Chapter 6

Chapter 6

“Shall I help you, Sir?”

He didn’t seem to notice the joy that filled her voice.

“Help with what…?”

“Here he is! Oh my?”

Just then, a woman who had appeared behind Leonard shouted loudly, as if meant to be overheard. Then, unseen by Leonard, she winked one eye at Irenea.

They’re Moon Shadow’s guild members, Irenea realized at once.

Barely resisting the urge to blow a kiss to the women who had brought Leonard to her, she linked her arm through his.

“You’re too late, Sisters. I caught this man first.”

In truth, the words were meant not for the women but for Leonard.

You can’t run away from me anymore.

Gripping Leonard’s arm firmly, Irenea guided him to the plaza. Though they had wound their way through familiar alleys by a rather roundabout route, the walk with him felt terribly short.

‘I want to stay like this, together, forever. But right now… a confession would be useless.’

Irenea knew that the reason the Leonard of the past had reached out to her was pity.

A noblewoman who had been continually abused by her husband and lost her will to live. A man who couldn’t pass her by, because she looked so much like she would end her own life given the chance, and so much like his dead younger sister.

The Leonard of now would surely hold no feelings for her at all.

‘What should I do? What should I say to him?’

While she was busily deliberating, Leonard, who had let out a sigh as if finally relieved, offered a courteous greeting.

“Thank you for your help, my lady. Thanks to you, I was able to escape a dire predicament.”

The title “my lady” and his more formal manner of speech meant he had picked up on her status.

Irenea, who had tensed slightly at the thought that he might have caught on to the contrived nature of this meeting, felt relieved when she realized the faint emotion in his eyes was mere curiosity.

‘Even if he noticed, I wasn’t going to let him go so easily.’

With a short laugh, Irenea spoke to Leonard in a soft voice.

“If you truly consider my help a favor, may I ask you to repay it?”

“Repay it, you say?”

“Yes, repay it.”

Irenea realized she had chosen the right word.

Though he came from a mercenary background, he had been more of a knight than any knight, and he valued a debt of kindness above grudges.

Look at him even now. For a mere bit of guidance, he could simply have pretended not to know her and gone on his way, and yet there he stood in silence.

Releasing Leonard’s arm, she stood before him, spread her skirts wide with both hands, and curtsied.

“You who have won the honor of Anup. I’ll send someone to your lodgings soon. Please, do not refuse my invitation.”

“…Do you know who I am?”

“Of course.”

My love, my light, my everything.

Having chewed over and over the Leonard of her fading memories, she found that coming face to face with the real him left her unbearably elated.

Suppressing the urge to laugh out loud, Irenea made a vow.

‘I promise. I will never leave you behind and go first.’

The promise you broke, this time I will make sure you keep it.

* * *

“Kiri! I finally met him!”

As she flung the carriage door open herself, Kiri, who really had been reading documents, said, “I see,” and nodded.

Her reaction seemed curt at first glance, but a faint smile had spread at the corner of her mouth. It was a smile that held a very gentle warmth.

“I just received the documents from Selen. An order for formal attire in Count Elpiers’s size has already been placed at a gentlemen’s tailor.”

“Really? Show me too!”

Scrambling into the carriage, Irenea undid the ribbon, tossed the bonnet aside, and shook her head a few times.

Not noticing that her sweat-damp hair clung to her cheeks, her eyes moved with the utmost speed as she scanned the papers she’d been handed.

In her place, Kiri closed the half-shut carriage door and tapped the wall to set the carriage in motion.

“Number 12, Ivy Street, the Boyle Inn…”

After chewing over that address a few times, Irenea’s brow furrowed slightly.

“If it’s Ivy Street, a night’s lodging usually runs about 5,000 lark, doesn’t it?”

“Yes. It shouldn’t differ much from that.”

A standard room at the Velvet Street hotels, where nobles typically stayed, cost around 100,000 lark a night.

And the suites at the hotels she favored when staying in other cities started at one million lark a night.

Her head spun for a moment at the gap, but then she recalled that the daily lodging cost during her own days as a mercenary had also been around 5,000 lark, and she nodded.

“Still, a noble would normally stay on Velvet Street for the sake of his dignity…”

Then again, Leonard had never been a man who cared about things like dignity to begin with.

Besides, the reason he’d come up to the capital now was to raise money to repay his debt.

Thirty million lark in total, principal and interest.

That staggering sum, enough to buy a shop in the capital’s busy district, was a gambling debt run up by the previous Count Elpiers, Leonard’s own father.

