A Lovers' Quarrel (3)
"Answer me seriously, Ethan."
"……"
Ethan Richard Blackwood was flustered.
First, because Lilith had brought up something entirely different from what they had planned to discuss in this situation — and second, because a strange chill crept over him at the way her question suddenly bore down on him like an interrogation.
This wasn't supposed to be what our argument was about….
As he remembered it, the argument he and Lilith were supposed to have was nothing like this. The plan was for her to drive off whichever woman approached him, then compare herself to that woman while working herself into a rage — and for him to push back with the air of a man utterly fed up with her antics. In other words, they were supposed to perform a scene in which a rift of resentment between the two of them (a rift that had never actually existed) finally came boiling to the surface at this noble exchange gathering. That had been the original script.
And if things didn't pan out — if no other woman came near him — the fallback was to loosely rehash the conversation they'd once had at the academy chapel. He had come prepared with both versions ready. But this question of Lilith's was something he'd never rehearsed for, so naturally, no answer sprang readily to his lips.
"Ethan. I asked you a question."
"Li- Lili…? Are you… angry right now, by any chance?"
"I'm asking why you didn't dodge until that young lady's lips were practically right in front of your face. I'm genuinely curious."
A cold shiver ran down his spine; he felt sweat break out below the nape of his neck.
True, this was all part of the operation — but the moment the question left her mouth, a peculiar intuition seized him: if he didn't answer it properly, his relationship with Lilith might turn awkward from here on out.
"…I was going to dodge."
"No, you weren't."
"If she'd come a little closer, I would have. You stepped in before I needed to, so there was nothing to dodge. That's all."
"……"
Her expression was impossible to read. It looked a little like anger — and a little like someone hearing his explanation and refusing to believe a word of it.
For Ethan's part, he was dying of indignation. He'd kept up that shameless facade right up until the young lady's lips nearly touched his precisely because abandoning the script he'd built with Lilith was never an option.
He cherished and loved Lilith more than anyone, and he had no intention of wrecking their operation through some careless misstep of his own.
Had he flinched away openly, it would have amounted to openly declaring that his relationship with Lilith was on solid ground. If that derailed the plan, the McHart subjugation operation — nearly a month in the making — would collapse into failure along with it.
That was why Ethan simply could not understand why Lilith was suddenly throwing this question at him now. The Lilith he knew had always made the soundest possible judgments, the one who steered him toward the wisest choices.
She did occasionally act on impulse, but somehow things always worked out well in the end when she did.
…No, wait. Maybe—
What if this angry-sounding question of hers was actually part of the act — a setup for their staged quarrel?
The moment the thought struck him, everything fell neatly into place. Of course. Lilith would never, on a mere whim, ask him a question designed to corner him like this.
Apparently, Lilith intended to cast him as the "obsessively possessive fiancé" at this noble exchange gathering. That improvised kiss from moments ago — surely that, too, had been groundwork laid for this very operation.
It did strike him as odd that Lilith would kiss him in front of a crowd like that without a second thought, purely for show. At least from where Ethan stood, Lilith had never seemed like a woman capable of that kind of fixation.
…Though that was only the "Lilith as seen through Ethan's eyes," and the reality happened to be somewhat different.
In any case, now that he'd grasped the situation, Ethan's next move was obvious: play along. It diverged a little from the original plan, but the situation itself wasn't a bad one for stoking the appearance of discord between them.
The pairing of someone clinging obsessively to their betrothed and a partner so sick of it they explode in fury — it was a common enough drama in any walk of life. And considering his and Lilith's respective standings, it wasn't the least bit strange for her to be seen as the one obsessed with him. A truly inspired bit of casting, really.
Tucking the inconvenient truth — that he was the one hopelessly obsessed with her — carefully away in his heart, Ethan began his own performance to match Lilith's.
"So. What exactly were you planning to do if I hadn't dodged and just let her kiss me, Lili?"
"…What did you say?"
"I'm getting tired of you nitpicking my every move. Is there really some reason to work yourself into a lather over things that never even happened? Whether or not I intended to turn my face away doesn't matter, does it? It didn't happen either way."
"Wh- what…?"
Watching Lilith flounder — no, watching her perform floundering at an answer she hadn't anticipated — Ethan quietly marveled to himself.
Her acting had been astonishingly good back when they'd staged that fight with Agnes, too. Truly, Lilith was a woman of many talents.
In reality, Lilith was simply stunned that he'd answered this way — but there was no possible way Ethan could have known that.
"I'm about worn out by your obsession, too. Just how long do you intend to interrogate your own fiancé before you're satisfied?"
"Wh- when have I ever doubted you, or cornered you—"
"You're doing it right now. You grabbed me by the collar and forced a kiss on me not two minutes ago, and already you're questioning my feelings again."
