“Why did you bother with them? One word was all it would have taken to make them clear out.”
“I could hardly treat guests with such rudeness.”
“So you lied on account of that?”
“Lied?”
Ryan’s brow narrowed as he met Anasta’s clear gaze.
“As if you know me so well—ah, damn it.”
· · ·
“Never mind. Now that the banquet is over, wrap up your business and head back to your room.”
Ryan turned and entered the annex first.
“It was not a lie. You are kind and considerate of others.”
“Who? Me?”
Ryan stopped mid-stride and looked back at her.
“You stepped in for my sake because you were concerned for me.”
“Those rats were merely getting on my nerves.”
“And I was in a difficult spot because of those same rats.”
“What?”
Faced with Anasta’s serene tone and unruffled expression, Ryan hesitated for a moment before letting out a dry sneer.
“You hardly looked in a tight spot to me. If anything, you looked as though you were enjoying yourself, weren’t you?”
“You are mistaken.”
“…Whatever. I am heading inside my room, so go rest.”
Ryan whipped around swiftly to conceal his face, which was beginning to flush red.
Yet even after he climbed the stairs and reached his bedchamber, the sound of Anasta’s footsteps trailing behind him did not cease.
“Do you have business with me?”
“…I spent a pleasant time at the banquet. Nor did I commit a single faux pas.”
“Then the Duchess of Soltaire must be thoroughly pleased.”
“What interested me most was speaking with your friends.”
“I am sure they were useless pests, as always.”
“Quite the contrary—they were warm, gracious individuals. They knew a great deal about you as well. They told me all about how brilliant and formidable you were during your academy days.”
Ryan’s hand paused as it reached for the doorknob.
“All of that belongs strictly to the past.”
To the past, then.
“Even so. I hear you are remarkably skilled with mathematics and figures. If you could teach me as well—”
“Why on earth would I do that for someone due to leave this estate shortly?”
Ryan snapped curtly, and the moment he pushed the door open to step inside, Anasta seized the opening and slipped into the room.
“Your friend asked me to deliver this to you.”
Anasta held out the small red ring box toward him.
The instant his eyes fell on that familiar box, the harsh retort on Ryan’s tongue dissolved.
“…This.”
The gold-banded ring awarded only to the top graduates of the military academy.
At the mere sight of it, a storm of emotion welled up inside him.
· · ·
The fleeting changes in his expression did not escape Anasta.
Watching the nostalgia overtake Ryan’s features, she recalled Alex’s parting words.
“The gentleman introduced himself. He said his name was Alex.”
“Alex…”
Ryan murmured the familiar name under his breath.
“There was also a young lady named Scarlett.”
“Scarlett?”
“Yes.”
Anasta remembered the woman whose eyes had gleamed with an unmistakable spark each time Ryan’s name was uttered.
“She seemed to know you quite intimately.”
“We were close.”
“Was she your lover?”
“What?”
“I mean only that she knows so much about you.”
Ryan knit his brows tightly.
“I have never had a lover in my life, so stop spouting nonsense.”
“Not even once?”
At Anasta’s blunt inquiry, heat rushed abruptly to Ryan’s face.
“Why? Did you have plenty of them yourself?”
“I have never had anyone, either. But it seems hard to fathom that someone as handsome as you has never kept a sweetheart.”
“What? That is my line to say about you—!”
Ryan cut himself off, clamping a hand over his mouth.
‘Damn it! What in the world was I about to say?’
· · ·
· · ·
Their gazes locked in the quiet air.
Strangely enough, whenever Ryan stared into those vivid green eyes, his body heat flared as if it were the height of summer despite the winter chill.
He had even seen her in his dreams the other night.
‘What is wrong with me? Am I getting sentimental over my first fiancée simply because I’ve never dated anyone?’
“Kyaah!”
Just as their eyes refused to break away, an unmistakable sound drifted up from the direction of the window.
It was a woman’s sharp gasp.
“…Did you hear that just now?”
Ryan asked cautiously. Anasta gave a solemn nod.
Tense and hushed, the two crept toward the window where the sound had originated.
They carefully leaned their heads out into the cold draft blowing past.
The first sight that greeted them was the hem of a woman’s skirt fluttering wildly in the breeze.
Seeing the woman sprawled flat on the ground, Anasta and Ryan both frowned.
They had initially feared someone was injured, but the atmosphere down below was entirely different.
A heady, stifling haze of arousal hung over the scene.
Moreover, another presence was tangled with the woman.
“Ah! Oh, Edward!”
“Are you cold?”
“I—I feel so burning hot!”
Beneath her lay a gentleman dressed in formal attire.
