.jpg)
“Please, I ask you to reconsider just one more time. Through my connections, there are ways to publish it under a different name.”
With a final polite bow, the pianist walked down the stairs.
Once he confirmed that Marcel had vanished from sight, Ray slowly walked down the hallway toward the piano room where Rose would be.
Rose, who had been sitting in a chair scribbling something, looked up at Ray and smiled.
“I’m surprised you’re back so early. What were you talking about with the teacher for so long?”
At some point, Ray had come to love this moment.
The sight that greeted him whenever he entered this room.
The woman, who became especially beautiful when focusing on something, was immersed in her work with a serious expression. Then, upon his entry, she would look at him and smile.
Lately, he found himself frequently recalling the words of Ambassador Antaka, which he had once dismissed as absurd.
The claim that a Boltonian's smile was like a gift.
He loved seeing Rose's smile, hearing her laughter.
In those moments, he succumbed to a brief illusion.
When her gaze, which had been fixed on things he could never understand, turned toward him and the corners of her lips curled upward, it felt as if all her affection was gathering solely for him.
An illusion that she was devoted only to him.
Am I not enough for you?
Would it not be enough for you to have only me?
Harboring questions he wasn't even consciously aware of, Ray approached Rose.
“...You looked quite surprised earlier.”
“Earlier?”
“What did Mr. Garnier say to you?”
“Ah.”
She became visibly flustered again.
“Nothing. It’s just... I made a very basic, ridiculous mistake.”
Her face flushed slightly as she spoke, avoiding his gaze.
“It was embarrassing to be called out on it.”
He knew instinctively. She was lying.
If it were nothing, why couldn't she tell him?
However, he couldn't exactly grab her and demand the truth. He wasn't some madman plagued by pathological jealousy.
Following the line of her downward gaze, he saw several sheets of paper filled with musical notes and terminology.
Notes he could never understand or read stared back at him as if mocking him.
As if Marcel had corrected them, there were lines drawn in blue ink or notes written across the pages.
That man could read this.
That fact brought back a deep sense of unpleasantness.
Rose absentmindedly touched her flushed cheek, leaving a smudge of ink on her skin.
Ray let out a small chuckle at her foolishness and dipped his finger into a water glass nearby.
“You’re not a child; how do you get this on your face?”
As he gently rubbed her cheek with his finger, the soft skin felt pleasant against his touch. Ray watched in silence as the ink trace slowly disappeared.
“Are you alright?”
Rose asked, seemingly finding his silence strange.
Do I not look alright?
Ray recalled the same question he had been asked a few days ago.
“Are you alright?”
Agatha had asked him, not with accusation, but with a worried tone.
It was her reaction when he announced he would take Rose with him to Euse. It was a reasonable reaction.
Leaving her behind would be the far more rational and convenient choice.
However, the thought of not having Rose under his gaze for such a long period was unbearable. He only felt at peace when she was right before his eyes.
“I just accepted it when you said the absurd thing about teaching Rose composition or whatever. Well, I suppose I no longer have the right to say anything.”
Agatha let out a sigh.
“But... are you really alright lately?”
Her expression was one of genuine concern, a strangely human side of her.
There was even a hint of anxiety. Since his father's death, he had rarely seen Agatha make such a face.
Am I truly alright?
He couldn't answer.
At some point, he felt as if he were watching a stagnant match. If an ambiguous stalemate—neither victory nor defeat—were to last forever, would it feel this suffocating?
But if so, who exactly was his opponent? The opponent in this match, the one he had to defeat.
Looking up at the woman with a worried face, he ended up kissing her.
As he always did, he resolved these complex and stifling emotions in that way.
Unlike Marcel Garnier—that damn man who seemed to know the proper way to alleviate Rose's worries and anxieties—Ray knew no other way.
As if confirming that his chosen method was the correct answer, Rose naturally wrapped her arms around his neck. Whenever she embraced him like this, his unpleasantness subsided.