"F- forced…? Did you just say forced?"
"What else would you call yanking my face toward yours and pressing your lips to mine? And talking as if I were your personal property? You've been crossing the line for a while now, Lili."
"……"
Every word out of his mouth felt like driving a dagger into his own heart. Yes, this performance was for stoking the appearance of discord between them — but that didn't stop him from resenting a situation where he had to spit out words that might genuinely wound her.
The fact that he had to disgrace Lilith in order to protect her pained him. By tomorrow, no doubt, rumors would be spreading everywhere about the baron's daughter hopelessly fixated on her fiancé, a duke's heir.
Lilith had told him more than once that marrying anyone but him meant nothing to her, that he shouldn't give a thought to his own reputation — and yet, as the man who loved her, Ethan couldn't help but grieve that he had to be the one to create a situation like this.
"…Ethan, do you perhaps think what that young lady said was true?"
"And what, exactly?"
"That you'd much rather have a nice, modest chest like hers than this disgustingly oversized one."
"……What?"
"Do you think she's right — that a chest this uselessly huge is just inefficient? That it gets in the way when you swing a sword, that it's nothing but pure fat with nothing worth actually grabbing, that it swallows everything up so completely you can't even feel it properly? Is that what you've been thinking, all those times you touched my chest?!"
Thrown off balance once again by this sudden detour into Lilith's breasts, Ethan could only gape.
He'd managed to roll with the obsessive-fiancé act moments ago, but what on earth was he supposed to do with a bomb like this, lobbed straight at the most sensitive subject imaginable?
By the logic of the operation — of provoking an open quarrel — he was supposed to agree with her. But the words refused to come. And if he flatly denied it instead, that would only turn into comforting her, which was equally out of the question.
Besides, he had no desire whatsoever to appraise her body in front of others — least of all with men watching.
Lilith's body, from the crown of her head to the tips of her toes, was meant to belong to him and him alone. He'd long since resolved to one day claim both her heart and her body for himself — which was exactly why he had no intention of holding a public appraisal of what was already, in his heart, his.
If we have to fight about something, better the other thing….
Telling himself that pretty much any subject beat publicly appraising Lilith's looks or figure, Ethan steered the conversation onto different ground.
…Without the faintest inkling of how she would receive what he was about to say.
"See?! You did think it! You agreed with what that woman said — that's why you didn't even try to dodge when she came up to you! Even now, you won't so much as listen to me — all you'll do is take the side of some woman whose name you don't even know—"
"…Aren't you being rather insolent for a mere baron's daughter? And not just any baron's daughter — a daughter of a cadet branch of House Blackwood, at that."
"……I'm sorry?"
"Did you think becoming engaged to a ducal house made you something special, just because you're a baron's child? Without me as your fiancé, Lili, you're nothing but a lower noble's daughter with no backing whatsoever."
"……"
He'd hoped to avoid dragging status into it at all costs — but even so, this was far preferable to disparaging Lilith's figure in front of everyone.
Quarrels that stooped to aristocratic rank rarely ended well. Which meant that raising this subject was, ironically, the perfect way to signal to any onlookers that his relationship with Lilith had already fallen completely to ruin.
Besides, Lilith had originally been a commoner, not even nobility — and a proud woman like her would hardly take "lower noble's daughter" as an insult. As far as Ethan could tell, this topic was the safe bet, without question….
"……Hic."
…Are those — tears?
It was the first time Lilith had shown tears in the middle of their staged fight, and the sight of them rattled Ethan badly.
And then her following reply — and what she did next — rattled him even more.
"So you really did think that all along."
"…Wait, Lil—"
"I apologize for the insolence I've shown, a low noble's daughter who never knew her place. Then, farewell."
Wiping the tears pooling at the corners of her eyes, Lilith fled quickly out of the annex. Watching her go, Ethan could only pray, with everything in him:
Please, please let that just be part of her astonishingly convincing performance.
The garden behind the back gate of the imperial annex.
Having finished her "lovers' quarrel" with Ethan, the black-haired baron's daughter slipped out through the back gate as if fleeing the scene, walking alone into the night.
"…Ah."
Lilith let out a single sigh weighted with a dozen different meanings as she looked up at the sky. It was a dark night — no new moon had even risen to light it.
The moment she stepped outside, a cold night breeze brushed across her face, cooling the flush that her overheated emotions had brought there, and slowly, alongside the chill, her heart began to claw its way back toward composure.
By the time enough minutes had passed for the harsh burn of the brandy to settle and the giddy, unmoored feeling inside her to ebb away, Lilith stood with both hands quietly cupped over her face, exhaling a long, deep sigh from somewhere near the bottom of her chest.
"Haaah… I want to die of embarrassment."