23.
“Why are you here……?”
The question slipped out because I was genuinely puzzled.
Amazingly, I had never once exchanged a single word with this woman.
Would you believe that, though we had certainly known of each other’s existence, we had never even faced each other this closely until today?
But it was true.
Wrapped in a strange sense of incongruity, I stared at the lustrous emerald hair and deep violet eyes sparkling right before me.
Her soft cheeks were white and clear, as though they had never once seen sunlight.
When I was a young, inexperienced baron who had just entered society, Meriana had always been surrounded by countless people, and her attention had never fallen as far as me.
And not long after, when I became Rohwinas’s lover, she had always ignored me for some reason.
At first, I thought that, like everyone else, she was too proud to suddenly acknowledge me for the sake of bolstering Rohwinas’s prestige,
but only later, when I heard news of their engagement, did I finally realize it.
Meriana had long since had Rohwinas in her heart.
Though I did not know the details, it seemed Rohwinas’s feelings had not been very different.
Otherwise, there was no way their engagement could have been settled so quickly once he came to his senses.
Thinking of it that way, the two years I had spent with him could not have been more meaningless.
My face even grew hot.
To think I had been happy all by myself, knowing nothing.
“Am I not allowed to sit?”
But for a woman like that to come to the table where I had been sitting alone all this time, because people avoided me as though avoiding the plague—there had to be some reason.
I shook my head lightly and answered.
“No, sit wherever you like. And if you have something to say, say it.”
At my indifferent attitude, a faint smile appeared on Meriana’s face.
Seeing that, I naturally understood.
She was elegant, but fundamentally, she was not a kind person.
In that respect, she resembled Rohwinas.
I was inwardly sneering that lookalikes should go and have a pretty little romance together when—
“Desire is an inevitable human nature.”
Even then, I had been steadily pouring champagne down my throat, but at some inexplicable premonition, I raised one eyebrow and set down my glass.
Meriana continued.
“But not everyone resorts to such base and unclean methods to obtain what they want.”
It had been a long time since someone had condemned me so openly.
And at the same time,
“Do you truly feel no shame at all?”
Meriana’s flawless, upright voice, and the look in her eyes that reflected noble pride……
left me speechless.
Meriana’s question was not meant to mock me.
It was neither cheap superiority nor malice born of idle curiosity.
She was asking sincerely.
Because she truly wondered.
Like someone who had suddenly come face-to-face with a vulgarity that simply could not exist in her world.
In the end, Meriana murmured as though she could not understand.
“……You truly do not even know what you did wrong?”
Then, as if she regretted having exchanged words with me, a cold expression crossed her face.
She rose and turned away just like that.
As though declaring that even the brief interest she had felt had vanished without a trace because of that question just now.
“…….”
I lowered my gaze from her departing back.
‘I know too.’
I know.
Something like that,
I knew better than anyone.
* * *
It was when I had trudged back toward the duke’s tent.
Because I was troubled, I had wandered a little, and the duke had returned first and was waiting for me.
When I spotted the duke standing in front of the horse, I hurried my steps and approached him.
“Were you waiting?”
Perhaps my expression looked off, because the duke’s brows lifted slightly as he looked down at me.
I awkwardly swept a hand down my cheek, but I could not quite manage my expression.
However, the duke did not point it out and instead held out the reins to me.
When I looked, it was the horse I had chosen earlier.
Surely he hadn’t gone to fetch it himself?
“Before we go, why not try riding it once?”
“Ah, well. It’s fine. Anyway…….”
That was when it happened.
The duke then led over a large horse that had been hidden behind the tent and lightly mounted it.
It was a black horse as dark as night, except for the white markings on its chest and near its hooves.
It occurred to me that it might be a warhorse. The aura it gave off was somehow far from ordinary.
Thanks to that, the duke’s eye level, which had already been high, had shot up even farther, so I had to crane my neck fully just to meet his eyes.
Staring at my face, as I still showed no sign of getting on the horse, he asked,
“Do you perhaps not know how to ride?”
It was obvious at a glance that he was deliberately provoking me.
“Is it too high…… and frightening?”
“…….”
Even knowing that perfectly well, I found myself stepping into the stirrup and climbing onto the saddle.
“Who says I can’t ride?”
I took the reins short and looked back at him. The duke let out a small laugh, then suddenly shot forward with a brief shout.
And then I saw it.
The look in the duke’s eyes as he glanced back at me while galloping.
‘You think I can’t catch up?’
