Episode 8
He could not bring himself to ask why she was wearing such a resolute expression, as if it were her own affair when it was not.
Nor could he ask the even more pointed question: why was she, unlike him, an heiress who had received that vast fortune without such worries, acting as though she understood him?
Matilda happened to enter the dining room at just the right moment, and at the time, Isaac simply could not get another word out.
It was absurd, after all, the way her attitude had changed when she had seemed so utterly indifferent to him, now behaving as if she even felt some kinship with him.
……Ha.
Fine. Forget it.
The next day was Friday.
And on Friday, without fail, that woman, Sasha Grayson, came to see him again.
Isaac was in poor condition from the previous day’s hangover. Of course, he was still better off than Major Wells, who had drunk with great enthusiasm under the pretext of comforting him, but in any case, the hangover had left him with a headache and nausea, putting him in a thoroughly low mood.
As she had over the past few days, Sasha Grayson brazenly occupied the sofa in his office and merely drank tea while rambling on about vague, inconsequential things.
She acted as though she had never heard the story he had drunkenly told the day before about the disastrous arranged meeting, or about his grandmother forcing him to marry.
Isaac was oddly grateful for that, and yet he could not understand why she had gone so far as to come bother him again today, which made him a little irritated.
‘Why did you come here?’
So why, exactly, had she come? The question he had failed to ask the day before hovered in his throat.
Had she never actually intended to get a proper apology from him in the first place?
But when he remembered the words of comfort she had spoken the day before, even those doubts vanished cleanly.
‘She’s a woman I’ll never see again anyway.’
Muttering it inwardly as if brainwashing himself, Isaac looked at her warily.
Just then, as if she had suddenly remembered, the woman handed him the flat box that had been sitting beside her.
“I’m returning to the capital today.”
The woman spoke with a courteous smile.
Isaac, who had only been staring at the flat box she had thrust toward him, awkwardly reached out and accepted it only after hearing her words. A faint scent of cinnamon drifted from the crack in the box.
“It’s apple pie. I heard you liked it.”
“……From whom?”
“The major’s wife. She said you rarely come down toward the village, but whenever this pie shop opens, you never fail to stop by……”
“Thank you.”
Isaac hurriedly cut her off.
Sasha smiled as she saw both his ears turn red.
It was something she had felt on the first day she came here, when she had spoken properly with that man named Isaac Pinsher.
“Thank you for putting up with me these past four days, even though I must have been a nuisance.”
He was quite normal. Far from the scoundrel of rumor, he was merely a man who was moderately shameless and rude, and a little too defensive.
Sasha silently mulled over her impression of Isaac for a moment. Should she just tell this man honestly?
The real reason she had come here.
“To be honest, I never needed an apology from you from the beginning.”
After a brief moment of hesitation, she spoke honestly.
“……Pardon? What do you mean?”
“About asking you for an apology.”
Whether Isaac stared at her blankly with a slightly foolish expression or not, Sasha continued speaking frankly.
“I simply needed an excuse. After that commotion at the party, there was certainly damage on my side as well. Mr. Osmond and Mr. Bloom, the ones you struck that day, kept refusing to leave the mansion under the pretext of treatment.”
“…….”
“And my cousin, too, camped out in the annex under the excuse of protecting me and showed no intention of leaving. I thought it would only last a few days, but all three of them were tormenting me in their own ways, so……”
Sasha continued with a neat smile.
“I said I would personally go and receive your apology, then simply left the mansion myself. But my cousin went so far as to attach a maid to me, so for form’s sake, I had to make it look as though I kept coming to persuade you.”
The explanation flowed out smoothly, as if she had been waiting to say it.
As Isaac stared at her, blinking, Sasha pointed toward the door and whispered.
“She’s waiting for me outside that door even now. She followed me around all day, so yesterday I gave her some work and shook her off, and now she’s in a very foul mood. Mm. In any case.”
“You came to see me every day because you were worried about a maid watching you?”
“The maid my cousin attached to me.”
“So you were worried about your cousin……”
Her cousin, who had apparently assigned a maid to monitor her as if it were the most natural thing in the world, and her excuse that she had no choice but to bother him as though performing a play because she had to keep up appearances before that cousin—it all struck him as bewildering.
