Chapter 73
There Was Nothing Rational
The hem of my dress caught at my toes. I lifted the skirt and quickened my steps.
The white indoor dress fluttered in the autumn wind—and in the wind I myself created. The ribbon wrapped around my waist felt heavy. When the wind blew, the ribbon streamed backward, and it felt as though it were tugging at me. So I walked with even more force.
Ah, the night. Dark.
When I reached the entrance of the annex, there was no light in its windows. It seemed that after Cedric and I had left, the lamps had been put away.
It wasn’t a space used regularly, so there was no reason to leave the lights on late into the night.
And yet, I wanted to go inside so badly.
With one hand pressed to my chest, I lightly pulled on the annex’s doorknob with the other. The door opened. I felt the weight of the entrance door at my fingertips.
I tilted my head slightly and peered inside. It was pitch-black. I couldn’t see anything.
A flicker of fear rose. I let out a sigh.
There was no way I could wander around an unfamiliar building at night without a lamp. What was I even doing, coming all the way here? If I’d thought about it for just a moment, I would have known I couldn’t go into the annex in the dark. And what if the door had been locked? Why had I come all this way?
Still holding the doorknob, I lowered my head and sighed. It was cold.
“Princess.”
“Eek!”
A voice came from behind me—completely unexpected—and I nearly collapsed on the spot. As I let go of the doorknob, the annex door swung shut with a sound.
The owner of the voice caught me at the side.
“Princess, are you all right? I didn’t mean to startle you. I thought I made enough noise as I approached.”
“Duke.”
It was Cedric. I regained my balance, and Cedric released his grip.
My heart was pounding. It was certainly from being startled, but I couldn’t tell whether it was because Cedric had appeared so suddenly—or because the one person I least wanted to catch me here had done exactly that.
I turned to face him. He was dressed just as before, his expression just as composed.
“Are you truly all right?”
Cedric asked again, checking my complexion.
“Yes, yes. I’m fine. Ah—how did you know I was here?”
I asked, feeling my heart thudding beneath my fingertips.
“Princess,”
Cedric paused, choosing his words.
“I realized that you had not returned to your room.”
“I thought I was walking very quietly.”
Had I been moving according to the rhythm of my racing heart?
“You were. However, I heard your footsteps.”
“On the stairs?”
“I’m not sure how to explain it.”
Cedric turned his head as he thought, then continued.
“My senses are rather sharp.”
“Oh. Wow.”
I made my admiration deliberately obvious.
“I’ve heard that for martial artists to reach a certain level, keen senses are important.”
“That’s true.”
“Then you must be an incredible swordsman, Duke!”
Cedric smiled. I had heard that becoming a swordsman with such heightened senses required more than just talent or effort. Cedric must have reached a level beyond even being called impressive.
“Did you leave something behind in the annex, Princess?”
“Ah—yes, I did.”
I had been caught trying to sneak into the duke’s annex at night by the very owner of the estate.
There was no way I had actually left anything behind. Wherever I went, I carried nothing but a handkerchief or a parasol. And today, I hadn’t brought a parasol.
What I had left behind was my thoughts.
“I’ll accompany you inside. It’s late, and even within the estate walls, it’s dangerous for you to be alone.”
“Ah. Thank you.”
I considered refusing, then realized that would be strange in its own way. After trying to enter the annex alone at this hour, saying I didn’t need to go in anymore would only look suspicious.
So I nodded. I could always invent a reason once inside.
No—truthfully, everything was a mess. From coming to the annex on impulse, to being discovered by Cedric—there wasn’t a single rational thing about it.
Any explanation I gave would obviously sound like an excuse.
And yet, I placed my hand in the one Cedric offered. He opened the closed annex door again. The darkness that had frightened me before no longer scared me at all with him beside me.
“Princess, shall we go to the terrace from earlier?”
“Yes.”
In the pitch-black space, Cedric guided me by the hand. Without hesitation, he led me up to the third floor and into the room with the terrace.
“What did you leave behind on the terrace?”
“Uh… well…”
“I’ll help you look.”
Cedric said this as we stopped in front of the terrace door. With my free hand, the one not held by Cedric, I gripped my skirt.
I leaned slightly and looked at the terrace door. A handkerchief? There was one in the inner pocket of my dress.
I could say I’d look alone on the terrace, then show the handkerchief afterward.
But at that moment, I thought of something worse than a lie. Another impulse.
“I thought you were interested in Princess Rachel.”
“Pardon?”
His eyes—usually neither particularly wide nor narrow, and barely moving except when he smiled—widened slightly.
Since the incident on the airship, I had wondered where Cedric’s heart lay. Whenever Rachel’s name came up in our conversations, it rattled inside my chest.
And yet I hadn’t asked him about his feelings, because I believed I had a place to return to. Even if his heart were directed toward me, I couldn’t promise him anything beyond that.
Then why, today, had I brought up Rachel? It was bad. Truly bad.
I wanted to squeeze my eyes shut. I wanted to flee somewhere—anywhere. I wanted to run away.
But I didn’t. If there was only one person before whom I could still appear as a cultured lady, that person was Cedric.
I attempted a small smile, but my lips felt stiff, so I stopped.
“I didn’t think you would see my relationship with Rachel that way, Princess.”
“You seemed very close.”
“Rachel does appear to be paying attention to you, Princess, but—”
I could clearly hear my heart pounding like a drum—thump, thump, thump.
I desperately wished I looked natural. I wished I could drink some tea. If I were holding a warm teacup, I could calm my racing heart—and hide part of my face behind it.
“Rachel and I are friends.”
I already knew that. Cedric and Rachel were friends. What mattered to me was what came after that. Mattered…?
“We’ve known each other for a very long time.”
“Her Highness said she was especially close to you.”
The next line slipped out as smoothly as a rehearsed line in a play.
Cedric looked at me, closed his eyes, then opened them again. His cherry-colored gaze moved away from me. Now he was looking past me, at something else.
Where was Cedric looking right now? The room we stood in? The Dayerton estate? Owen? Or some moment, some place, shared with Rachel?
I tried to listen closely to his words. But what leaned instead was my heart.
I wanted to hear only the thin surface of his words—that Rachel was just a friend. I wanted to lean into that surface, into the shape of “just friends.”
“She is especially close to me, but not in a special way, Princess.”
Cedric gently closed his hand around the one he was escorting.
As I looked at him, my stomach churned. To keep him from noticing my lack of composure, I swallowed hard.
“But she decorated the annex entirely to her liking.”
“So that’s why you didn’t return to your room tonight and came back to the annex?”
“Yes.”
Cedric was too gentle. And so I lowered my head.
“If I had known you might misunderstand, I should have explained this place to you in advance.”
He paused, then continued.
“Rachel has a tendency to act as she pleases. This annex as well—since I don’t manage it, she informed me that one day she would change it according to her wishes. I recall telling her to do as she liked.”
He spoke as if the details with Rachel were hazy, yet it also felt as though he were explaining everything carefully.
“For someone like me, living alone, the main building of the estate is more than sufficient. The annex held no meaning for me.”
Outside the window, a sleepless bird flew past. I heard the sound of feathers cutting through the air, and the shadow cast by its movement briefly appeared on the window before vanishing.
Thinking about it, Cedric had never once sought Rachel out while I was staying at the estate. Nor had he ever been the first to bring up her name with me.
I also recalled that on our journey from Rundra to Owen, Cedric and Rachel rarely sat side by side—neither in the carriage nor at the dining table.
When we went to purchase summer banquet attire, Rachel had been interested not in Cedric himself, but in his clothes. And after her conversation with Daymond, Rachel had not visited the ducal estate again.