I very easily took his bait and drove my horse after him, pressing close behind.
In the process, I realized that the horse I had chosen was even better than I had thought.
It was smaller than the duke’s horse, but that made it all the more nimble.
It was also more intelligent, easily understanding even my smallest movements and changing direction.
It was to the point that the reins were hardly necessary.
People who had been carrying things through the field or taking walks started and lifted their heads.
We swept quickly past their sides.
Facing the wind head-on, we raced without pause all the way to the outskirts of the sparsely populated forest.
Whenever I thought I had nearly caught up, the duke would widen the distance in an instant, and I would grit my teeth and chase after him.
The way he seemed just within reach, yet absolutely refused to be caught, as though teasing me, was infuriating!
I had thought him a prim and stiff sort of man, but I grew heated as though I had been betrayed.
Before I knew it, I was grinding my teeth, my gaze fixed on the back of the duke’s head, running with all my might.
In the end, just as I doggedly caught up to his horse’s tail once more, the duke fled like an arrow, too fast for me to catch, and stopped far ahead, turning his horse’s head.
Rather than feeling deflated, I had no choice but to acknowledge him.
Only after I finished catching up to him did I also pull on the reins and stop.
Perhaps the duke had taken the sunlight head-on, because he frowned slightly and smiled faintly.
“You ride well.”
At that compliment, tossed down like alms despite the fact that he himself rode far better, my lips twitched.
“I was born with it.”
In the end, unable to resist, I lifted my chin stiffly and savored the praise bestowed by a war hero.
He, too, looked at me for a moment with eyes holding a trace of light laughter.
After being battered by the wind and galloping so exhilaratingly, my head felt clear, as though all the unpleasant thoughts had been washed away.
Though thanks to that, my hair had become a complete mess.
For no particular reason, I looked at the duke and grinned.
Traces of the wind remained on the duke’s sharply defined features as well.
Around his cheekbones and the bones beneath his dark brows, his skin was slightly reddened from the wind.
Perhaps because his attire was light as well, he gave off an unusually boyish impression.
Suddenly, I found myself wondering how old he was.
Seeing him today, I was sure there couldn’t be much of an age gap between us…….
I roughly swept back the hair that had fallen over my sweat-damp forehead. Though I couldn’t see it, my face was probably flushed bright red as well.
Watching me, the duke lightly dismounted.
Then he went down in search of the narrow stream below the hill.
I got off my horse and followed him.
He was already bending down before the cold brook.
He dipped his hands into the running water, then slowly wiped the back of his neck.
Since he barely sweated, I had thought he wasn’t bothered by the heat, but it seemed he had been hot after all.
Thinking the timing was perfect, I sat beside him and dipped my hands into the water.
Then, after hesitating for a moment, I bent forward and washed my face.
Even as I splashed water over myself again and again, his gaze did not follow me. He acted as if it were only natural.
I was inwardly surprised that he didn’t seem like the other nobles, who would tediously fuss over formality and etiquette.
How many nobles had there been who pointed fingers behind my back whenever I did anything?
While I was at it, I washed the back of my neck too, and, feeling much refreshed, I simply let down the hair that had become disheveled from riding.
My wavy hair scattered wildly over my shoulders.
I held the hair tie between my teeth and shook the water from my hands. Then, just as I gathered the hair I had roughly combed down with my fingers,
a few strands from the side slipped down before my eyes.
For an instant, they almost poked my eye, and I flinched, shaking my head to brush them away, when—
a hand had come close to my face before I knew it.
The tips of those fingers slowly moved from my forehead to my temple, then quietly tucked the fallen strands behind my ear.
All I felt was the movement of my hair. His hand did not touch me in the slightest.
And yet, it was as if…….
After carelessly fixing my hair like that, he withdrew his hand.
I started to lift my head to check his face, but instead just finished tying my hair.
The only sound was the gentle trickling of water.
A short while later, when I had finished tying my hair and raised my gaze, he was looking at the sun, now beginning to tilt to one side from its place high in the sky.
“Since we’ve come this far, would you like to look around the forest before the hunt?”
I shook my head.
Then I said,
“I’m all right now.”
“……Then that’s enough.”
He seemed to understand the meaning implied in my words, but he did not bother denying it.
He really had brought the horses all the way out here because of me.
My mood was certainly much better than it had been earlier.
As if his business were finished, he began climbing back up the hill.
A faint sense of regret rose within me.
If only we had not become entangled through such dirty, wretched circumstances.
I probably would have helped him gladly.
He was a decent person.