Chapter 15

Adel could not believe what he had said. Did he even know how many people he had just insulted?

“Tell me! Earlier today you two were looking into each other’s eyes and smiling—did something happen behind my back?”

“Th-that is insane….”

“If not, how could you—Adelaide Devryan—do this to me?”

Looking deeply wounded, he released Adel’s arm, turned away, and pressed a hand to his forehead.

“I only asked about my sister’s health.”

“That was the only thing you talked about, and yet your face looked like that?”

“It is true that he suggested I visit the imperial palace to see my sister.”

“I knew it.”

He glared at her again with resentful eyes.

“But that was merely a courteous remark to me, since I had asked after my sister. And I am only trying to give you the divorce you want.”

“I never said I wanted a divorce.”

“Yes, and of course that is because of the title.”

“I don’t need any of that!”

“Now… you say that?”

At Adel’s words, Ethan turned. Countless emotions lay in the eyes of the two as they looked at each other. The moment he met her eyes, Ethan felt the ground sink beneath him.

“In any case… you are not going anywhere.”

With that, Ethan seized Adel’s wrist again. And with a pace neither slow nor fast, he led her up to the second floor.

“I will go to the annex.”

“Here!”

Ethan, his voice rising for a moment, paused briefly to steady his breathing.

“This is your room. From now on, I will not permit you to stay in the annex.”

Ethan pushed her into Adel’s room in the main house, closed the door himself, and moved away from her.

* * *

Jacques, having returned from Herbron, had moved into the grand mansion in the capital’s bustling district that he had purchased not long ago. Since the Emperor had granted Jacques only a manor at the Empire’s border and a single residence, Jacques’s townhouse was one he had procured himself. Of course, Jacques had never once gone down to his own estate.

The townhouse where Jacques had stayed in the capital had belonged to a baronial family that supplied foodstuffs to the imperial house, but after it was revealed that they had manipulated their ledgers and embezzled, they had been stripped of their title and had their property confiscated a few years ago.

Jacques had bought the empty house for a pittance, but for a man who had once been crown prince and was now a duke of the Empire, it had been absurdly shabby.

Yet, whatever had happened in the two years since, Jacques had secured a massive mansion in the district where the wealthiest people in the capital’s central area lived.

“Truly congratulations, Duke.”

“Thank you.”

Although he had not put forward the pretext of holding a banquet to commemorate the acquisition of the new mansion, most nobles who had built friendships with him over time thought Jacques was holding the banquet to show off this enormous mansion.

“The mansion is so beautiful.”

“You flatter me.”

This place, once the mansion of a countly family with a long history, was not a house one could buy no matter how much money one had. It was of a scale unimaginable for the city center and had five large gardens. In the garden where a fountain rivaling the imperial palace had been installed, it was even said that the sun of Hessenia touched there first. Although Enoch had witnessed with his own eyes the process by which all of this had come about, he simply could not believe it. A mine on an estate everyone had thought abandoned… how absurd was that?

“But Duke, why did you not reply to my letters?”

Jacques, exchanging greetings with a ceremonial smile, offered an even deeper smile to the woman who threw him a sudden question. Knowing that smile appeared when he did not recognize the other person, Enoch shook his head from side to side. Unaware of Jacques’s feelings, the woman pressed her body closer.

“Tonight, my husband… will be away from the capital.”

It was, to anyone’s eyes, a secret invitation. At this, Jacques smiled brightly and responded to the woman.

“I hope your husband, who is traveling far, returns safely.”

At Jacques’s words, the woman flushed with shame. That woman had probably built and demolished countless towers alone over a single meaningless smile from Jacques.

Enoch thought the rejected woman would soon move away from Jacques with a face full of anger. But the woman, on the verge of tears, withdrew from Jacques while dripping with lingering attachment.

Once the Countess had moved away from him, Jacques called Enoch.

“Who was that?”

“Was she not Countess Ksen? She sent more than thirty letters.”

“Do not send invitations to that family from now on.”

“Are you saying that because she was a little bothersome?”

“No. They are a useless family now.”

