“It would be good for Claudel to see this. Right away.”

“Yes, of course.”

The butler placed the list and invitation samples on his desk and took a step back.

Kaian, uncharacteristically hurrying, headed towards Claudel’s room. Walking briskly as if on urgent business, the maids cleaning the floor looked up with surprised eyes, but he paid no attention.

‘How long has it been since I’ve seen her?’

Since the day Claudel couldn’t come to the party due to poor health, she had been ill for several days.

So she hadn’t come out of her room to eat.

If there was a natural chance to run into her, he would try to strike up a conversation, but he hadn’t caught such an opportunity at all.

‘It must have been about a week.’

The area in front of Claudel’s room was eerily empty.

The hostility between Temnes and Vermonte was mutual. It takes two hands to clap, doesn’t it?

Claudel was a Vermonte who wouldn’t raise her hand to clap.

Even Kaian felt within a day that “somehow Claudel doesn’t seem like a Vermonte” and it was uncomfortable, so the servants couldn’t have missed it.

If she lashed out angrily when they oppressed and mistreated her, baring her claws as if to kill, it would have been fun to beat her, but with only her feisty maid causing a fuss while Claudel quietly didn’t react, they must have found it utterly boring.

‘Still, shouldn’t there have been guards?’

At this rate, anyone could barge into the lady’s room without notice.

Thinking he should summon the castle’s security chief later to give him a piece of his mind, Kaian knocked on Claudel’s door.

The room was quiet.

‘Did she go somewhere?’

Kaian wondered as he opened the door silently.

Even though it was midsummer, the interior surrounded by thick stone walls and smoothly plastered inside was pleasantly cool.

However, it also felt desolate with no sign of human presence.

“She must have gone for a walk.”

The hand holding the list and invitations lost strength, as if deflated.

The thought Kaian had in mind when he came was to use this as an excuse to talk about the hunting competition and have a natural conversation since he hadn’t been able to see Claudel for a while.

But with no woman to talk to, the next step was another problem.

Should he just leave?

Or should he wait for her to return?

As he turned his head, wondering if he should go sit on the sofa, his eyes widened.

Claudel was in the room he thought was empty.

She was lying on the large, plush bed, neatly covered with a blanket.

‘How did I not see a person here?’

Usually, if someone is lying in bed, the blanket should be puffed up or something.

But with Claudel lying among the thick, fluffy goose-down comforter and cushions, covered by the blanket, it was hard to tell if someone was lying there or if the bed was just abundantly made.

Kaian approached the bed, stifling his presence so as not to wake her.

‘Was she always this small?’

Kaian newly spread his hand over her face.

The person looked so small that her entire face could fit in his palm.

Observing her closely, she seemed even thinner than the Claudel he remembered, as if her body had shrunk.

The woman sleeping soundly was breathing so faintly that her breath was barely audible.

On her flawless white skin, the eyelashes attached to her closed eyelids and the eyebrows curving above them were all the same red as her hair.

Finding the sight peaceful, he sat in a chair next to the bed with folded arms and began to observe Claudel.

On the other hand, he wondered what to say when she opened her eyes.

Kaian had never bowed to anyone.

Given the twisted situation, it was clear that he should be the one to extend a hand and let her soften her heart.

But the difficulty was that he felt restrained from putting such words in his mouth.

The dignity of the head of the family comes from not bowing.

It was truly troublesome to face something he had never done before in a real situation.

“Mmm.”

Suddenly, Claudel turned over towards where he was sitting.

Kaian stood up abruptly, thinking she had woken up, but it seemed to be just a sleeping habit.

Sitting down quietly again, he rested his chin on his hand and resumed observing her sleeping.

Then something caught his eye.

The button ornament that had been the cause of this mess was still on her finger.

Quite some time had passed since that incident, but why?

However, looking at it again, it just looked like a thin ring that would have suited Claudel well if not for that incident.

‘Does she like rings?’

Looking at it now, Mother’s blue diamond seemed too much for Claudel’s slender fingers, likely to spin around even if worn on her thumb.

It’s natural for everyone to have different finger sizes.

Having never thought of gifting rings to anyone, Kaian had no idea about the basics of having them resized before giving them as heirlooms.

But unlike the excitement he felt coming here at the thought of having a chance to talk to her, seeing that she still had that thing made his heart sink.

‘I’ll give you another ring, so that one…’

As Kaian carefully reached out to remove the ring from her finger:

Click.

The door opened and Hannah, carrying a large vase with thick white freesia flowers, was startled to see him.

“Your Grace.”

At the voice of the maid who hurriedly put down the flower vase and bowed her head, Claudel opened her eyes.

Claudel, who had just woken up, had a clear expression as if the drowsiness had evaporated. Her round golden eyes were immediately filled with anxiety.

Seeing that made him upset right away. What had he done to make her make such a face as soon as their eyes met?

Kaian stood up abruptly and shouted.

“You seem to have no interest in the dignity of a lady.”

“…Your Grace.”

Claudel quickly got up from the bed and stood with her head bowed.

In the process, when the blanket was lifted, her ankle that was revealed seemed no thicker than Kaian’s wrist, momentarily furrowing his brows.

It seemed that feeling with his hands in the dark at night and seeing directly with his eyes were different after all.