‘He worked as a mercenary under a hidden name and identity to pay off that debt. After all, he couldn’t very well work as a mercenary as a count…’

A man starting over as a newcomer like that could hardly have commanded a high fee. Picking only the rough jobs no one else would take, he had barely managed to keep up with the interest.

Then, when he made his name in the Weinburg Great Forest and his fee rose,

‘The creditor suddenly demanded the principal be repaid in a lump sum, they said.’

Along with an outrageous demand: if he couldn’t, he should hand over his younger sister as a bride for the creditor’s son.

So, given his current circumstances, it was right for him to save every last coin. It was right, but…

‘I want to put him up in the finest suite of the finest hotel, with the finest service piled on top…!’

But for now, she’d have to hold back.

After all, she had met him only once.

‘Just you wait. No matter what happens, I will make you happy.’

Shaking off her regret and frustration at being unable to do anything for him right now, Irenea read and reread the documents about Leonard.

Mixed in among them was news of the item she had told them to keep an eye on being put up in this auction.

“As expected, that sword has already been submitted.”

Chewing over what Leonard had once told her in the past, Irenea sent Kiri on an errand.

“I need to attend this auction. Get me a catalog. And…”

Kiri looked slightly surprised at the additional task Irenea assigned, but soon nodded loyally.

* * *

And so, two weeks later, on the day of the banquet.

“What happened? Has he arrived?”

“Please calm down, Marchioness. That’s the twentieth time you’ve asked…”

Emily, the lady’s maid in charge of Irenea’s grooming, looked slightly fed up.

But Irenea, seemingly unaware of it, only wore a look of genuine bewilderment.

“Why hasn’t he arrived after I’ve asked twenty times? Did you actually send the carriage?”

“I believe you asked that exact question twenty times too, and yes, I did. Dozens of carriages are arriving at the mansion right now, so please wait calmly and stop biting your lip. You’ll ruin your makeup.”

At Emily’s small gesture, a maid standing nearby swiftly approached with a tray.

From the cosmetics piled on the tray, Emily picked up the rouge dish and had Irenea bite down again on the paper dyed red.

Fortunately, her efforts paid off, and the twenty-first question did not burst from Irenea’s mouth.

Instead, just as her restless glances toward the door began to feel deafeningly loud, an attendant finally rushed in with the news she had been waiting for.

“Count Elpiers has arrived!”

“Really?”

The paper, which fluttered down because she’d opened her mouth reflexively, was deftly caught by Emily.

As Emily pressed a hand to her chest, relieved at having narrowly prevented red from staining the white dress, Irenea, oblivious, fussed over the mirror.

“How do I look? Am I pretty? Do you think Sir Leonard will fall for me at first sight?”

“Of course. If he doesn’t fall at first sight, his eyes must be sprained, so please send him straight to a doctor.”

“Don’t worry. That man has terrific eyesight.”

After adjusting the slightly nervous Irenea’s attire one last time, Emily clapped her hands once, directed the maids, and lined them up along the wall of the drawing room.

And then, at last.

“Count Elpiers has arrived.”

The drawing-room door opened, and the man Irenea had waited for so desperately strode inside.

Helplessly captivated, Irenea’s eyes followed every tiny movement of Leonard’s without missing a single one.

‘Ah…’

Ray, my love.

A rapturous sigh escaped Irenea’s lips.

As a result, everyone in the drawing room except for herself and the slightly nervous Leonard noticed. That it was not he but she who had fallen in love at first sight.

“Ahem.”

Had it not been for Emily’s pointed cough, she would have kept sitting there with that dazed look.

Thanks to it, Irenea came to her senses and thanked Emily with a glance. Emily answered her with a small smile.

“Thank you for accepting my invitation, Sir Leonard.”

Fortunately, her voice as she addressed Leonard came out smooth, without a tremor.

Holding her broadly flared skirts, Irenea curtsied lightly and met Leonard’s eyes, working hard to control her expression.

His golden hair, swept back without a single stray strand, was as entrancing as waves across a rich wheat field, and the broad forehead revealed beneath it accentuated his masculinity.

Beneath thick brows and abundant lashes, his vermilion eyes, flickering as they blinked, brimmed with life like a blazing torch.

Just as Kiri and the Hawk siblings often said, Irenea could not help but admit that there was something of the moth in her.

Otherwise, the urge to leap into those burning eyes could never rage so wildly, like a horned colt.