At the name that fell from Leon’s lips without thinking, Kasha’s eyes went wide. How did you know? — her expression said exactly that.
There it is again. That startled rabbit look.
Kasha squirmed in his arms, trying to slip free, but Leon simply tightened his hold around her, as though he hadn’t noticed.
He was annoyed that this man’s voice had interrupted the moment. And though the reaction it drew from Kasha was clearly an unpleasant one, the simple fact that she had reacted at all stirred a childish irritation in him that he couldn’t quite explain.
He leaned close to her ear and murmured:
“Let’s listen a little.”
Her startled, blinking eyes narrowed slightly. Then she gave a small nod of agreement and turned her attention toward the sound, her expression growing intent.
At that moment, a woman’s voice, sharp with indignation, came from the same direction.
“Know your place, for once! You barely have a career, no background, nothing — how long have you even worked for the trading company? You should be quietly learning the business the way Father tells you to. Why on earth do you think you have any right to interfere in how it’s run?”
Wait. That voice—
“Odette Tyrot?”
Kasha breathed the name barely above a whisper. Leon looked down at her and nodded.
Kasha let out a low, involuntary sound of realization — her expression shifting to oh, could it be?
She had evidently heard the rumors about Simon and Odette as well. Margaret, her friend, would never have let such gossip pass without passing it along.
Then Simon’s voice came again — anxious, his footsteps growing closer, drifting toward where Leon and Kasha stood.
Kasha seemed to notice it too. She instinctively drew herself in. Leon allowed a faint smile to touch his lips and pulled her further into his arms, as if to hide her.
Simon’s voice reached them again, syrupy and ingratiating.
“I’m not interfering — I only thought that if I understood the internal workings of the company, I could be of better service to you.”
Ha.
The way he tacked that strained little laugh onto the end of his words — he sounded for all the world like a sycophant flattering his superior.
“I have genuinely good intentions. I want to be of use to the ducal household…”
“Of use? You? How could you possibly be of use!”
“Even so — if I were to have access to the trading company’s import and export records, and the account books, when I make my reports to Father—”
“Father? Ha!”
Odette scoffed loudly, and from the way her voice no longer moved, she seemed to have stopped walking. Her voice now came from a fixed point.
Leon seized the moment. He swept Kasha up into his arms and carried her behind the broad trunk of an old tree, into the undergrowth beyond. Kasha, startled, threw her arms around his neck — and Leon’s smile deepened considerably.
Meanwhile, the argument between Simon and Odette had turned uglier.
“You’re already calling him Father and acting like you own the place? Don’t flatter yourself, Simon Blanche. You’re a live-in son-in-law. That’s all. You do what my father tells you, and you keep me in a good mood — that’s the entirety of your role. Why do you keep trying to do things? Who on earth do you think is expecting that of you?”
“Wh — what… My lady, how can you say something like—”
“What, is your pride wounded?”
Odette, who ordinarily maintained at least a veneer of aristocratic composure, was showing her ugliest side with nothing held back. Her situation had driven her to the edge of a cliff. She no longer had the luxury of softening her words.
Leon’s sharp gaze cut through the underbrush toward the voices.
The plan he had set in motion when he first heard that formal charges had been filed against Odette Tyrot was producing results beyond what he had imagined.
His original aim had been simply to create circumstances in which Odette could no longer treat Kasha with impunity. But to have Simon Blanche swept up in it at the same time — that was an unexpected windfall.
Simon was still stammering out his defense.
“That’s not what I meant — don’t you think that’s a bit much? I’m going to be your husband before long, and yet you still—”
He was pushing back, but there was a cowering quality to his voice that he couldn’t quite conceal.
This was less a conversation between engaged persons than something approaching a master and servant.
With that thought, Leon glanced down at Kasha’s face. An expression that sat somewhere between grim satisfaction and something more bitter. The faint flush at the corners of her eyes.
He had suspected that Kasha and Simon had once been something to each other. But her expression now seemed to go beyond the mere discomfort of witnessing a former lover make a poor showing of himself.
Whether it was hatred or jealousy was unclear. Honestly, it appeared to be neither.
Whatever happened between the two of you — to make you, who are almost always unreadable, react like this.
Whatever it was, he was certain of one thing: it was deeply unpleasant. The fact that she was reacting to this man at all.
Just as Leon was thinking this, Odette shrieked.
“Then leave! Just quit!”
“What? No, that’s not — I didn’t mean—”
Simon floundering, scrambling to placate her. Odette screaming at him as though good breeding had never occurred to her.
“I said leave! Do you think I want to marry you, you idiot?”
“You — you called me an idiot… my lady, even so—”
Uuuugh.
Then came the sound of a truly animal cry, followed by the sweep of skirts and a thud as something — someone — collapsed to the ground.
“My lady! You can’t just sit down here — you’ll ruin that dress!”
“Shut up! Why on earth do I have to marry someone like you. Aagh! I’m so furious I could lose my mind — go away!”
“Odette, please—”
“Don’t say my name and go away! I can’t stand to look at you!”
A moment later, the tentative sound of footsteps retreating — and then Odette’s voice shot after him again, sharp as a whip.
“Hey! Where do you think you’re going! You’d abandon me in the middle of the forest — some fiancé you are, you coward!”
“But you just told me to go—”
“I said get over here and help me up! Do you have any idea how impossible it is to stand up alone in a dress like this?”
