The Moment It All Changed
She remembered it as a cool evening.
When word reached her that Heston had rarely come all the way to the estate and was waiting for her, Sylvia had hurriedly thrown on a thin dress and gone out to the garden.
He must have come to explain the rumor that’s been spreading lately.
As she trod over the lawn, the sunset spread out like a carpet beneath her feet, and Sylvia prayed that Heston would settle this anxious knot in her stomach at once. But when she finally met him, he did nothing of the sort. Instead, in that same composed tone, he simply confirmed the rumor.
I’m engaged to Her Highness the Princess.
Those green eyes of his had never wavered.
They looked at her so directly, so strangely, that Sylvia could only take a stumbling step back.
Of course she had heard the rumors that Princess Catherine and Heston were involved. They had been circulating steadily for three months. But Sylvia had never once believed them.
After all, ten years was a long time to love someone alone.
Heston Lockwood was the empire’s most celebrated knight, and even though he had given up the right to inherit the ducal title, he was still the eldest son of the Lockwood ducal house. Add to that his handsome face and his habitually serious bearing, and women naturally crowded around him with admiration.
Because of that, Sylvia had spent years watching countless women try and fail to pry open the iron door of Heston’s heart. Every time, in order to salvage their pride, they spread rumors that did not exist or relentlessly tore him down behind his back.
Sometimes those rumors sounded so real that even Sylvia, who had known him for so long, had doubted him more than once. But Heston always came back.
As he always did, without a single flaw in sight.
So she had assumed he would do the same this time too. Even when Rosalyn had chirped, “My brother might get married this time,” and even when the newspapers had been churning out story after story about Heston and Princess Catherine every single day.
“You’re really marrying Princess Catherine?”
She did not even have the presence of mind to steady her shaking voice. Heston, who had never once let anyone into his heart, had suddenly fallen in love with Princess Catherine? And enough to propose after only three months? Sylvia could not make sense of it at all, and the confusion made her dizzy.
Was it, as people said, all because of that banquet?
That banquet had left quite an impression on Sylvia as well. She, too, had planned to confess her feelings to Heston that day.
The banquet had taken place three months before the day Heston announced his engagement to the princess.
At that time, the First Knight Order, which included Heston and Sylvia, had achieved the feat of recovering an intact holy relic from a long and grueling assignment.
For the empire, the recovery of a holy relic carried significance beyond anything else. And with a flawless success after twenty-eight years, the Emperor was overjoyed. He threw a grand banquet and honored Heston, the man at the center of it all, with a medal and treasures from the empire.
Meanwhile, Sylvia had been fidgeting as she watched Heston surrounded by the Holy Empire’s envoys and many others. The moment the assignment ended, her head had been full of nothing but thoughts of confessing. Of course, even imagining herself speaking about the feelings she had carried for him for so long made her feel half sick.
But I’m not hiding like a coward anymore.
Ten years was enough to run.
Even without her father already preparing to sell her off somewhere, Sylvia had originally intended to confess around that time anyway.
Now, things were very different from those worthless days ten years ago. She had found her place as Heston’s partner, and people had begun to acknowledge her in turn. More than that, they had recovered a holy relic. Surely that was enough to count as the beginning of something.
Enough to call it a chance to stand beside him at last.
Heston.
At her solemn call, Heston lifted his brows as if asking what was wrong and looked down at her.
His neat forehead was faintly furrowed, as though he found this glittering banquet disagreeable. He seemed hardly pleased to be receiving such excessive hero’s treatment, when he had not done the work alone to begin with.
Proof of that was the way, every time people praised him, he dutifully added the same tired explanation: that his partner Sylvia had suffered far more, and that he had only done as he was told.
The only time Heston had ever smiled was when she had begged him, please, to stop torturing her with that kind of thing.
I’m already worn out enough. Please, can’t you bear the burden of everyone’s attention by yourself?
At her grumbling, he had given that particular amused smile of his and, hidden from everyone else, lightly flicked her forehead.
You should get used to it. You’re going to become an even more remarkable person.
Remembering that, Sylvia rubbed the forehead he had touched.
The warmth that had brushed her there so subtly had seemed to give her courage.
When she lifted her head, Heston was still waiting for her. His gaze was kind, and his manner patient to the point of serenity. If he had had the time, he would have stood there forever, not moving an inch until she finished speaking. That was the kind of man Heston was.
But that day had been especially unlucky. Every time she tried to seize the moment, someone would intercept the banquet’s main attraction, Heston, and drag him away. This time, too, one of the Emperor’s attendants came with a message that he was needed, and Heston had no choice but to turn away.
