadied her ragged breath and quickly looked around.

There were three paths running between the shadowy alleys.

She should have checked in advance which direction he would come from. She must really have been out of her wits, Irenea chided herself.

‘More to the point, so he was in the capital after all.’

Irenea calmly reviewed what she knew of Leonard’s movements.

Around this time, after losing his earldom to a certain incident and returning to being a mercenary, he would become the captain of the mercenary company he’d once belonged to and make a name for himself in no time.

She knew from hearing it directly from him how he had ended up losing his title, his honor, and even his only family, and gone back to mercenary work.

Irenea did not want to let Leonard lose what he had. For that reason alone, she had to meet him.

Of course, even before that, the wish to see him was greater.

Thud, thud.

Just then, quick, heavy footsteps sounded from the alley behind her.

Footsteps drawing steadily closer to her. Irenea pressed down her pounding heart and turned around.

And there he was.

Looking so much like the face she had dreamed of every day, terrified of forgetting it, though a little younger than the one she knew.

‘Ah…’

Biting her lower lip hard, Irenea gazed at Leonard’s face in a daze.

Golden hair, slightly tousled by the wind. Vermilion eyes that had felt like blood when he cut down his enemies mercilessly, and like a warm campfire when he comforted her tenderly.

Eyes that seemed to meet hers for an instant widened into circles.

In that moment, Irenea fell into an illusion. That he remembered her too, and had longed for nothing but to meet her.

‘Rin.’

But the tender call did not come. Not a trace of longing lay in his gaze. He merely looked her up and down, as one would a stranger.

She had no time to be hurt by that gap. She was too entranced by how much fresher and healthier he looked than the man she had known.

‘So this is the face you have now…’

No matter how well he rested, the shadows beneath his eyes and his haggard air had never left him. How could Irenea not know that the lack brought by misfortune that had come down like a sudden downpour could not be filled by anything?

Perhaps it was because they both carried holes of a similar size in their chests that the two had been able to share the passing wind.

Irenea barely held back the tears welling at the corners of her eyes.

“That way, over there!”

Just then, at the voice from behind him, Leonard flinched, his shoulders jerking.

Could this man, who had been called iron and blood itself, actually be startled by something like that? Even with her eyes burning, she laughed, glad of the newly learned fact.

‘To think I’d meet you again like this…’

Irenea thought it was truly fortunate that she wore a bonnet covering half her face.

Had Leonard been able to see her face, he would have wondered who this woman was, looking at him, a total stranger, with such an expression.

‘Yes, this is our first meeting.’

What did it matter if he had no memory?

If anything, it was better. Without needing to comfort each other, without needing to console or pity each other, they could write their story anew from the beginning.

Her past self was already dead. Even before that, the past him had died. Protecting her.

My cruel knight, who broke a promise for the first and last time, and of all promises, the one never to die before her.

Hiding her heart, so overwhelmed it felt ready to burst, Irenea approached him, one step, then two.

As the distance closed, Leonard raised one eyebrow slightly, as if flustered. Fearing that he might startle and flee, her last step was taken in haste.

The moment she finally placed her hand on his arm, she couldn’t help smiling brightly beneath her bonnet.