A Small Sprout (5)
“Why is my lady so late?”
Mina muttered anxiously as she waited for Harnie.
Her mistress was scrupulous about keeping appointments. There were times she ran late, of course, but that was only when she was being squeezed by the socialite circles or watching the Marquisate's mood—and when it came to the plans she was preparing, not a single thread ever came loose. For Harnie to still not have arrived by now, she had no choice but to feel uneasy.
“She's so late... and no reply, either. This is making me anxious to death, my lady...”
Mina stamped her feet in place, wishing that even now a letter might arrive from the merchant guild. Harnie had said she was going off on important business—putting the socialites' interference in its place at the banquet hall before returning. She had been a little surprised to hear she'd stayed at the ducal estate the previous night, but no follow-up letter announcing a longer stay had come.
Which meant, just as Mina suspected, that Harnie should have reached the Marquisate long ago.
It was impossible for her to be this late unless she'd been held up somewhere, and a sudden chill crept over Mina.
“Don't tell me... did the nobles or the socialite circles catch on, or did something else happen to her?”
The socialite circles certainly had leverage they could use to keep Harnie in their grasp. And that banquet hall was nothing short of a den of hyenas.
It was true she'd entered a dangerous place, but the nobles and the circles themselves wouldn't be the ones to tie her down. And yet—wasn't this exactly being tied down?
“Right. Something's off. It should never be this quiet.”
How many informants had she planted in that banquet hall? At this late hour, it wouldn't be strange for at least one line of communication to have come through. Even if things had gone sideways, it was a hall full of nobles—the news would have reached her regardless. If an incident had occurred at the banquet hall, voices would naturally carry all the louder precisely because it was a noble venue.
But nothing was coming through.
With this much silence, the odds were actually greater that trouble had broken out somewhere outside.
Mina was fretting in agitation, about to hurry and send out the guild's people, when—
A carriage came to a stop nearby.
That carriage... the Bagrand ducal house's?
It was a mercy. It wasn't a carriage from some other family, nor the Marquisate's carriage returning from an outing.
Stay sharp. He's still a man, after all.
Since it was the Bagrand ducal house's carriage—the very one carrying out the contract engagement—it was reasonable to guess that the thing she'd feared hadn't happened. But given the kinds of proposals Harnie had been fielding from men, all orbiting around political marriage, she couldn't afford to relax.
Proposals dripping with black-hearted schemes. Lecherous stares that drifted, none too subtly, toward certain parts of her body. To Harnie—who, blessed with that beautiful face, had weathered and brushed off countless schemes from men hoping to claim her—every man was, without exception, a beast.
And then it struck Mina just how precarious the situation truly was.
A carriage... they could be completely alone in there!
The empire's peerless beauty, tragically, had no choice but to scheme how to protect her own body—one step away from being sold off.
The hope that the Bagrand ducal house might be any different?
There was no such thing. If anything, a man of that house would reach for Harnie all the more readily, never the reverse. Even a house perched at the very summit of the nobility—men were still men.
Worse, that man trailed incidents and scandals wherever he went, and it would hardly be rare for him to press Harnie using the ducal house's power and authority.
I have to hurry!
Mina pulled up her skirt and drew out the small knife she kept hidden against her thigh. Then, without making a sound, she crept carefully toward the carriage.
She reached the door. Open it, and Harnie would be there. It had to end as fast as possible.
The moment that shameless man touching her lady panicked and shrank back, she had to land a decisive blow and get out cleanly.
Hoo.
Heart pounding, Mina began counting. Once the count ended, she intended to pry the door open in a flash.
Three. Two.
And as she counted the last one—
“There. Harnie's asleep, so open the door quietly and come in.”
“...!”
Karsein's voice drifted from inside the carriage.
She hadn't made a sound as she approached. Yet he spoke in a lowered voice as though he'd known in advance that her hand was already reaching for the carriage door.
“It's been about an hour and forty minutes since my fiancée fell asleep in the carriage. I'd like to let her sleep a good two hours, but could you not grant me just twenty more?”
“...”
Once again, Karsein's voice from within the carriage—and, ironically, the sight of him apparently asking permission brought Harnie's own words to mind.
Young Lord Karsein isn't that kind of man.
Those words had come from her lady's own mouth—the lady who had dealt with countless men driven by filthy, bestial lust. With an engagement in the picture, could it be that he really hadn't laid a finger on her?