“My cousin is the young Duke of Grayson, Jeffrey Grayson. He has had quite a personality since childhood. He’s the sort of man who isn’t satisfied unless he gets everything he wants.”
At Sasha’s matter-of-fact explanation, Isaac asked with a reluctant expression.
“Is your cousin courting you or something?”
“Oh, similar, but different. Courtship is at least far more gentlemanly. Yes. Far more polite. After all, it at least waits until the other party gives permission.”
In other words, her cousin did not even care about such formalities……
“…….”
“…….”
Silence fell.
Isaac looked at Sasha without saying a word, and Sasha, too, merely looked at him as if she expected no words of comfort from him.
Neither of us is interested in the other anyway.
“I seem to have gone on about something too personal. Please just forget it lightly.”
So just forget it.
Just as she had listened to his lament yesterday and pretended not to know, she was asking him to let it pass as if he had never heard about her troublesome cousin.
Isaac obediently nodded. Just as she had been, he too had not been profoundly interested in her to begin with.
“At any rate, I apologize for the past four days. And, um…… I also wanted to thank you. Thanks to you, I was able to spend my time comfortably, looking around various parts of Lance Field.”
“…….”
“I enjoyed speaking with many people as well. Everyone here is kind. So much so that, if I could, I would like to come again.”
“……Then just come again.”
Isaac spoke as if grumbling.
“Don’t use me as an excuse. This time, just come purely for sightseeing. The major and the major’s wife like you so much that they’ll welcome you……”
Without realizing it, Isaac continued as though encouraging her.
But even after hearing his words, Sasha only smiled faintly.
“If I could, I would like that, but I expect to be rather busy from now on.”
“Because you have to drive those men out?”
“That’s part of it, but much like your circumstances, Captain, I’m also in a situation where I urgently need to marry……”
The woman said only that much.
Then she looked at the clock on the wall and rose from her seat, saying she ought to be going.
Isaac stood up after her without realizing it. Naturally, as if seeing her off, he went ahead toward the door and opened it for her.
As if that were not enough, he even left the office with her and escorted her all the way to where the carriage was waiting.
“Wait a moment. Greta, no.”
“…….”
“I mean, you…… that.”
“It’s Sasha Grayson, Captain.”
Truly, as if even that were not enough, he reopened the carriage door that had been about to close and stood there, looking to anyone who saw him as though he were overflowing with regret, and forced the words out to her.
“I hope you make sure to drive out those two bastards, Miss Grayson.”
“……Why?”
“Because the handsome one among them intends to seduce you, and the short one intends to squeeze money out of you.”
The woman did not look particularly surprised.
Right. How could there be only one or two men with such intentions around her? There must be countless men who approached her for her fortune alone, differing only in their methods.
“Captain.”
“Yes.”
“If we had met in a different way, I think we might have become good friends. It’s a pity.”
Isaac objected one beat too late.
“……Pardon?”
Sasha was already getting into the carriage.
“Thank you, Captain. I’ll be careful.”
The door closed, and the carriage carrying Sasha Grayson departed just like that.
Isaac stood there for a long while, breathing hard as he watched it go.
“…….”
The lingering feeling lasted only a moment, and as soon as the carriage disappeared into a dot, Isaac turned away with a relieved expression.
‘In any case, I won’t be seeing her again.’
＊＊＊
Incidents always had a way of occurring in unexpected forms. And to Isaac, an incident always meant misfortune.
When that woman, Sasha Grayson, who had left by carriage as if they would never meet again, returned to Lance Field in less than a week,
Isaac Pinsher instinctively sensed that something ominous was about to happen.
“It’s nice to see you after so long, Captain. Have you been well?”
The woman did not have the businesslike air she had worn on the first day she came here, nor the utterly honest expression she had shown on the last day when she left.
Rather, she looked at him with a bright smile filled with even more pretense than on the first day, a smile that anyone could see was aimed at winning his favor.
“If you’re here for sightseeing, go see the major’s wife.”
“No. I came because I have business with you, Captain.”
The woman spoke with utmost clarity.
“You urgently need a marriage partner, don’t you?”
With a brazen smile that showed not a trace of her former thoughtfulness.
“In fact, I was in the same situation. And circumstances on my side have become urgent.”
She had become a completely different person, to the point that he wondered if she had truly been struck on the head somewhere.
“How about me as your partner?”
She promptly hurled a bombshell at him.