18.
I climbed into the carriage with renewed resolve.
The carriage began to set off, rocking as it went.
The problem now was that appointment letter.
The appointment letter that Duke Gladineer had personally obtained, even receiving the emperor’s seal after a private audience.
Frankly, that alone was enough to cause a great stir among the nobles.
On top of that, the person singled out just had to be a baron with problems in more ways than one.
Having no public esteem was a fatal flaw among nobles.
In truth, more than anything else, I found the duke’s intentions suspicious.
The duke had taken the elixir.
What that implied was quite clear.
The current emperor had no particular interest in drawing lines and standing against the noble faction.
That very hands-off attitude actually made it difficult for the nobles to unite as one.
For the sake of their respective interests, the political world was in a complicated state, divided into groups large and small.
In such a situation, there was a young duke who had become the pillar of an emerging force through an early generational shift and brilliant military achievements.
And Duke Gladineer, of all people, had gone out of his way to appoint me as his direct adjutant.
Even the emperor had yielded to him.
This was not a good thing for the duke either.
He could come under concentrated political fire.
And what if the matter grew too large to control?
Considering that when I visited him last time, he had said things like, “Did you come because of the appointment letter?” it seemed he was aware that what he had done was not exactly sensible.
After all, taking an elixir wouldn’t suddenly turn a person into an idiot.
Would it?
At this point, was it fair to regard him as a gravely ill patient incapable of sound judgment?
While I was lost in various thoughts, the carriage arrived at its destination before I knew it.
I took a deep breath, then got down from the carriage.
I already knew that persuading him would not be easy.
* * *
The duke, who had been leaving the mansion, suddenly turned his head toward me.
It was as natural a movement as if he had felt the wind, but there was no sign of surprise in his eyes when he found me.
I bowed my head lightly in greeting.
Leaving his carriage behind, he walked toward me.
Even beneath the early morning sunlight, his hair was vividly red.
A perfect red that neither faded into paleness under the light nor darkened in shadow caught the eye.
Was it because it was rare for human hair to reveal its own color so distinctly?
Usually, some other color would be mixed in, however faintly.
My gaze kept drifting to it.
“Baron.”
He smiled faintly.
His posture, hands naturally clasped behind his back, was straight.
There was a restrained elegance about him.
Like the distance between him and me.
Stopping at a distance just beyond reach even if I stretched out my hand, the duke asked me,
“What brings you all the way here?”
There was not the slightest trace in his tone of blaming me for the discourtesy of coming all the way to the duke’s private residence without prior notice.
“Your Grace.”
I felt his gaze focus on me, as if he were listening attentively.
I cleared my throat and asked the question I had prepared in advance.
“Did you not miss me?”
Whether he frowned, grew wary, or denied it outright, I was confident I could handle it all.
After all, unless I brought this problem out into the open, no matter how much we talked, the conversation would only go in circles.
But the duke stared at me with a face as unchanged as an ancient tree.
“……”
So much so that I, who had asked such a question, was the one who felt awkward instead.
Well, he was the sort of person who hadn’t so much as raised an eyebrow when told he had taken an elixir, so there was no way a mere question about whether he missed me would startle him.
The duke lowered his gaze for a moment, then asked, his arms still loosely clasped behind his back.
“It seems you’ve finished sorting out your thoughts?”
If anything, he seemed more interested in the true meaning behind my words than in what I had actually said.
No matter how I looked at it, he was certainly a man indifferent to his own emotions.
In any case, I answered.
“Yes.”
“Then what answer do you wish to hear?”
Still, it seemed he did not entirely intend to avoid answering my question.
“The truth.”
Just then, I saw the aide who had been standing a little way off, glancing at his watch and shooting dissatisfied looks at me, finally unable to endure it any longer and approaching us.
It seemed he was coming to urge us along, apparently worried that the next item on the schedule would be disrupted because of me.
The duke, who must have noticed his presence far earlier than I did, kept his gaze fixed on me without breaking his focus.
“I missed you.”
The aide stopped dead in his tracks.
Judging by how his complexion worsened in an instant, he had clearly heard it.