“I’m sorry. I think I have to go. Is it important?”
At his gentle voice, Sylvia could not bring herself to say anything at all.
“No, I just felt like I hadn’t properly congratulated you. Congratulations on recovering the holy relic.”
He gave a tired little laugh.
“What’s there to congratulate between us? You were always by my side.”
The words pressed once against Sylvia’s heart. When you loved someone in secret, sometimes the smallest careless remark could hurt like a blow. But Sylvia had learned, through long practice, how to hide it.
“True. I suppose so. Without me, how would you have made it back in one piece? I worked myself nearly to death getting your reckless life back under control.”
“You’re impossible,” he said, and with a teasing pinch to her cheek, his hand slid lightly to her shoulder before gliding away. Sylvia was only able to draw a full breath after hearing his low, “I’ll be back.”
Yes, she had botched it badly this time, but she could always wait a little and try again. Once the banquet had settled and the crowds thinned, she could call him out to the garden or somewhere like that. Under the faint moonlight, perhaps she would find the courage after all.
Sylvia pressed a hand over her pounding heart at the thought. But the chance she had expected to come never came at all.
She stepped away for a moment on some errand and returned to find Heston nowhere in sight. When she asked around, people told her, their voices full of laughter, that Heston had left with the princess.
Stunned, Sylvia snapped back that they should not talk nonsense. But more than a dozen people had seen them disappear together, and afterward the rumors never stopped: the two of them were often spotted together around the capital, at places young lovers would go, like art galleries or greenhouses, and so on...
And then, three months later.
Heston had announced his engagement in the garden of her estate. What could Sylvia do when he told her, like a faithful friend, that he had wanted to bring her the news first? He had even said, “I wanted you to be the first to know,” while she stood there in confusion. In the end, she had no choice but to put her ten-year love behind her and take up the mask of friendship once more.
And yet all the while she kept wondering whether everything would have been different if, that day in the banquet hall, she had confessed just a little sooner.
If only she had been braver. If only she had been more honest.
She had even thought the same thing during Heston’s engagement dinner last night...
“What on earth is this?”
Standing in Rosalyn’s bathroom, Sylvia stared blankly down at her own body. Looking at the evidence left behind from the night before, she felt something beyond embarrassment now. A kind of awe. And for the first time, she thought that perhaps even if she had confessed then, nothing would have changed.
Just as Heston had proposed to another woman after three months, she, too, had ended up making a mistake with another man.
In the end, perhaps what never happens will never happen at all, while what is meant to happen will leave its mark this clearly on the body.
Sylvia sank down as though she might submerge herself in the bath.
In any case, everything that had happened last night would be buried and never brought up again. She would scrub every inch of herself clean, and the clothes that bore the evidence would be burned to ash.
The maids had gone wide-eyed when she told them to burn perfectly good clothing, but they soon nodded and complied.
Unlike their mistress, the maids knew all about Sylvia’s hopeless, long-standing crush on Heston. It was easy enough to understand why a woman would not want to keep the dress she had worn on the day of the man she loved’s engagement.
And so the glossy apricot dress, its lace ripped in several places, was dropped into the incinerator at Sodern Castle, and Sylvia was able to return home safely in Rosalyn’s clothes.
* * *
“Busy, isn’t he.”
Leaning his elbow on the wide-open window, Owen murmured as he watched a carriage pass through the front gate.
His tousled blond hair fluttered in the wind, and morning light spilled over his bare upper body.
“Do I really not need to tell her?”
Uneasy, he scratched at his jaw.
He had even tried whistling to get Sylvia’s attention as she hurried into the carriage, but she must have thought it was just a bird chirping, because she never looked back before leaving.
Owen let out a sigh.
He should have told her. That there were marks on the back of her neck.
It was an out-of-the-way place, so he worried she might not notice them or be able to deal with them on her own.
Given Sylvia’s nature, she would have been rushing around since morning like a rat in hiding, pulling on clothes and trying to escape. If someone else pointed it out to her, she would probably turn red all the way to her face and nape from sheer embarrassment.
“It’s not like she’s usually the clingy type, either.”
With a shrug, he closed the window and shut out the cold draft.
Stretching his stiff body like a cat, Owen went into the bathroom, muttering that he did not understand why he had acted like a starving dog last night when he was usually so clean and restrained in bed.
Soon, the cheerful sound of water falling filled the bathroom.