Chapter 117
Sweet Deception
Having seen off Princess Irene, Olivia didn’t return to her townhouse in Royal Park until twilight.
She removed her hat and gloves, placed them on the table, and sank into the wing chair.
As her tension unraveled, fatigue flooded in.
Anne moved briskly about—opening the windows for ventilation and tidying away the hat and gloves Olivia had set aside.
Olivia gazed silently at the park beyond the open window.
The serene flow of the lower Bichen River and the harmonious scenery of the park beyond, all bathed in the golden afternoon light of autumn, exuded a quiet charm.
“Don’t lose to the Grand Lady of Wellington. I’ll be cheering you on.”
The princess’s rather whimsical words of encouragement before boarding the ship floated back to her.
Olivia thought she understood their meaning, though she couldn’t fathom why Irene had said them. Nor why she had suggested inviting her and Johann to the Grand Duchy of Kranz.
Perhaps she looked like a woman still clinging to regrets.
“Miss, shall I bring you some tea?”
“Thank you, Anne.”
Olivia replied as she looked up at the maple tree whose leaves were beginning to blush red at the tips. Birds chirped cheerfully amid the stillness.
Where should she go?
The quiet life of tending roses in Briar seemed no longer possible. If she were to leave—truly leave—it would have to be so far that no word could ever reach her.
The thought of going somewhere unknown didn’t frighten her. Only—
“The one I want is you, Olivia Blanchet.”
The man’s voice seemed to drift to her again on the wind. Olivia exhaled a heavy sigh and closed her eyes.
The soft breeze enveloped her, loosening the weight from her eyelids.
And so she drifted into sleep without resistance.
When Anne entered the parlor carrying a tray with perfectly steeped tea, Olivia was already asleep.
Setting the tray down, Anne fetched a lap blanket from the bedroom. Moving silently, she approached and carefully spread it over her mistress.
She had just turned back toward the kitchen when the doorbell rang. Startled, Anne wheeled around.
“Who’s there?”
She called out from the entryway. No response came from beyond the door.
Could it be those unruly supporters of the princess playing a cruel prank?
Her grip on the tray tightened. Her heart began to beat anxiously.
Then came a knock, and with it, a voice she knew well, muffled through the heavy door.
“It’s me, Anne.”
“…”
Anne’s fingertips stiffened on the tray.
“Anne.”
After a long hesitation, she set the tray down on the sideboard. Her hand faltered on the doorknob.
Again that deep, magnetic voice called her name.
Biting her lip, Anne slowly opened the door without a sound.
Backlit by the sinking golden sun stood the Marquess Lancelot.
“How have you been?”
“…”
Anne had no idea what had transpired between her lady and the marquess.
She couldn’t ask, lest it reopen wounds still healing. And her lady never spoke of it, as though that time had been erased.
But Anne knew one thing—that her lady had suffered deeply because of him.
So when she saw him smiling as if nothing had happened, anger welled up inside her.
“You don’t even bother with a polite ‘won’t you come in.’”
The marquess smiled faintly.
“…My lady would not like it.”
Anne answered coolly.
“Olivia…”
His eyes slid past her, searching inside the house.
“…is asleep.”
Anne’s reluctant answer was icy. But the marquess seemed unbothered.
His gaze deepened, thoughtful, like the dusky twilight sky.
“Give this to Olivia for me.”
He held out a box tied with a blue ribbon that fluttered in the breeze—the very shade of her mistress’s eyes.
“I’m sorry. I cannot accept it.”
“Is that so?”
He arched his neat brows slightly, his eyes amused though his tightly pressed lips radiated pressure. Anne swallowed dryly.
“Why not?”
“…My lady instructed me not to accept anything.”
Anne’s voice was steady, her stance firm.
The marquess gave a small nod, a hollow smile touching his lips.
Then, stepping up onto the entryway steps, he said—
“Then I’ll have to give it to her myself.”
His words were calm, yet his action was bold.
“N-no. Please, give it to me.”
Startled, Anne seized the box. She could not allow a sleeping lady to be seen by a man, no matter who he was.
With no other choice, she accepted it.
“Thank you, Anne.”
His lips curved in a languid smile.
But once more his gaze slipped deep inside the house, lingering there. After a moment, he finally turned away.
Anne remained at the door, watching until his carriage disappeared into the twilight street.
Even then she lingered longer, uncertain whether delivering the box to her mistress was the right thing to do.
The decision would not come quickly.
“My lady?”
Olivia stirred awake at the gentle shake of her shoulder.
Still groggy, she blinked several times before Anne came into focus.
It was already night; the house glowed with lamplight.
“I slept far too long, didn’t I?”
As the fog of drowsiness lifted, Anne’s face came clearer in the reddish light above her. Olivia smiled faintly and straightened from the chair.
“You were tired, my lady. But… there’s something.”
“Yes?”
Anne hesitated, uncharacteristically flustered.
“Did something happen?”
“…You had a visitor.”
Her voice trembled slightly.
“A visitor?”
Anne met her lady’s gaze, lips trembling. She had bitten them so hard that faint marks remained.
“…Yes, my lady. The marquess came.”
“….”
“He didn’t come inside—he only asked me to give you this.”
Anne lifted the box she had placed on the table.
“I’m sorry, my lady. I tried not to take it, but the marquess…”
“It’s fine, Anne.”
Olivia gave her a faint smile, then fixed her eyes on the box.
The evening breeze had grown chill, clearing her mind as it brushed her cheek.
Barely two months.
What grand love could have grown in such a brief time?
She managed to laugh now. A hollow, powerless laugh, almost self-mocking—but enough to let her untie the ribbon without flinching.
The soft ribbon slipped from the white box and fell soundlessly to the floor.
Olivia slowly lifted the lid.
“….”
The glass of a photo frame caught the chandelier’s light and stabbed at her eyes.
“Could we stay like this a little longer?”
“I’d like to take one with her.”
A moment she had completely forgotten was preserved there.
The man in the photo was looking at her. Though asked to face the camera, in that instant, his gaze had been on her.
Even after making a fool of her, he could look at her with such eyes, so effortlessly…
“To My Queen.”
The man’s sweetly deceptive voice seemed to melt in her ear once again.
Olivia bit her lip hard until the blur cleared from her sight.
She lifted the frame from the box, and something slipped out from behind it.
A postcard from the Lancelot Hotel’s gift shop.
Its ornate design bore the hotel’s name in elegant script and a gold-embossed image of the Rose Garden’s marble pergola.
She stared at it for a long while, then picked up a corner between her fingers. A faint scent of fresh cologne clung to it.
Taking a deep breath, Olivia slowly turned it over. The thin paper felt impossibly heavy.
“I will be waiting. Yours, Edgar.”
The chandelier’s light spilled across the dark ink, staining it red.
The handwriting, full of elegance and poise, was exactly like the man himself—outwardly gentle, endlessly gentle, always gentle.
And she had been the foolish woman who believed it.
Olivia set the frame and postcard neatly upon the table.
Once, she had thought those times the brightest moments of her life. But now, in her weary gaze, they were nothing but emptiness.
He comes.
White smoke rose into the dark night, curling like heat haze before dissolving into mist.
He doesn’t come.
Again the smoke drew pale trails in the still air, then vanished.
Leaning against the marble column at the top of the pergola steps, Edgar counted the stars.
How foolishly romantic—it made him chuckle.
The overcast sky left only a few visible, and even those stars seemed not to be on his side. He would not come.
How absurd.
Abandoned even by the heavens, Edgar dropped his gaze from the night sky.
His gray-blue eyes sank heavily as he fixed them on the far darkness beyond the stone path. Someone was coming toward him.