A horrified gaze stabbed into the back of the duke’s head, then was hastily withdrawn.
The duke was still looking at me.
“Very much.”
“……”
“The entire time.”
His voice was low and quiet.
I was the one who had asked, and yet I felt as though my own face might grow hot.
The aide approached, repeatedly clearing his throat.
Whether he did or not, the duke did not seem to care in the slightest.
“Was that answer enough? Baron.”
“……More than enough.”
The aide did not miss that chance and quickly cut in.
“Your Grace. You must depart now.”
“Would you like to ride with me?”
I nodded without even knowing where he was going.
Because I had something to say.
Once we were done, he would drop me off somewhere along the way.
The aide shot me a sideways glare. When I deliberately turned my head to meet his gaze, he instantly looked away and pretended not to see me.
Well, that was normal.
Duke Gladineer was the abnormal one.
I followed after the duke, who had already taken the lead and was walking ahead.
His unwavering back felt like a measure of the attention he held for me.
He didn’t look back even once.
Even though he said he missed me.
The one who could not seem to take his eyes off me, rather, was the aide.
There were many things about Duke Gladineer that were questionable in various ways.
But I had not forgotten the golden spray and foam that had blossomed before the duke’s eyes.
There was no other possibility.
The carriage door opened. When I raised my head, the duke was offering me his hand.
I stared blankly at the hand clad in a white leather glove, and the duke lowered it.
“That was rude of me.”
“Ah, that’s not……”
“Please get in first and speak after we depart.”
The aide slipped in again.
When I looked at him, the aide gazed off into the distance, ignoring me.
“……”
In front of the duke, he might be an aide, but by rank, there was every possibility he came from a family far more powerful than mine.
I quietly climbed into the carriage.
The duke climbed in after me and sat across from me.
For a ducal house, even the most basic carriage was usually a four-horse one, but he rode around in an ordinary carriage commonly seen on the streets.
Perhaps because of that, when the duke bent his legs to sit, his knees briefly bumped against mine.
When I pressed my body close to the backrest and tactfully drew my knees in, the duke blinked as if troubled, then sat back as far as he could.
But the length of his legs made its presence even more clearly known in such a narrow space than when he was simply standing.
After a somewhat uncomfortable and embarrassing adjustment of our positions, my legs ended up modestly gathered between his.
I quietly tugged at the crumpled hem of my dress and smoothed it out.
When even the aide tried to climb into the carriage,
the duke raised one eyebrow and took hold of the door as if to block him.
“Your Grace?”
“You ride a horse.”
“Pardon? But—”
The door slammed shut right in front of the aide’s eyes.
The duke’s attitude, as if there was no need to hear another word, was clean and utterly without excess.
The carriage began racing down the road, rocking intermittently, and our knees inevitably brushed little by little.
When I tried to move my legs, the toe of my slipping shoe jabbed against his.
“……”
“……”
For the first time, an awkward air we could both mutually understand hovered between us.
“It won’t take long, so I ask for your understanding.”
“Yes, it’s all right.”
After that, I looked anew at the duke, who remained silent the whole time.
I had occasionally heard the expression that someone was as big as a door, but this was my first time seeing a man as big as a carriage.
The duke, who completely filled one side of the carriage, sat quietly with his gaze fixed outside the window.
The carriage I usually rode in was exactly this size, too.
Every time the carriage lurched, the top of his head touched the ceiling.
Watching him, I found myself confused as to whether this carriage had actually been made for children.
“Since you’re so large, wouldn’t it be better to ride in a bigger carriage from now on?”
The duke, unable to look me straight in the eye and lowering his gaze, replied.
“……I’ll keep that in mind.”
I hadn’t meant it as criticism.
Thinking I might lighten the mood, I felt like adding a few casual words.
“Does your aide usually ride in the carriage with you?”
I had suddenly remembered the aide from earlier, who had tried to turn this carriage into a three-seater.
But I quickly realized it had been a pointless question.
The moment I imagined what it would have looked like if, in this cramped space that was already this tight with just the duke and me, the aide—who, while not as large as the duke, was still fairly well-built—had ridden with us as well.
My eyes met the duke’s dead on.