Chapter 04
What Sephine did for the entire afternoon was unpack the luggage she had brought.
Since she stayed here every vacation, she had her own room on the second floor. The writing tools, art supplies, books, and small decorations for the bookshelf were the same ones she had left behind during her last visit four or five years ago. Sephine gathered them to one side of the shelf and neatly filled the space with the new books she had brought.
After setting up an easel for the paintings she drew as a hobby, the room no longer felt like a place that had been empty for years.
She opened the window wide, leaned her body out, and gazed at the crimson sunset. It felt like the beginning of a beautiful holiday.
Seeing the fruit trees hanging with clusters of green grapes covering the hillside, she knew the village festival would begin soon.
Her heart felt light, like a gentle breeze. Immersed in the peaceful scenery, the assignment she had to write and even the talk of her engagement to Felix felt distant, as though they belonged to someone else’s life.
It was around the time when the sky began turning violet that the name suddenly came to her mind.
Heath.
The boy she had parted from, knowing only his name and not even his surname, resurfaced in her thoughts—not simply because she was feeling sentimental.
Could it have been him? That rude uninvited guest.
But how could that boy possibly have grown into a gentleman like that?
Sephine closed the window and took out a small box from the corner of the bookshelf. Like many young girls, she had kept things she wanted to treasure in a small wooden box. Naturally, most of them were items she couldn’t keep at her father’s estate.
From the bottom of the box, she pulled out a crumpled piece of paper. It was a drawing of a lakeside—but in it, there was a boy.
A boy with black hair and blue eyes.
During adolescence, boys could change so much that they became almost unrecognizable—perhaps even more so than girls. Had I changed like that too? she wondered. Or did he recognize me?
They had only grown close for a few days, yet the parting had hurt her deeply. It had been the first time she had ever liked someone like that.
Even though five years had already passed, the memory was still vivid in Sephine’s mind.
* * *
“Hannah, do you remember someone named Heath?”
Downstairs in the kitchen, dinner preparations were in full swing. Sephine lit the candles on the table, pulled out a chair, and sat down as she asked.
Hannah placed a pot on the stove and stirred the soup casually as she replied,
“Of course I remember. I never saw him myself, but it’s a name you sang about for quite a while, my lady.”
“I did?”
“Of course. The whole household was in an uproar, and the Count sent you here in exile, remember? Everyone said it was the first time they had ever seen him so angry. And you cried for days.”
Thinking back to herself at fifteen, in the early summer—how attached she had been to a boy she had liked for only a few days—Sephine felt a little embarrassed and laughed awkwardly.
“But why? Being here made you think of that boy again?” Hannah asked.
Seeing Hannah’s cheeks twitch as she tried not to laugh too much, Sephine replied in a flat tone,
“That uninvited guest from before. I thought… if Heath had grown up, he might look like that.”
Hannah instantly took her hands off her waist and turned toward her.
Her lips parted wide in surprise.
“That can’t be. That boy was a beggar tagging along with a wandering troupe! Wasn’t the Count furious, saying a vagrant had latched onto you to get something out of it?”
“Hannah! A beggar? He had a job too. He was just the youngest member of the troupe, so he mostly ran errands, but he was still one of the members who could play the piano. And I told you everything back then. I said I thought I liked him. I only told you honestly, so how can you misunderstand me the same way everyone else did?”
“Oh, right. That’s true. But it seemed that Heath didn’t feel the same way as you, did he? You said he left without even saying goodbye—wait!”
As if something suddenly occurred to her, Hannah tossed aside the cloth she had been drying her hands with and pulled a chair over to sit in front of Sephine.
“So you’re saying that Heath is that Heath? That insufferable rich man—or the vagrant boy who made you cry?”
“I said he resembled him, not that I’m certain. But what do you mean? ‘That Heath is this Heath’… Does that man’s name happen to be Heath too?”
Hannah nodded, still looking unconvinced.