Cherishing that small sliver of hope, Mina carefully opened the door.
And she saw.
Harnie, breathing softly in sleep, leaning against Karsein's shoulder.
There were only the two of them in the carriage. So she had been certain that those filthy hands must have been on her lady's body, and yet—
Shk.
Karsein's eyes were fixed solely on his book.
He asked in a hushed voice.
“You thought I'd have laid hands on Harnie, didn't you?”
“Pardon? Ah...”
“No need to worry. I'm a man like any other—if anyone were keeping a beauty like this at his side, it would only be natural to think so. All the more so if the person in question serves Harnie faithfully.”
It wouldn't be strange to regard men as beasts, he said. Doubt on this level was perfectly justified, he said.
“Your lady has a good maid looking after her,” he remarked, entirely unbothered. He even went so far as to hammer the point in advance: her arriving on guard, feeling threatened, was a normal reaction, and he took no offense whatsoever.
Even his voice was pitched low, as if in delicate consideration for the sleeping Harnie. Mina could declare with certainty that he was starkly, unmistakably different from every man she had ever seen her lady deal with.
“Twenty minutes exactly. That's all I'd like to let her sleep. She only dozed off like this because she was trying to help me, you see.”
“What do you mean? My lady stayed up helping you?”
“You know perfectly well. Because of this.”
He handed over a document.
One that Mina found somewhat familiar—the report on the Shatren Territory.
“She fell asleep like this on the way back from the banquet hall. When she yawned this morning, I asked about it, and she said she'd had work to do at the ducal estate last night. And the whole ride here, she had her nose buried in this.”
“This... document?”
Something had struck her as strange, and now she understood why. The Shatren Territory had nothing to do with Harnie. If anything, it was directly tied to Karsein Bagrand. But the Shatren report she was looking at now contained considerably more information, carefully organized.
Then by all appearances, my lady was trying to hand this to Young Lord Karsein.
The moment Mina pieced that together, Karsein pointed out the exact blind spot to resolve her confusion.
“I imagine she meant to sort this out for me as payment for putting on the show of being my fiancée at the banquet hall. Not that I ever asked her to go this far—turns out I ended up being the cause of it all, quite unintentionally.”
“...”
“In any case, I don't want to leave a debt this large outstanding. So I've been trying to let her rest as much as I could. I'd rather you didn't misunderstand.”
At those words, Mina's guard dissolved entirely.
Here was a woman beside him whom men went mad trying to marry into the empire's power structure—and this man acted as if she barely registered in his eyes. Listening to Harnie's soft breaths drifting faintly through the carriage, punctuated by the quiet shk of a turning page, he truly did seem nothing short of a man of honor.
Her lady's eye had been precisely right, after all.
Only now did Mina finally relax.
“Then... would it be all right if I brought a blanket?”
“Hm? You're not suggesting she sleep here longer, are you?”
“That is exactly what you intend, isn't it? My lady is certain to wake after only a few hours at the estate.”
Karsein blinked twice, as though the answer had caught him off guard.
“Hmm. Wouldn't that be rather inconvenient? I...”
“I know you're not that sort of man, so there's no harm in sleeping together. In truth, the Marquisate is empty right now.”
The moment Karsein seemed about to say he was the same as any other man, Mina cut him off at once. Seizing the opportunity, she pushed a little harder.
“Or, alternatively, you'd be perfectly welcome to stay a day at the Marquisate yourself, my lord. That way my lady's sleep would stretch even longer.”
“That's a bit difficult for me too. I have work left over that I need to do back at the ducal estate.”
“Then could you let her sleep here in the carriage for two hours—or, no, even one hour?”
“...Why are you going this far?”
“My lady trims her own sleep to work, even on ordinary days. She can only drift off this comfortably at times like these, when you're near, my lord.”
At that, Karsein gazed quietly down at the sleeping Harnie. In his dark eyes flickered the faint stirrings of a small deliberation.
My lady. You brush it off as if you're perfectly fine, but I know. It was only a matter of time before a crack like this showed.
Harnie fought at full strength at all times to sever her ties to the Marquisate—but the human body has its limits. Sooner or later exhaustion would claim her, and cracks would show, just as they had now.
And yet.
Was there not someone right here who could seal that crack?
