“What woman in the world wouldn’t desire a man like you at a moment like this.”

I raised my hand not holding the bouquet and caressed his cheek. My fingertips were cold from the burning desire heating my heart.

His soft, warm face touching my hand stirred my heart deeply.

From the beginning, I’ve… always… wholly you…

“I like you.”

“……”

“You must already keenly feel it.”

While appropriately revealing the truth he knows.

“I’m saying this now just for the sake of formality.”

Mixing in some light jokes as Ricardo would.

“For as long as I am your fiancée, I will love you passionately.”

While cleverly concealing the real truth I want to hide.

“Yes, so I will gladly be engaged to you, the one I love.”

I decided to fully reveal my heart to you for all the time we can be together. Because that’s all I can do. Thinking this, my trembling body stopped shaking.

Perhaps 10 years ago, on that stormy night. Maybe this was the reason I took the hand of opportunity offered by a being, whether god or devil, and returned.

Even knowing life would be hard again, and that the sad fate of not being allowed to love him would repeat.

Without hesitation or fear in the face of death.

Like Ricardo’s mother, just to see his smiling face even once more.

So I had no intention of backing down during the time I could love. If someone set fire to my body as punishment for loving him, I would let myself burn to ashes.

Even if death separates him and me. So that I leave no regrets.

I gathered my courage and slowly put my arms around his neck. Fortunately, he didn’t push me away. My cheek gently touched his.

“All women in the world would surely do this at a moment like this. So this is just for formality, not an act with any special meaning.”

“…I see.”

Ricardo also slowly extended his arms and wrapped them around my waist. I pulled his neck a little closer and whispered.

“There’s something I want to ask.”

“What is it…?”

Ricardo’s voice, sounding coolly scratched, lingered in my ear.

“You said it then, didn’t you? In the carriage. That just because I can’t touch you doesn’t mean others can.”

Ricardo chuckled softly. The slight vibration traveled from his cheek to his neck and down to his chest.

“I did. So what do you want to ask?”

“Is it… certain that you can’t touch? Not that you won’t?”

“What?”

“There’s a huge difference.”

Between not doing it because you don’t want to, and not being able to even though you want to.

Ricardo grabbed my shoulders and pulled me away from him. I clung to him, shaking my head in embarrassment, but he was merciless. As he looked straight into my eyes and smiled slightly, my hopeless heart fluttered foolishly.

“Why are you asking that?”

“Obviously because I’m curious.”

His gaze darkened as if it wasn’t a light question. I waited for an answer for a while, but none came. I shook my head and tried to back away from him.

“Let’s pretend I didn’t ask…”

“You’re right, it’s that I can’t.”

“……”

“Though I don’t know why that’s important.”

I’ve never seen snow fall in my life, but I thought his eyes must be like snow falling on a pitch-black night.

“The reason it’s important is…”

I stole a quick kiss from his lips, making a soft sound. So swift even a bee or butterfly would be envious.

Thinking I don’t know how many times this stolen kiss makes.

Ricardo’s brow furrowed briefly as if suddenly attacked. With a smile still on his lips, he asked me with his eyes. What on earth are you doing? Countless stars twinkled and scattered in his pitch-black eyes.

“Just because you can’t do it doesn’t mean I can’t either. If you don’t dislike it.”

Taking advantage of the moment his arms relaxed, I bounced away from him. I backed away slowly, taking in the sight of Ricardo smiling with a dumbfounded expression.

He was a beautiful man, so much so that I thought it cruel for him to stand alone under the lamplight.

“As I said earlier, a kiss of promise is a formality that must be observed in a situation like this.”

“……”

“But I can’t do something you dislike.”

I kept backing into the darkness, trying to hide my cheeks that must have turned peach-red. When I was far enough that even the long shadow of the garden lamp didn’t reach me, I waved the bouquet he had given me.

“Thank you so much for today. I’ll never forget it.”