“It was something like Heathhark… or something like that. Maybe the shortened name is just the same… right? There’s no way it could be. That man is said to be a famous rich man even in Tulego.”
For a wandering boy who had been little better than a beggar to suddenly become the son of one of Tulego’s most prestigious families, the world would have had to turn upside down several times.
Had something like that happened to that boy in the past five years?
Hannah quickly shook her head, deciding that it couldn’t possibly be the case. Even so, her suspicious gaze lingered on Sephine.
“But do they really look that alike? Were his eyes that blue? Was he that tall, with shoulders that broad? And dressed that well? I mean… was he really that handsome on the outside?”
Back then, Hannah had already left the Count’s household. When the Count decided his daughter no longer needed a nanny, he had generously paid Hannah and her husband and sent them back to their hometown. Sephine had been fourteen at the time.
And then the trouble happened the following year.
A gypsy staying under the Count’s hospitality had approached the young lady.
In truth, it was something one couldn’t know for sure without seeing it firsthand. That was simply how people around them perceived it. But Sephine, who had been exiled to Greenwood by the Count, seemed to have truly liked the boy.
If Hannah had still been at the Count’s estate back then, she would have done everything possible to keep the young lady from meeting him.
Or perhaps she would have helped them meet—putting all her effort into making sure they were never discovered.
“If it really were him,” Hannah continued, “shouldn’t he have recognized you too? If you suddenly ran into someone you liked when you were young, you’d at least be surprised for a moment. Your expression would change, or you’d be speechless. But he didn’t look like he recognized you at all.”
“He might not have recognized me. Maybe the reason I noticed him now is just because I was the one who liked him.”
“If the Count heard you say that, there’d be trouble.”
There had been no real connection between a man from a wandering troupe and Sephine, the precious only daughter of a noble family. Anyone could see that they were mismatched, and from an adult’s perspective, it had only been natural to separate them.
After all, Sephine was a young lady worthy of being paired with a fine gentleman from a good family. When you loved someone, didn’t you want to give them the very best?
In that sense, Count Buchanan’s reaction at the time wasn’t entirely incomprehensible.
A gypsy has attached himself to my child. Sephine has only just begun her social debut. I don’t need to explain how important reputation is in this world.
The Count had personally come all the way to Greenwood. Without revealing how he had crushed the boy to separate him from his daughter, he simply demanded discretion.
It’s only for recuperation. Since you’re someone who won’t let anything slip, I’ll leave without further worries.
And so, in front of Sephine, Hannah had pretended not to know anything—even if she did. It was a promise she had made to the Count, and she couldn’t risk damaging the relationship between father and daughter.
In any case, Hannah had no idea how a boy who had been chased out of a troupe could suddenly appear dressed in such luxury. But there was a clear reason why that man should not be Heath.
Even if she could break her promise to the Count for the young lady’s sake, she still doubted whether the businessman’s presence would be good for her.
“If he were truly a gentleman,” Hannah said, “he wouldn’t try to be rude to a woman he once liked. But how was that man earlier? Even when we said we had guests, he kept talking about what he wanted. And he ignored Sir Felix’s introduction so blatantly.”
“If he didn’t recognize me, it’s possible. Or maybe he was just surprised and froze.”
“So you’re saying he’s not that bad of a person? Just because you liked him briefly when you were young doesn’t mean you need to know him again now, my lady. Besides, you know what he’s doing here in Baltes. They say he’s a heartless businessman obsessed with acquiring land. He says he wants to buy it, but the way he acts, it’s practically the same as taking it.”
Trying not to reveal how serious her expression had become, Hannah turned away and focused on the kitchen work.
Sephine remained seated, looking deep in thought.
Just then, Lucas returned from finishing the farm work. A breeze blew in through the wide-open front door, refreshing the kitchen air that had grown heavy from the unexpected argument.
Sephine stood up. It seemed as though she wanted to continue the conversation, but she decided helping Lucas first was more important.
Watching Sephine’s back—now taller than herself—Hannah let out a sigh.
An unexpected worry had appeared.