He wanted to go to bed quickly.
To a place where he could cast aside all these thoughts and be free, be at ease, and indulge in her to his heart's content.
* * *
The day he had to leave the Crawford estate for Euse approached rapidly. They were scheduled to depart by train tomorrow dawn.
After confirming that all the luggage was packed, Rose walked down the stairs and once again spotted Agatha acting suspiciously on the second floor.
Just like before, Agatha entered the prayer room holding a dry cloth.
Wondering if it was dangerous for her to be seen doing this twice, Rose contemplated going in to speak with her.
Agatha had seemed particularly sensitive lately. Rose guessed it was because of the general election.
When an article appeared in the newspaper claiming that Ray Crawford advocated for a nobility income tax, she had immediately and without a shred of doubt declared it a fake article and low-level slander.
The shocked expression she wore when she discovered that Ray was actually leading the reform plan was something else.
Looking at her face, one would think she wouldn't be surprised even if a natural disaster struck Orturan and the heavens and earth collapsed.
Despite appearing extremely dissatisfied, she didn't utter a single word of opposition.
Whenever the topic came up, Agatha simply kept her mouth shut.
It was a starkly different attitude from how she had relentlessly countered Count Greenwood in the drawing room.
After a moment's hesitation, Rose eventually opened the door to the prayer room. Setting everything else aside, she was simply too curious about what on earth she was doing in there.
“Rose!”
Upon opening the door, Rose saw Agatha shouting while holding a dishcloth.
She had been so startled that she had her hand pressed against her chest.
“What are you doing in here?”
Rose asked, closing the door. No matter how she looked at it, it seemed Agatha had been dusting.
“I, I...”
Agatha even stammered. At this unfamiliar sight, Rose unconsciously observed her closely.
“I simply... the state of the cleaning, yes, the state of the cleaning was quite unsatisfactory.”
Agatha spoke very slowly, as if she were trying to convince herself while speaking.
“The new maid is quite inadequate, but I didn't want to be cruel and nag her, so I came in myself.”
She started flustered, but by the end of her sentence, her posture had become somewhat dignified.
“And you’re saying Agatha is personally dusting? I saw you coming out of this room with a dishcloth last time, too.”
The expression of the woman pretending to be calm wavered, but thanks to her years of experience, she didn't crumble immediately.
“I wondered if it had improved in the meantime, but it’s still poor. I shall inform Mrs. Selma.”
Her ability to construct a lie had become quite excellent, but Rose didn't believe a word of it.
Realizing that not a single one of Rose's doubts had been cleared, Agatha, who had been standing stiffly, let out a deep sigh as if giving up.
“I ask you. Do not tell Ray. Nor Beth.”
The decorations on the urn in front of Agatha were sparkling, without a single speck of dust.
“But I’ve already seen you twice; could it be that no one else has noticed?”
At the worried question, Agatha let out a small chuckle. Rose knew a man who laughed exactly like that.
She suddenly realized how much Ray resembled Agatha.
“I didn't do such things before you arrived, so no one would have seen.”
“...Are you saying you did this because of me?”
Rose asked back, doubting her ears.
While she had never felt she and Agatha were perfectly compatible, she had never thought of her as someone who would criticize her for things that weren't her fault, so this attitude was shocking.
“When did I say that? I only said I didn't do it before you came.”
Agatha spoke with an expression that almost seemed prim.
“It’s just that since you arrived, I’ve been thinking of him more often.”
Agatha looked up at the portrait hanging on the wall. A momentary fragility seeped into her firm profile.
It was a look too complex to be called simple sadness.
In the portrait, a gentle-looking man with brown hair was smiling softly.
The final image of the man who had been dead for over ten years was far younger than Agatha was now.
“What kind of person was he?”
“He was a man entirely different from me.”
The answer came immediately. It seemed that, in her mind, the deceased husband's primary identity was that: a person different from herself.
.jpg)