Irene Windler Is the Girl Next Door (5)
"Your Grace. May we truly leave things as they are?"
"Leave what as they are?"
"...I cannot be sure it is right, that someone strange should remain at the young lady's side."
"Anyone watching would take you for the child's father. You worry more than I do."
"...Forgive me."
Rak bowed his head.
He was a proud man, but before the duke he revered he was also a man who would lay down his life at any moment. That was Rak. And so, to him, Irene Windler was not merely a genius mage. She was a benefactor.
After she came, His Grace changed.
For the better.
He had been a man tormented by madness after losing the duchess. Where had that once-brilliant mind gone? How it had ached to watch him catch the frenzy of the Magic Sword and grow, day by day, more cruel. Fortunately he had never turned that cruelty upon the guiltless, only upon criminals—and yet, because of it, there was never a day when the smell of blood left the ducal house.
Then, in the midst of all that, she appeared. A beauty like a fairy. A girl who wore a smile as warm as sunlight, as if the duchess herself had come back to life.
After she appeared, His Grace smiled with a warmth that made one wonder whether he had ever been mad at all, and returned to them as the brilliant lord they had once known. She was the ducal house's great good fortune. She could be called nothing other than a blessing. And the girl herself was a gift, and a kindness.
So if anyone threatened her, Rak meant to stake his life on driving them off.
...And there was a reason, above every other, why she had to be protected.
"It is fine. He is a better man than I had thought. He will not threaten the child."
"..."
"You still look displeased."
"...She may be Your Grace's own child. The duchess's daughter."
"...You overstep."
"...Forgive me."
But it had to be said.
Yes. That girl, Irene Windler, might well be the duke's...
There was a strong chance she was Blake's biological child.
Blake himself felt it more keenly than anyone, and a few within the ducal house already knew. They simply did not say it. It was an open secret. Just as the royal house of Pendragon had noticed, Galahad already knew. And still the fact was not announced.
"Nothing is certain yet. Restrain yourself."
"..."
"Hmph. Impudent brat. Now that I look at you, you have even less discipline than that man."
"...Your Grace is far too exacting."
"Yes. I am Your Grace. And so I must be cold, and I cannot so much as embrace a child who may be my own blood."
"...!"
Duke Blake's words were the right ones. There was a chance Irene was his child by blood, but that was not a thing he could simply decide to be sure of. She resembled her. Where was the proof that she was his? What if she was only a person who looked alike?
...Later, Duke Blake had no confidence he could bear what would follow. Politically. ...And in his heart.
So he hid all of it, and merely received her as a foster daughter. He also needed time to restore a ducal house that madness had worn down as far as it could be worn, and for the present he would scarcely have the leisure to look into her.
"That is why I need that man. I do not know what relation he bears to Isis, but he has surely been ordered by my niece to watch Irene. A truly fitting choice of person. Worthy of my niece."
He had been surprised even as he investigated. To think a talent of that order still remained in the knight order. The Silver Lion Knight Order had been coming apart ever since Sir Baltar; for the royal house, the man was astonishing luck. And he was Galahad's luck as well.
"To watch her means he can also be held responsible for Irene's safety. If it is him, I can trust her to his hands."
He felt no displeasure that Isis, his niece, was watching his foster daughter. He would have done the same. No—he would have set an even heavier hand upon her. Seen in that light, she was still a soft child.
"...Even so, he is weaker than I am. Better that you send me."
But Rak still seemed unable to accept it. Discontent sat plain on him. Watching his disciple in that state, the duke let out a short breath of laughter.
"A man who looks ready to collapse at any moment, and only his mouth is still alive."
"I—I am not collapsing."
"Not collapsing, he says."
The duke, and the knights of the order with him, shook their heads as if the man were past saving.
Rak de Duron. Galahad's great hope, the young knight they were certain would become the next Aura User—they had all seen how badly his arms and legs were shaking. He trembled like an aspen. It was an ugly sight. He pretended he was fine, for the sake of his pride, but his insides were surely in ruins.
"Drink a potion, and quickly, you sorry fool."
"I... I am fine."
"...Blood is running from your mouth, you idiot."
"...Kh."
A thin red line slid from the corner of his mouth.
Rak had gone as pale as a man could go, and the duke clicked his tongue at the sight. Sorry fool.
"This is why knights..."
That one, and this one. Not a grown man among them.
Well.
"Still better than those sly bastards."
A cold light stirred in Blake's eyes. It was not a coldness meant for the knights. No.
"So the grand ducal house keeps rats, does it?"
