Chapter 13
13
Moonlit Night
Unlike the day she had vented her anger fiercely and stormed off, Leila appeared looking like a demure, proper young lady. Mathias gazed at her while languidly leaning back on the sofa.
“I’m truly sorry for the rudeness of visiting so suddenly, Duke.”
Leila, who had hesitantly opened her mouth, bowed her head as if avoiding his gaze. Her densely grown eyelashes were remarkably long and straight. It seemed that was the reason her slightly downcast eyes left such a strong impression.
“I hate to impose, but there’s something I’d like to ask.”
Leila’s lips twitched several times before she finally continued. Just then, the phone began to ring.
Mathias slowly rose to his feet and passed by Leila, who startled back in surprise, to pick up the receiver. It seemed to be a business call, as a conversation about a complicated contract ensued.
Leila watched Mathias during the call with slightly widened eyes. He skillfully led the conversation. Even in his occasional short smiles and polite speech, one could feel the overwhelming power and elegance that subdued his counterpart. He looked every bit the perfect Duke of Herhardt that everyone in Karlsvar admired without reservation.
So, no way.
The suspicion that this man might have really taken her glasses suddenly felt utterly ridiculous.
It felt like she was doing something pointless… But then, was it really the crow after all?
As she pondered how many crow nests there might be in these woods, Leila silently bowed toward the duke, who was still on the call. Unexpectedly, he covered the mouthpiece with his hand and turned his body toward her.
“Wait.”
That short command sounded like it came from someone entirely different from the perfect Duke of Herhardt just moments ago.
Leila froze in an awkward pose. Mathias resumed focusing on the call as if nothing had happened. Watching him, Leila realized something new.
Even in the midst of the most sociable conversation, the Duke of Herhardt’s gaze remained utterly calm. It was no different when he smiled. But his posture was always straight and elegant without fail. Even though the person on the other end of the line couldn’t see him, he never faltered for a moment. It was probably a habit ingrained in his body.
After the call dragged on for a few more minutes, he returned to the table and jotted something down. Leila anxiously clasped her fidgeting hands behind her back. Just as she began to wonder if he had forgotten her presence entirely, Mathias’s gaze finally turned to her.
“Speak.”
“Huh?”
“What you wanted to say.”
His direct stare made Leila uncomfortable, so she gently lowered her eyes.
“Oh… well, my glasses. I was wondering if you happened to see them at the pier on the day I fell into the water…”
“Hmm. I don’t think I did…”
Mathias slowly rose from the sofa and approached Leila.
“Or maybe I hid them.”
“Uh… Pardon?”
Leila was so startled that she lifted her head without thinking.
“Did you really hide my glasses, Duke?”
“What do you think?”
“I don’t think you would have.”
Leila replied, narrowing her eyes slightly.
“Why?”
Mathias tilted his head as if amused, and his black hair, like a crow’s feather, swayed above his forehead.
“Well… Duke, that would be too mean.”
Leila braced her feet to keep from stepping back.
After spending days searching crow nests with Kyle, she had finally mustered the courage to come here. Even if she disliked him, the duke was at least someone she could reason with. It seemed better to ask straightforwardly and eliminate at least one suspect between the crow and the duke. But now, she wasn’t so sure. She wondered if the enigmatic Duke of Herhardt, who only sowed more confusion with his riddles, was really someone she could talk to.
The two stared into each other’s eyes in silence for a long while. Had the butler not returned with an urgent telegram and mail, that moment might have lasted even longer.
Leila retreated to the window, her cheeks slightly flushed.
After a quiet exchange with the butler, Mathias finally tilted his head up obliquely to look at Leila after some time. They were quite a distance apart, and without her glasses she couldn’t be sure, but his red lips seemed to curve slightly.
“Um…”
She squeezed out every bit of courage she had to open her mouth, but Mathias cut her off by nodding his chin toward the door.
It was a succinct, cold gesture signaling that there was no longer a place for Leila Llewellyn here.
“What’s this? Suddenly into keeping birds?”
Riet stared at the birdcage in bewilderment. Inside the beautiful golden cage sat a bird just as beautifully golden as the cage itself.
“Planning to raise it yourself and shoot it someday?”
At Riet’s joke, the people gathered in the suite’s parlor burst into laughter all at once. Mathias let out a light chuckle as well. As usual, no reply came. While Riet added a few more silly remarks, servants brought in champagne.
After the dinner commemorating the gathering of relatives spending the summer together had ended, the young ones had moved here. The parlor in the master suite, Mathias’s private space, had been prepared especially at Claudine’s coquettish request. The fact that Mathias, who rarely allowed anyone into his space, had readily agreed showed he was quite indulgent with his fiancée.
Among family and friends, Mathias and Claudine’s engagement was as good as settled. The reason Countess Brandt visited Arbis every year with her young only daughter, and the Herhardt family’s noticeably warm reception of her, were all too obvious.
Since it was a natural inevitability that had now become reality, no one among them was surprised by the engagement. If Mathias had chosen another duchess candidate, that would have been the shocking turn.
“That bird must not know what kind of man the Duke of Herhardt is.”
When the bird flew through the open cage door and landed on Mathias’s shoulder, Riet burst into delighted laughter.
“A bird in love with the master of bird hunting. Is it foolish or pitiable?”
When Mathias extended his hand, the bird hopped onto his finger as if it had been waiting.
“Claudine, what do you think?”
At Riet’s question, everyone’s gazes turned to Claudine.
“Hmm. Well.”
Claudine glanced at the bird perched on Mathias’s finger, chirping away.