One of his hands stroked her waist, while the other slid surreptitiously beneath her gown.
It was an illicit, clandestine rendezvous.
Assuming the unlit, shadowy annex was an abandoned wing, the two lovers clung to each other, trading fervent, bruising kisses.
Anasta parted her lips slightly, mesmerized as the couple cradled each other’s faces, leaning in for another deep kiss.
“Why on earth are they carrying on like that here?”
Ryan muttered under his breath.
“They look as though they intend to go all the way.”
He forced out the words with a detached air, yet his face was thoroughly flushed crimson by the spectacle.
‘Damn it, why now of all times, and right here?’
Had he witnessed it alone, he would have brushed it off as rotten luck and walked away, but he was seeing this alongside Anasta.
That single detail made everything feel unbearably strange.
‘I cannot even drive them off without causing a scene…’
Pretending not to care about the entwined figures, Ryan stole a glance toward Anasta.
By all rights she ought to have been mortified, yet she was watching the kissing pair with the wide-eyed wonder of a child seeing lovers for the very first time.
She had not shown this level of concentration even over a game of chess.
Ryan studied her face intently before creasing his brow.
“What? Are you wishing you could try something like that with a man?”
Was it truly just his friend she had met at the banquet? She must have exchanged glances, danced, and spoken with any number of handsome noblemen.
And he could not be certain that someone among them had not matched her ideal type.
“It is simply… fascinating.”
Anasta said softly, watching the unending kiss.
“How wonderful must it feel for them to indulge so fiercely? When it is nothing more than two pairs of lips meeting.”
“That is precisely my point.”
“Sir, are you not curious?”
“About what?”
Ryan asked, affecting ignorance.
“About a kiss.”
It was the first shy expression he had ever witnessed on Anasta.
“Not in the slightest.”
Ryan had never once harbored curiosity regarding a kiss.
The very thought of touching his lips to someone else’s repulsed him—both sanitarily and psychologically.
That revulsion had only deepened once his illness worsened.
He believed no one could ever love him, and even if he were ever forced to kiss, it would be a cold, calculated formality devoid of any romance.
That was what he had always believed, but seeing Anasta look so girlish and innocent made Ryan swallow hard.
“…So you are the one who is curious?”
“Yes.”
Faced with her straightforward confession, utterly free of hesitation, Ryan let out a faint laugh.
“I am curious.”
She wondered if a kiss truly tasted so sweet, if it really brought such intoxicating bliss.
After all, she had never seen lovers kissing properly before.
Those who bore the title of parents had been so in name only, screaming at each other daily, and the slums where she grew up were so miserable that happy lovers were virtually nonexistent.
The only kind souls had been the priest and the nuns at the village church, but they had taken vows of celibacy.
Whenever they had planted a tender peck on little Anasta’s cheek, it had filled her with pride, soothing her quiet longing for love.
Yet what did it feel like on the mouth? Watching the lovers’ kiss deepen below, she indulged in romantic daydreams like an innocent young girl.
“Why not pick just anyone and try it out?”
Ryan suggested tartly.
“Why would I ever do such a thing with just anyone when you are right here?”
“What?”
Ryan froze entirely at her answer.
What had he just heard?
“I am your fiancée.”
Her direct gaze shifted from the lovers below to settle squarely on Ryan.
Perhaps from their proximity to the window, her green eyes shimmered softly beneath the cold winter moonlight.
“Only a short while ago, I stood at the banquet in the role of your fiancée.”
· · ·
“And you, Sir, having never had a lover, must never have kissed anyone either, right?”
Ryan felt a sudden wave of dizziness.
The staggering sequence of words she unloaded all at once left his mind spinning.
Anasta did not stop there. Stepping closer, she seated herself beside Ryan on the bed, bringing her gaze level with his.
· · ·
She was waiting for his answer.
“…I haven’t.”
Ryan managed with difficulty, swallowing against a dry throat.
Before he fell ill, he had done no more than touch his lips to the back of ladies’ hands at balls; he had never kissed someone in earnest like that.
Anasta hesitated a heartbeat before asking softly, “May I kiss you, Young Master?”
Ryan caught his breath.
· · ·
He should have refused.
She was only proposing it on a whim to satisfy her fleeting curiosity.
Yet he could not bring himself to reject her outright, sitting there in mute, stunned silence like an idiot.
Why was that?
For a brief instant, that dream from the other night flashed through his mind.
The vision of Anasta descending as lightly as an angel.
And the sharp pang of regret he had felt when she vanished so abruptly.
‘Damn it.’
Why did that memory have to resurface now, of all times…?
END