Noble and pitiful Ricardo.

That beautiful man bloomed and withered repeatedly among the lush spring bouquet.

On the day of the engagement ceremony, although I woke up early, a very long and strange dream continued.

Even as I forcibly swallowed food that wouldn’t go down, was led here and there by people’s hands to be dressed up, and put on a beautiful dress for the engagement ceremony, the terribly surreal dream didn’t stop.

So when I wake up from this dream, I might open my eyes in my bed in my room in Lesothia.

“Ha……”

No matter how much I tried to accept it, this lacked realism, far too much.

Just like that night when I received the proposal in the garden.

What are the odds that the daughter of a fallen noble family in the principality would suddenly become engaged to the heir of the great Rochester Empire? And a bastard who doesn’t have a single noble quality at that.

Wouldn’t it be right to run away even now?

By the time my knuckles, which I hadn’t realized I’d been clenching tightly until now, began to tingle, the carriage carrying me entered the autumn territory of the duke’s family.

The carriage slowed down in front of enormous buildings that were more appropriate to call castles than mansions, and stopped in front of the building with the sharpest spire.

I don’t know where so many people had been hiding, but from the moment we entered the autumn territory until here where the carriage stopped, the duke’s servants were lined up watching us.

It was a sight that could be mistaken for a procession in the city rather than the Rochester duke’s residence.

People whispered among themselves with curiosity in their eyes. As I watched this, my ears, steeped in paranoia, began to hear hallucinations.

That divine wrath would soon befall the Rochester family because of that worthless woman. That it made no sense to betray the saint and take such a woman as a fiancée.

Those whispers actually resembled the voice of my inner self hidden deep in my heart.

Then a low voice broke through, shattering the voice of my heart.

“It’s truly unbelievable. As I always feel, you are really… well.”

Only then did I remember that the other protagonist of today’s engagement was riding opposite me.

“Wh-what about me?”

“It’s been just over ten days.”

“So what about it?”

“The desire for me that filled your eyes has all but vanished already.”

Ah, so this is what it means to have nothing to say even with ten mouths.

“I can hardly believe that the woman who looked at me with greedy eyes and the woman in front of me now are the same person.”

“Gr-greed? You’ve misunderstood my gaze too much. What about me now makes you say such things……”

“You have the expression of someone pushed off a cliff. Didn’t you say you desired me? That you would love me passionately for as long as you were by my side?”

I don’t think I said ‘passionately’… Did I? Every time, even though what I said is clear, why does it feel like a lie when I hear it through Ricardo’s mouth? It was something I both understood and didn’t.

“I told you that day too, didn’t I? At such a moment, what woman wouldn’t desire a man like you smiling with a bouquet? Even a woman lying in a coffin would probably sit up straight.”

Ricardo’s face cracked at the inappropriate comparison. He raised one eyebrow slightly and leaned against the carriage.

“Anyway, it’s too late to regret now.”

He had been staring straight into my eyes all this time, and he expressed the complex feelings I was experiencing in just one word. When I heard it put that way, it was exactly right, but it wasn’t such a simple emotion.

“No. What I’m doing now isn’t regret, it’s……”

Instead of asking what it was, he responded with a low laugh.

“It’s resolve. Like a pledge, you could say. I’ll make sure to make you happy.”

Perhaps my eyes reflected my sincerity again, as Ricardo closed his eyes tightly and chuckled, his chest heaving. He seems to laugh quite easily, is this really why the duchess wants to elevate me to the level of a saint?

As his laughter subsided, he extended his hand to me.

“It’s time for my fiancée, who alternates between regret and resolve, to get out of the carriage.”

With a determined heart, I got out of the carriage and was immediately humbled in front of the magnificent building. What greeted me was an enormous door so tall that I had to crane my neck to see its top.

The shrine located within the mansion only opened its noble doors for engagements or marriages of direct family members, or when holding funerals for those who had passed away.