Harnie needed someone who, when she was blocked by a towering wall as she was now, would let her lean on him for a moment and catch her breath. Someone who, though a complete stranger, could offer up this kind of small consideration without a second's hesitation. Someone upright, honorable, and wise.
He met every condition.
He was the kind of man who would, without reserve, extend a hand and pull Harnie Theresia back to her feet on the day she finally collapsed from exhaustion.
“I apologize for doubting you. But please... help my lady get even a short nap.”
“...”
Silence held for a while.
Karsein said nothing, only gazing quietly at the soundly sleeping Harnie. Before long, however, he let out a long sigh.
“I suppose it's partly my fault. And I can't very well refuse... Honestly.”
Just as she thought. Even when he seemed to accept it grudgingly, this was simply who he was.
“...The Marquisate's eyes?”
“Every member of the Marquisate except my lady is currently away preparing for the Eastern Noble Conference, so there's little risk of drawing suspicion.”
That, in fact, was the whole reason the thought had crossed her mind to invite them from the banquet hall to the Marquisate at all. Declaring that they needed to produce proper results at the conference this time, the family had left the estate—deliberately leaving Harnie behind. Thanks to that, prying eyes had conveniently vanished, and no one would notice a thing.
But Karsein cut Mina's reasoning down with firm resolve.
“Then staying a full day would be all the more dangerous.”
“Why so?”
“Today, Harnie cast off the nobles' suspicions at the banquet hall and shook off their faction. With one force pressuring her now removed, word may well have reached the Marquisate as well.”
“...!”
“We can't rule out the possibility that they'll return quickly, suspecting that my connection to her is more than a simple engagement. And if that happens, Harnie will be caught by the collar.”
A cold chill swept down Mina's spine.
Of course. No matter how set the noble factions are... the enemy of my enemy can become an ally, at least for a while.
Just as Karsein said, the Marquisate, too, was nobility. One could not assume they had no covert dealings with the socialite circles.
“How long would it take the Marquisate's household to return here?”
“Ah, probably... three hours, if the horses ran at full gallop.”
“Then one hour is the limit. I'll let Harnie sleep here, wake her, and send her back.”
“Understood. I'll hurry and bring two blankets.”
Mina bowed her head and closed the door.
It was a genuine blessing, she thought, that her lady, sleeping the sleep of the innocent, hadn't heard any of this. If she had, she'd have leapt up demanding what on earth he thought he was doing.
That aside, though—the two of them.
Somehow, in strange little ways, they overlapped. And perhaps because of that, a certain expectation seemed to swell in her chest.
Hmm hm. Don't they make rather a good pair?
It was only a fantasy, granted—but having glimpsed that scene even for a moment, Mina set off to fetch the blankets with a faint smile playing on her lips.
“Mmm.”
A smile settled onto Harnie's lips.
She was sleeping that deeply. In the past few days, the work had piled up so relentlessly that she hadn't had a single proper night's rest. Tasks stacked up like a mountain, day after day. She had only one body, and her fatigue compounded twofold with every passing hour.
Did she want to roll around in bed? Naturally, more than anything. The problem was that she couldn't. She had to deceive the Marquisate's eyes completely, which made even carving out time to rest difficult.
Whenever Mina urged her to take a break with a worried voice, Harnie would brush her off with an I'm fine, busy concealing her exhaustion.
But today was the exception.
Because she had deliberately left behind the one member of the family lagging furthest behind at the Eastern Noble Conference, she could rest soundly. She'd cleared away the suspicions of the socialite circles at the banquet hall, too—so she could afford a few more hours of sleep. Buried in the sensation of sinking into a bed, Harnie decided to set everything else aside for a while.
So soft. So warm. Wrapped not just in the blanket spread over her front but in a warmth enveloping her whole body—she felt as though she could sleep for hours...
Hm?
At that moment, a strange disquiet bloomed.
Had she gone to bed after returning from the banquet hall? No. Even setting that aside—was the thing supporting her back really a bedsheet? And whatever was covering her didn't quite feel like a blanket either?
Then what was this warmth?
Angular, somehow, and yet so undeniably warm...
...Don't tell me.
By the time she realized that what enveloped her was not a fluffy blanket but the warmth of another person, her eyes had snapped wide open.
“Did you sleep well?”
Close enough that his breath brushed her skin.
The first thing she saw upon opening her eyes was Karsein's face.