“…”
There followed a stretch of rustling, Odette berating Simon in a voice that could have drawn blood, and the low mutter of Simon muttering something under his breath.
Gradually, the sounds of their bickering drifted away.
Only then did Kasha push hesitantly against Leon’s chest. He let himself be moved, though the fading warmth of her body left him gritting his teeth against the loss.
Kasha murmured softly:
“So the rumors were true. I had my doubts.”
Leon replied, all innocence:
“…So it seems. Not all gossip that circulates in society is entirely without use.”
Kasha nodded, then looked up at him with something like surprise.
“Yes. But — did you already know about this, Leon?”
“I heard they had gone to the temple to apply for a marriage license.”
He had in fact known through an informant he had placed within the Tyrot ducal household — but he said nothing of that.
“Goodness. But how in the world did Simon and Odette ever become…”
Kasha tilted her head.
“I wonder how the two of them even got close in the first place. But more than that — why would Odette Tyrot choose to marry Simon of all people? She was throwing herself at you not so long ago.”
“I’m not sure how they grew close. But I suspect the two of us may have had something to do with bringing them together.”
“We did…?”
Kasha repeated the words in a puzzled voice — and then her hand flew to her mouth, and her eyes went round.
“Don’t tell me — that time, on the balcony—!”
Leon simply smiled.
The Crown Prince’s wedding banquet. The night Leon’s curse had been at its peak, and their first kiss had taken place. And the two witnesses who had seen it all — Odette and Simon.
That moment had likely been the catalyst that brought the two of them together. They had probably joined forces in hopes of driving a wedge between Kasha and Leon.
“I never imagined it. That those two would end up like this.”
Kasha murmured quietly. Her perceptive eyes grew bright with a complex light.
“It’s unexpected — but honestly, it’s good. Truly.”
“Is it?”
“Yes.”
Her answer came without a moment’s hesitation, and Leon’s mouth curved in quiet satisfaction. He had confirmed it now: she had not one trace of lingering attachment to Simon.
“It really is. Because right now, Odette is… she’s not alone in the world anymore, in a manner of speaking.”
“What do you mean?”
Leon wasn’t certain he had heard correctly.
“She’s pregnant. Simon Blanche is going to raise a child that belongs to a man whose face he’s never even seen — as his own.”
On Kasha’s small face rested a cool, measured smile. Leon studied it carefully before asking:
“Kasha. How do you know that?”
“That’s…”
Kasha lifted her head and met his eyes. What to call the tangled emotions flickering in those deep pink irises — relief? Pity? Gladness? Grim satisfaction?
“I just… heard it. From someone. A very unhappy man.”
“An unhappy… man.”
He had no idea who this person was, but the word man already grated on him. Kasha, however, seemed too absorbed in her own thoughts to notice whatever expression had settled on his face. Her small features were growing visibly tighter with concentration.
“I can’t predict how this change will affect… the course of things as they were meant to unfold.”
“The course of things as they were meant to unfold?”
Leon repeated the phrase slowly, puzzled by the turn of phrase. Kasha seemed to realize what she’d said and immediately redirected:
“No, I mean — Simon, that man. He’s cunning and underhanded. Just now, it sounded as though he was using the engagement as a pretext to extract information about the Tyrot Trading Company’s internal affairs.”
“Internal affairs of the Tyrot Trading Company. What would he want with those?”
“He’d hand them over. To whoever he serves.”
Leon noticed that Kasha’s voice was unmistakably edged with hostility. His own voice dropped before he knew it.
“Whoever Simon Blanche serves. Do you know who that is?”
At Leon’s question, something shifted in Kasha’s eyes — her pupils widening abruptly, like a creature that had come face to face with danger.
Leon waited in silence for her answer. She lowered her head. After a long moment she raised it again, and what came out of her mouth was something he had not expected at all.
“Leon. I’d like for us to end our contract courtship.”
Leon felt his heart plummet.
It was as though the shadows of the summer forest had deepened around him all at once.
He made himself ask, calmly:
“…What do you mean?”
“The hunting tournament ended more than a month ago. The exclusive courtship arrangement — it’s run its course.”
The tournament had taken place in mid-June. In truth, more than two months had passed. But what did that have to do with anything?
“Our courtship was a separate agreement, independent of the tournament results.”
“Of course. But… your curse has been lifted now.”
“Even so, you have yet to ask anything of me.”
“I needed you to remove Simon Blanche from my life. And now that Simon is going to marry Odette — I no longer need the contract.”
“Kasha Rüschino.”
Kasha stopped at the cold edge in Leon’s voice.
“Kasha. I am not a fool.”
“…”
“Simon Blanche? That man could be dealt with by the Rüschino family’s influence alone. He’s a minnow. You did not come to me because of him.”
“…”
“If you cannot yet tell me your true purpose, then don’t. But our contract courtship cannot end like this.”
“Leon.”
“I believe I told you.”
“…?”
“The curse’s aftereffect still remains.”
Leon despised himself for resorting to this — such a shabby excuse, born of nothing but the fear that she might push him away.
And yet, even if it dragged him down to the very bottom of himself, he could not let her go. Not like this.
“Leon. Ah—”
Kasha moved her lips as though she might argue, then exhaled a long, heavy sigh.
The sound of it felt like something falling through the floor of his chest. The euphoria of their kiss still burned in his head — and yet she could speak of parting as easily as this. The sheer unfairness of it was enough to undo him.