The woman before his eyes kept seeming much thinner than the one in his memory.

“What brings you here?”

He hadn’t expected her to welcome him. Seeing Claudel shrinking her shoulders as if frightened, Kaian’s answer sheet that he had pondered over for a week, thinking of what to say, went to waste.

“Were you planning to play around at Rowen Castle?”

He dropped the list and invitations he had brought onto her bed.

“The butler will have organized it, so write that they must come on the invitations and sign them. Organize it by tomorrow and bring it to the office. Or give it to the butler.”

He left her bedroom and slammed the door shut.

And immediately regretted it.

“…Am I crazy?”

The Vermontes had been like foxes with their tails on fire for generations. Cunning, crafty, manipulating people with their three-inch tongues and causing trouble with their schemes.

When they used those tongues for diplomacy for the sake of the Kingdom of Oberon, they were excellent people, but when they tried to deceive the frank and straightforward Temnes, who had been a military family for generations, they were quite incompatible.

If Temnes killed people by stabbing their hearts and beheading them, Vermonte could make people die of anger with just a few words.

Claudel had none of that venom.

Yet Kaian felt like he was going crazy with frustration as he kept spouting nonsense.

“This isn’t what I meant to do.”

His rather intelligent brain replayed the situation from earlier.

He had been out of his mind from the moment he saw Claudel’s pale, slender bare legs revealed as her nightgown rode up when she lifted the blanket to get out of bed.

And then he blurted out nonsense and stormed out soullessly.

“Why did I do that? Why?”

If he had succeeded in saying a few kind words to her and improving her mood, those legs he saw earlier could have been wrapped around his waist tonight.

Kaian roughly ran his hand through his hair as he headed to his office.

Kaian’s visit was like lightning.

Short and intense.

So after he left, Claudel was momentarily dazed.

“What was that about? Coming suddenly and… Who’s playing around? Seriously.”

As soon as Kaian left, Hannah’s attitude immediately became disrespectful.

“Well, it’s true that I’ve been lying down. He must think I’m pathetic compared to how the Duchess usually spends her days.”

Hannah sighed as she tidied up the bed.

“Pathetic? You finally got to nap a bit after not being able to sleep for days. If only you could have slept a little longer.”

The lady of Valmond Castle, Duchess Vermonte, was meticulous in managing the territory.

Her assistance was considerable in making Valmond, where more than half the land was frozen, habitable for people.

Especially for children born around Moghill, the ice valley where Valmond Castle is located, she would personally visit and take care of each household.

It seemed that normally, the mistress of Temnes Castle should be as busy as Duchess Vermonte, but there was no handover telling Claudel what to do or take care of.

She felt bitter about being ignored, but on the other hand, as someone who was going to leave, she thought it might be better not to have people coming and going to handle affairs.

“Still, he gave me some work to do.”

Claudel picked up the list and invitations thrown on the bed.

“Don’t do it. It’s really unsightly.”

“He said to do it by tomorrow.”

“Who cares? Should I do it instead? I’ll write it with my foot for you.”

Hannah said seriously, as if she meant it.

Claudel sat by the window, placing the list down and stacking the invitations neatly as she took them out of the envelopes.

‘…Temnes.’

There had been no occasion yet to realize that her name had changed from Vermonte to Temnes.

Perhaps that’s why he gave her this task?

To make her aware that she had become a Temnes.

The word Temnes descended onto the invitations one by one from the tip of Claudel’s ink pen.

The day of the crocodile hunt arrived.

Kaian was in a very bad mood.

Anyway, Claudel had brought the invitations he had asked for directly, without using the butler’s hand.

Of all times, it was while he had briefly stepped out with Burbrook to commend the territory people who had brought fruits to offer to the castle.

If she had given it through the butler, he wouldn’t have been this heated.

Kaian’s thoughts and words kept becoming a mess when he thought of Claudel, so he stopped thinking about where the point of his anger was.

Whatever he thought, it always got tangled up with that woman.

If he just let it be, the turmoil lessened a bit.

Claudel was wearing light-looking brown deer boots, a white dress that came down below her knees, and a vest made of the same color leather.

With her long red hair that reached her waist braided into one thick plait and a large white hat on top, she somehow looked like a young girl.

Since she hadn’t shown herself at the banquet, those seeing her for the first time today seemed to be staring at her ardently.

Kaian felt a surge of emotion and had the urge to forget about the crocodile hunt and everything else, and take her to the tent set up for rest to talk.

‘Stop with the distracting thoughts.’

Usually, it was impossible for one person to catch a crocodile alone.

Kaian was capable of it, so he would liven up the hunt, catch a suitable one, drag it back, and then dust off his hands.

But was it because his heart was unsettled due to Claudel that he kept having distracting thoughts today?

…Just as this thought crossed his mind:

“Watch out!”

Claudel, who was standing next to him, shoved him hard, and he was pushed from the platform where he had been overlooking the hunt participants, falling onto the lower ground with a level difference.

“What on earth are you…”

What entered Kaian’s eyes as he got up was a huge crocodile biting into the place where he had been standing just moments ago.

Its eyes turned towards Claudel, and its ferocious mouth opened cruelly.

“No!”

The hunting ground, which had turned into chaos in an instant, was filled with screams.