NM | Chapter 03

Chapter 3

At the unexpected question, a blank expression crossed Amelia’s face.

“The… back garden? Um… if you walk down the hallway to the left, you’ll find a staircase. You can go down that way. If it’s for smoking, you can use the terrace instead. Father and my brother often smoke there.”

“I try to avoid smoking indoors.”

“Then I’ll come with you—!”

“I don’t want to come all this way just to be nagged by Vincent Everett.”

Above his gentle tone, blue eyes that revealed nothing of his true thoughts were hidden behind lids curved in a faint smile.

“You must be tired as well, my lady. It would be best for you to return and rest.”

It was clearly a considerate and polite voice, yet the formality in his words carried unspoken pressure. Understanding that he was telling her not to interfere any further, Amelia pressed her pink-lipsticked lips together.

Amelia did not expect him to love her. But couldn’t he at least be a little kinder? Logan surely knew that she had been scarred while saving his life. Yet he only allowed her a carefully measured distance, and that made her resentful.

“O… alright. I’m sorry for holding you up when you’re tired. I’ll see you at dinner.”

Amelia bowed slightly and stepped back.

Her excitement over her fiancé’s visit faded quickly, and her lowered face flushed with shame.

‘The duke hasn’t changed at all.’

A distance of about two steps. In front of others, they linked arms or held hands, but once no one was watching, the space between them widened instantly. Polite, but not intimate.

The line Logan had drawn between them had not narrowed, even after all these years.

***

After entering the back garden behind the mansion, Logan loosened the tie that felt tight around his neck. That was not enough, so he unbuttoned a few buttons of his shirt. The cool breeze soothed the heat rising in his body. He took a cigarette case from his inner pocket, tapped it against his palm, and placed a cigarette between his lips.

“To be in this state the moment I arrive…”

Though he appeared calm, an unpleasant feeling had clung to him since he set foot in the Everett estate.

The Fraser ducal house and the Everett count’s house.

Their long relationship had begun when the heads of the families attended the same university, and it had continued to their children. Logan and Vincent had been classmates, and Amelia had become his fiancée.

Their tightly bound connection had seemed as if it would continue into the next generation as well.

But—

‘I told them not to attach meaning to a hollow engagement.’

Even if the promise had been made in childhood, there had never been any real emotional exchange between them. To him, the engagement was merely payment to the woman who had saved his life, nothing more and nothing less. That was why he had drawn a clear line early on, even when Amelia wanted obvious affection.

But as the years passed, Amelia began to want more than what the engagement system offered. The reason he accepted her annual invitations this time was to finally make his position clear.

Their relationship was a contract, and she should not expect affection. If she wanted, he was willing to break off the engagement.

Logan searched his pockets. He checked the inner pocket of his jacket, the cigarette case, even his trouser pockets, but he could not find his metal lighter.

After pausing, he muttered a low curse.

“Damn it.”

Had he lost it on the train?

Standing crookedly, Logan frowned. The bedroom he had been shown was close to the mansion entrance, far from the back garden he had walked to just to smoke. It felt too far to go back just for a lighter, so he bit down on the cigarette in irritation.

As he hesitated, someone entered his field of vision.

A maid, wobbling along while hugging a bundle of bedding almost as big as herself.

She was carrying laundry alone, with no one to help her.

‘If she’s a maid, she might have matches.’

Although many noble houses had switched to gas lamps, the old Everett estate still used candles.

Logan approached the maid without hesitation. The bedding blocked her view, so she did not even notice him approaching. He grabbed the load from her arms and spoke abruptly.

“I have a favor to ask.”

Startled by the sudden lightness of her arms, the woman looked around, then lifted her gaze. Her small head rose slowly, and ash-brown eyes met his face.

“Y-you’re… Duke Fraser… sir?”

Her full lips parted, and her voice shook with surprise as she recognized him.

At that moment, a long ringing filled his ears.

“I… I swear I’ll serve you for the rest of my life, young master. Promise! That’s enough now, right? Please give me back my handkerchief!”
“Young master, are you conscious? Please get up. We need to get outside before the fire spreads…”
“Help me, please… s-save me… I can’t breathe anymore…”

The memories he had buried deep in his chest flashed past in an instant. A sharp headache pierced his head, and the smile he wore like a mask disappeared. His heightened nerves focused entirely on the woman.

Logan stared at her fiercely. A young girl who still remained vivid in his memory despite the years. A bright, cheerful child who had boldly declared that she would become his child’s nanny once he grew up and got married, a mere maid with not an ounce of caution.

“You…”

A sound like a groan forced its way out of his tightly constricted throat.

As if to hide his face, Logan lowered his head and grabbed the woman’s wrist as she tried to flee. With his rough strength, her body was forcibly turned around.

“You’re… alive?”

You were alive? This close to me?

“Pardon? I don’t understand what you mean…”

“Look at me. Look me straight in the eyes.”

Logan tightened his grip on the maid’s wrist as she struggled to pull away. His focus was entirely on her ash-brown eyes, so he failed to notice her pained expression.

He had thought he was hallucinating, driven mad by longing for the dead. She looked so much like that child that he could believe this was what she would look like if she had lived.

Had he finally lost his mind, unable to forget the girl who had died because of him?

“My wrist… it hurts. Could you please let go…”

Enduring the pain from the grip that cut off her circulation, the maid trailed off. Though the back garden was a secluded place rarely visited even by servants, she kept glancing around, worried someone might see, and twisted her wrist to break free.

“Ah, I’m sorry.”

Only then did Logan realize that he had been using too much force, seeing the clear fear on her face, as if she wanted nothing more than to escape him. He released her.

He asked the woman, who was rubbing her wrist and holding it close to her chest:

“What’s your name?”

“M-my name? I don’t have one…”

“…You don’t have a name?”

“I have something I need to do urgently. May I go?”

Instead of answering further, she asked his permission. Since she had been anxiously looking around the entire time, Logan did not stop her any longer.

After bowing to the duke in thanks, the woman hurried away, as if afraid of being grabbed again.

Watching her flee without looking back like a rabbit freed from a trap, Logan ran a hand roughly through his hair.

“That’s beyond shameless.”

Crushing the cigarette that had fallen to the ground without ever being lit under his shoe, he shoved his hands into his trouser pockets and turned toward the bedroom.

Smoking would not improve his mood anyway.

“There’s no way someone who died over ten years ago could be alive.”

If she had lived, she would have come back to him.

Logan erased the woman who had left him with nothing but a throbbing headache from his mind.

In the back garden where their brief encounter had taken place, only the bedding, dirt-stained and abandoned, remained.