Translator: Nox

Chapter 36

“It was hot. I just… took a walk.”

“Dressed like that?”

The smile slowly faded from Blair’s lips. His eyes, sunken deep as if he had seen through everything, felt foreign. It was a stark departure from his usual self, who hid his true intentions and was always ready to slip away with a joke. This looked like a declaration of will—that this time, he would not back away and pretend not to know.

Vanessa stared at him in silence, as if looking at a stranger. Since when had Blair interfered in her business to this extent? Directly questioning one’s private movements was considered a grave breach of etiquette, even between close friends.

‘Then again.’

The moment he had snuck into a room whose owner was absent and stayed there for hours, Blair might have already decided to cross the line.

Having sensed something today.

“I don’t recall you ever owning an outfit like that.”

Taking a step closer, Blair caught her slender wrist in mid-air. The dress was so precarious that the slightest disarray looked as if it would send it sliding down below her collarbones.

In the midst of the festive night streets, the outfit had been on the modest side, but here inside Gloucester Castle, it appeared as scandalous as it could possibly be.

“…….”

Fortunately, River Ross was a man who was careful about leaving marks on visible skin. Unless he stripped her to reveal her chest, no traces of their tryst would be found. Even so, she felt as if she were being picked apart, naked.

Vanessa wrapped her free arm slightly around her stomach.

“I’ve had it for a long time. It’s just… not something I wear often.”

“Have you decided to follow the latest fashions of the rising bourgeoisie?”

“…….”

“Vanessa.”

He reached out and took her face, turning it toward him.

“You can’t look me in the eye when you lie.”

The strength in his hand was persistent. His deep green eyes, fixed on Vanessa, held a crooked smile.

“Did you manage to find a lover in that short time?”

“…It’s not like that.”

“I heard you were seeing some navy man.”

“I was just glad to see him, so we exchanged greetings in the garden a few times. He’s a friend who stayed at Gloucester Castle occasionally when we were young, so I just… Blair, let go!”

Overpowering her resistance, he forcefully pulled down Vanessa’s collar until her cleavage was exposed. Along the skin reddened by the friction of the fabric, mottled bite marks were clearly visible.

Blair stared down at the sight with a devastated expression before his lips twisted savagely.

“Do ‘friends’ do this to each other?”

Anger and fear outweighed her shame. She did not know this man—the one with this face, behaving this way. Her breath trembled uncontrollably.

“Let go….”

“Does your uncle know you’re playing around like this? Does he know about that sailor?”

“Don’t you dare touch him.”

Vanessa panted, glaring at him with icy blue eyes. They were aristocrats by birth, elegant beasts with their own established territories.

That was the nature of Ingram’s high society. No matter how filthy the deeds done behind closed doors, they strove to build a beautiful and solid world on the surface, and they despised those who used friendship as an excuse to meddle excessively in others’ lives.

Their friendship had been built on that very foundation. Maintain one’s position, offer advice occasionally, and never cross each other’s boundaries. The fact that Rosalyn and Blair had not actively stepped in to resolve her situation was an extension of that culture. They were young, yes, but they also respected Vanessa’s world. They were, after all, friends.

She had never felt hurt by that. She had considered it the hallmark of nobility, something natural. That was why today’s events felt all the more cowardly. Vanessa shook off his hand with force.

“Do you think you have the right to do this to me?”

“What?”

“You have Cissy.”

At those words, the color drained from Blair’s flushed cheeks. For a moment, his eyes widened as if he had been struck. It was clear the remark had hit a painful nerve deep inside him.

Just as Blair knew Vanessa, Vanessa knew Blair. For many years, they had been inseparable. Looking back, the Winchester twins had been there for every significant moment of her life.

From when they were four or five, wandering around holding hands while people teased that they looked like a little married couple; to the moment Rosalyn, jealous of her brother being taken away, pushed Vanessa off the sofa; even to the moment the three of them stood facing each other, weeping at the Earl and Countess’s funeral.

Blair slowly balled the hand she had shaken off into a fist. The laugh that escaped his lips was hollow. Soon, his expression, which had seemed to shatter, hardened once more.

“Naïve Vanessa.”

A low whisper followed. His deep green eyes, sunken with gloom, glinted dangerously in the dark.

“You’re so defenseless, not even knowing the filthy way men look at you.”

How could she not know? They all wore dazed expressions when they saw her face and turned red while pretending not to look at her chest. Those were eyes that stripped her bare in their imagination and then looked at her as if she were a lewd woman.

Claiming that a woman with a chest like hers couldn’t possibly be a virgin, that she must have lost her purity long ago being raised by a man, and that she wasn’t modest enough to be the mistress of a household.

That was why she felt more anxious. Because Blair—the friend who had understood her inside and out since they were children—was now a man, looking down at her with those same eyes.

“Wait, Blair….”

Vanessa stumbled back a few steps as Blair closed the distance. As she retreated, Blair closed the gap again. After repeating this several times, her back hit the wall.

Realizing she had nowhere left to run, she tried to flee in haste, but Blair extended both arms, slowly trapping Vanessa between the wall and his body.

With the light behind him, shadows cast over his face, making it difficult to even guess his expression. Even though it was a face she once thought she knew so well.

Blair’s breath carried the faint scent of strong whiskey. He felt like a man now. He wasn’t a soldier like River Ross, and having only recently become an adult, he was less seasoned, but he was still much larger and firmer than she was.

She already knew what would follow from here.

Her hands, clenched to strike him with all her might, were caught and pinned painfully against the wall. She barely swallowed a groan. This fool… he didn’t even realize how strong he had become. He seemed to think he could still grab her haphazardly as he did when they were children. Her skin stung and throbbed as if already bruised.

“Don’t do this.”

“How do you even know what I’m planning to do?”

“…….”

“Did you go all the way with that bastard?”

Her eyes, now adjusted to the darkness, finally read his expression. He looked miserable. All traces of his playful self had vanished, replaced by someone unrecognizable.

In Blair’s strangely cold green eyes, the reflection of a frightened woman was visible. No matter how she stomped or thrashed her arms, he didn’t budge. Vanessa looked at him with eyes drenched in fear.

“Blair, please… You can’t do this….”

“Why?”

“We’re fri—friends….”

He let out a harsh laugh and leaned down. His breath was close. Unable to bear it, Vanessa’s eyes snapped shut. Her lips, tightly pursed as if to refuse entry, turned pale.

At that desperate, futile, and incredibly fragile resistance, Blair burst into laughter. She was acting that way out of a belief that he wouldn’t actually go through with it. So complacently, thinking that merely pressing her lips together counted as defiance.

Looking down silently at her sensitive, fluttering eyelashes, he spoke as if he had suddenly remembered something.

“My mother thought you had already lost your virginity to your uncle.”

“…Did the Marchioness really say such a thing?”

“The old rumors about your uncle were that horrific. Even that incident back then… So, my mother was desperate in her own way. Rosalyn flew into a rage and was confined to her room for the entire summer break.”

Vanessa blinked rapidly. During their second summer break from Saint Louis, every letter she had sent to Rosalyn had been returned. At first, she thought she had written the address wrong; later, she thought the postman was playing a prank on her.

That was until the Marchioness of Winchester dropped a bundle of those letters onto her lap.