Come to think of it, Count Ksen was someone on whom Jacques had stamped “I don’t like him” within a single second of seeing him. From past experience, Enoch could tell that something bad would soon happen to House Ksen.

“By the way, why has Devryan been mentioned all day at my banquet?”

“If you mean the family that rules the Herbron estate….”

At the rare question, Enoch drew out the end of his sentence, hoping Jacques would grow more curious. It irritated him that he alone was always assigning meaning to Jacques’s every action and fretting over it. He wanted his master, who always wore a leisurely smile, to be a little anxious and a little—just a fingernail’s worth—curious.

“If you do not want to tell me, forget it. Even without you, there are many ways to find out.”

But Jacques did not easily soothe Enoch’s feelings. When he turned without hesitation, Enoch hurriedly spoke.

“Is it not because His Highness the Crown Prince let slip at an imperial palace banquet not long ago that the mistress of House Devryan would soon come to the capital?”

Jacques looked at his thoroughly provoked aide and let out a soft laugh. At times like this, Enoch could not erase the feeling that the man before him was an apex predator with everything beneath his feet.

“The mistress is coming up to the capital, so why is the husband’s name mentioned more?”

He asked with some puzzlement. Because the Countess he had seen in Herbron had shown no intention at all of coming to the imperial palace.

“Are you asking because you do not know?”

“….”

“Do you truly, really not know?”

“Yes. But is this something to make such a gleeful face over?”

Jacques clicked his tongue as if he could not understand, but Enoch began chattering away in genuine excitement.

“Count Ethan Devryan was the butterfly of the capital’s high society before you dominated it, Duke.”

“Butterfly? What is a butterfly?”

“You do not know… a butterfly?”

At that moment, it occurred to Enoch that people probably had not chattered to his face about him being the butterfly of high society.

“You truly… do not know.”

“And if I do not?”

“Today you seem to know so very little.”

“I did not know that counted as a welfare benefit in your work environment.”

“Yes, and what of it? As Your Grace’s aide, it is my duty to resolve your curiosity.”

As Enoch kept needling him, Jacques, unbearably bored, tried to leave the spot. At that, Enoch hurriedly supplied the answer.

“Is the butterfly not yourself? It means the most beautiful and popular man in high society.”

He recalled Ethan Devryan, who had worn a solemn expression like a clergyman. It was a modifier utterly unsuited to such a stifling person.

“Vulgar. Then what is a woman?”

“A flower, of course.”

“Vulgar and shallow besides.”

Enoch shrugged as if to say, what did it matter?

“At the center of it all is you, Duke.”

“It is a relief it is not a punishment. So why did my former butterfly leave all these beautiful flowers?”

“Because he got married.”

“He married, but he stayed in the capital the whole time. And why would marriage be a reason to leave high society?”

“You have been there, so you should know. The estate is far from the capital. They held the wedding after the Countess came of age. And after that, he stayed on the estate the whole time.”

In that moment, Jacques thought of Adel. No—in truth, he had often thought of her since that meeting. But he had thought it was only because of the great disparity between the woman who had let her golden hair down and laughed like a girl on the plain, and the way she had sat like an aged noblewoman inside that mansion that felt entirely gray.

‘Why on earth did the Crown Princess bring me and her together?’

Jacques was startled by his own thoughts and frowned. They said the women of House Millium possessed very mysterious powers; it seemed he, too, had unconsciously been thinking that his meeting with the Countess had been something special.

“But do you know something?”

At Enoch’s voice, higher-pitched and frivolous today of all days, Jacques was pulled from his thoughts.

“What now?”

“Count Devryan’s nickname was the Cold-Blooded Butterfly. Some also called him the Ice Sun.”

“Tacky.”

“Tacky, you say? It was a name that once set this high society abuzz.”

“I’m sure.”

“Are you not curious why he earned such a nickname?”

“I am not curious.”

“Then should you not be curious by now what kind of butterfly you are?”

“I have no desire at all to know, so you had better not even bring up my nickname. It gives me the creeps.”

Jacques had already turned away from Enoch, but Enoch continued to follow him afterward, unable to hide his excitement.