The chill was for the rats who were deluding themselves that they had hidden in secret upon that very scene.
And the one just called a rat—
"His Grace does have a foul way with words. Wouldn't you say, Jake?"
"What do you mean, my lord?"
"Nothing. Just one of those things."
"...You do realize you seem strange, now and then?"
"I know."
The young lion of the grand ducal house, black hair sitting well on him, nodded with perfect detachment, and his right hand shook his own head, muttering under his breath.
"What's gotten into him this time...?"
He served the man, yes. But every so often there was simply no understanding him.
"...What are you doing?"
Meanwhile, when Lee Han stepped into the house, the two women had fortunately caught no hint that anything serious had happened outside. He had said beforehand that he was splitting firewood, so a racket beyond the walls was something they could make sense of; they had been far enough away that voices would not have carried; and thanks to a potion he was whole, without a wound. Perhaps that was for the best. He had been spared showing them a humiliating sight.
What did throw him, once he was inside, was what the two women were doing. And the one caught in the act was thrown as well.
"O-oh. Welcome back."
She was every bit as flustered, startling like a child nabbed mid-crime.
"...Student Irene. What are you doing?"
"Th-that is, I was talking with the maid, and somehow it just..."
"...Somehow you end up in a dress? Before that—did this house even own a dress?"
"Hehe! This one's mine! Well, Sir Knight? Beautiful, isn't it!"
"...Yeah. It's flashy."
"Hehe. It's so flashy I barely wear it myself."
"...And you put something like that on me?"
"I thought it would suit Lady Irene!"
"—?!"
They were holding a fashion show.
He had been neck-deep in something deadly serious outside, and now, faced with a sight so utterly different, Lee Han nearly felt the resolve he had only just made come entirely undone. Even so, his eyes followed Irene. And sure enough—
Pretty.
There was a purity and a freshness right for a girl in the flower of her youth, and that particular gold hair and those blue eyes gave off a beauty that was somehow mysterious. The dress was far too ornate. Even so, Irene Windler had the bearing to wear excess like that, and to wear it cleanly.
But if one asked whether she was beautiful enough to set a heart racing...
Would have been nice, having a little sister like that.
Unfortunately, Lee Han had reached the age at which whatever in him answered to romance was slowly going extinct, and he was not a man who felt that kind of pull toward a girl so much younger. It was the fondness of a man past his youth, watching some young idol he half-rooted for work herself hard and thinking, well, good for her. Exactly that, and no more.
Irene, who had no way of knowing, seemed to grow shy beneath his gaze and ducked her head. The smell of a misunderstanding was thickening in the air.
And right then—
"My lady, don't be like that. Show him that. You practiced so hard."
"Th-that's a little..."
"Oh, come on. If not now, when?"
"E-even so."
"...Practiced?"
What was she talking about?
In the next moment the girl who had been dithering lifted the hem of her dress a fraction, bent her knees slightly, and tipped her head.
...What was that?
"Sir Knight, that is a curtsey. A noble's way of greeting. Well? A beautiful posture, isn't it?"
"...Beau-tiful?"
From where he stood, it looked rather like a doll with a creak in its joints.
"Ah, I'm not used to it yet."
Irene had not been a noble for long, and a noble's greeting was not familiar to her in the least. Then again, what even was the thing, that a person would skip meals to do it? Noble culture, honestly...
"Hehe. It's only because she isn't used to it yet. Once you are, it becomes natural. Like this. Like this."
Cloth whispered.
Just as Irene had a moment before, Layla caught her skirt and drew it up only far enough for a glimpse of ankle, bent her knees, and inclined her head. And that posture was—how to put it. He had nothing to say. It was clean, and it was true, so crisp and so like water taking its course that for an instant the words left him entirely.
"...Ha."
To his own surprise, looking at her, Lee Han felt the whole unpleasantness piled up through the day blow off him at once, and a freshness come in where it had been.
Yes. In this moment.
...Beautiful.
This thought, that she was beautiful, was surely a feeling of an entirely different kind from what he had turned on Irene a moment ago.
And so, for the first time in his life, Lee Han understood that the culture of his betters was not wholly a waste of effort.
"...Worth skipping a meal to practice."
Worth it even to the point that he said so himself. For the first time, he recognized that the maid he had only ever taken for a simple girl was a lady who could stand beside a rose in full bloom.
...And the heroine, dealt a defeat that humiliating—
"...Arin. From today on, we practice the curtsey. A lot. Understood?"
"...Okay."
—swallowed her tears together with the shame, and promised herself revenge.