“How about foolish and pitiable?”
Laughter erupted once more at her compromise.
Having known each other for many years, the atmosphere among them was intimate. Names everyone knew, a world everyone shared, interests occasionally interspersed with laughter—all flowed naturally.
“That bird, does it have a name?”
Claudine, who had been staring at Mathias’s face as he looked at the bird, asked affectionately.
“If it doesn’t have one yet, shall I give it a name?”
“It’s not worth the trouble, Lady.”
Mathias turned to her with a smile. It looked the same as before, but felt subtly different.
“A bird is just a bird.”
His answer was heartless, contrasting sharply with the gentle gaze he had fixed on the bird singing on his hand.
“See? Foolish and pitiable.”
Riet clicked her tongue briefly and looked at the bird with pity.
“To love a hunter who won’t even allow it a name!”
The group, laughing and chatting over champagne, finally left the suite as deep night fell.
Mathias brushed past the servants tidying the parlor and went out alone for a nighttime stroll. His face, no longer smiling, was as serene as the night.
The trap was set; now it was time to check. She wasn’t a complete fool, so she would have noticed, and once noticed, she wouldn’t give up.
So she would fall right in.
Mathias slowly mulled over the answer he already knew as he walked through the rose garden. The breeze grew cooler the closer he got to the river beyond the woods. His steps halted at the annexe by the river, where moonlight poured down white.
Entering the parlor, Mathias went to the console and opened the drawer. The glasses lay neatly inside, glinting as they reflected the moonlight.
He gently cupped them as if holding a bird, then lay back on the sofa with his languid body.
What was this bait meant to catch?
Gazing at the sparkling glasses, Mathias pondered. It was hard to arrive at an answer, but he felt no impatience. He would know once he caught it.
As he repeatedly tossed and caught the glasses lightly, the night deepened.
It was a moonlit night.
This is insane.
Leila was fully aware of it. Sneaking into the duke’s annexe was no act of a sane person.
“Yeah. I should just sleep.”
Pacing around her room, Leila flopped onto the bed. She wrapped herself in the thin blanket and squeezed her eyes shut.
“My glasses…”
But once again, she couldn’t fall asleep.
The duke hid them.
Leila was now certain. She couldn’t understand why he would do such a thing, but it was clear he had.
So she had to find them.
With a resolute expression, Leila sprang up. He surely wouldn’t have taken them all the way to the mansion, so they had to be somewhere in the annexe.
It was remote there, and now deep into the night near midnight. If she was quick and left no trace, it might be fine. The moon was so bright that the darkness wasn’t all that scary.
“Yeah. It’ll be okay.”
Muttering to herself as if to convince her own heart, Leila opened the door. The cottage, filled with clear darkness, was silent. The only disturbance was the snoring coming from Uncle Bill’s bedroom.
Grabbing the lace shawl hanging by the door, Leila hurriedly left the cottage. Every time she wanted to turn back, she thought of the countless fruits she had gathered and the hours spent stirring jam until her arms ached, all to buy those glasses.
“They’re my glasses anyway.”
As the glittering Schulter River came into view in the distance, Leila suppressed her anxiety with yet another mutter. Her soft golden hair, falling to her waist, rippled with the rhythm of her quickened steps.
But the more she thought about it, the stranger the duke seemed.
Walking along the pier connected to the annexe, Leila suddenly thought.
Could he like shiny things, like a crow?
Repeating the question mixed with irritation, Leila arrived at the annexe where the glasses were hidden. Only then did she realize she had walked the night path in her nightclothes, but it was the dead of night with no eyes around anyway.
Taking a deep breath, Leila erased her final hesitation and took a big step forward.
As expected.
This time too, Leila Llewellyn’s actions stayed true to prediction.
As the sound of footsteps ascending the stairs grew closer, Mathias’s breathing slowed. Even though he had left the door unlocked for easy entry, Leila had lingered outside for a long while before finally opening the corridor window.
Not deviating from expectation, but always with a touch of audacity—that girl.
Leila Llewellyn climbed through that window. Mathias, still lying on the sofa, listened intently to her presence. After the light creak of the corridor floorboards came Leila’s sigh of relief.
Mathias chuckled soundlessly and lowered his gaze from the ceiling. Soon after, Leila entered the parlor. She froze rigidly, glancing around, then took cautious steps. It seemed she would start searching from the window side first.
Mathias’s eyes, already accustomed to the dark, immediately caught sight of her. Moonlight streaming through the open-curtain window illuminated Leila as she stood by the table.
As Mathias’s eyes narrowed, Leila moved to the next spot, the cabinet. The hem of her skirt, wrapping her slender calves, swayed with her tiptoeing steps. The white dress, thin enough to reveal her figure, was probably her nightgown.
What was this bait meant to catch?
Mathias slowly stroked the thin arm of the glasses in his hand. His mind cleared along the cold, smooth texture. Meanwhile, Leila had now reached the console opposite the sofa where he lay.
Mathias shifted his gaze back to Leila’s silhouette, illuminated by the moonlight.
That woman.
Mathias readily accepted the reason he had set this pathetic trap and waited.
No longer a mere young girl, but that woman—Leila.
“Looking for this?”
Mathias slowly shook the glasses in his hand and parted his lips.
Leila, who had just reached out for the console drawer, whirled around in shock as if about to faint. She clamped her trembling hand over her mouth and stumbled backward. Even so, she would only hit the wall.
Mathias slowly sat up, leaning against the sofa. Moonlight now fell upon his face, which had been shrouded in darkness.
In the bright moonlight, their eyes met.
