The Lady Is Fed Her Breakfast
Birds were singing, and the morning sun had just begun to rise—a perfect day to savor a leisurely breakfast with the breeze drifting in through the window.
Sadly, that was a wish that could never come true.
For what sat before me now was not the warmth of a gentle wind, but Lady Rebecca, glaring daggers at me.
Only moments ago, I had thought her face the very picture of beauty. Transformed into a scowl, it was now impossibly loathsome.
"You're not eating. What are you doing instead?"
"...If you glare at me like that, even someone with an appetite won't be able to eat a bite."
"When did I ever glare at you?"
Honestly, how on earth had things come to this?
To answer that question, we need to step back for a moment to yesterday.
*
Yesterday afternoon—right after I had teased Rebecca to my heart's content and made my escape from the drawing room.
That was where the trouble began.
I had assumed that, having accomplished the purpose of my visit—meeting Lady Rebecca—I would head straight back to the county estate.
"Forgive me, but..."
"Lord Valencia and your father are drinking together."
The news that greeted me was this: my father in this world, Count Zernias, and Rebecca's father, Duke Valencia, were deep in their cups.
The Valencia butler who delivered this report wore an apologetic expression, as if there were no excuse he could offer.
"..."
I was left speechless.
Could there possibly have been a better way to describe the situation? Almost certainly not.
A part of me even wondered—is this really acceptable for men holding the rank of Duke and Count of the Empire?
Hoping my mother here—Countess Zernias—might somehow resolve things, I went to find her as well.
"Albert, your father hasn't seen his dear friend the Duke in ever so long. Please try to understand, just this once."
My mother merely defended my father, freshly reunited with an old friend, and offered no solution whatsoever.
...So my father is best friends with the Duke of Valencia.
So that backstory existed too.
Honestly, it wasn't all that hard to believe. If the Duke and the Count hadn't been close friends, Rebecca and I would never have ended up engaged.
A Count is a high rank of nobility, certainly, but it paled next to a Duke.
In The Crown Prince Holds the Sword, where the class hierarchy was so rigidly established, a Count's house and a Duke's house would never have become in-laws without good reason.
And so, thanks to my father celebrating his long-awaited reunion with an old friend, I was forced to stay the night at the Valencia Ducal Mansion.
The result: a private breakfast, just the Lady and me.
...Just the two of us? Then where on earth had our parents and the Duke and Duchess gone?
"...My Lady, might I ask where our parents are?"
"If you're looking for Count and Countess Zernias, they're most likely still asleep, hungover."
"..."
"The four of them drank well into the night, you see."
As if that were only the natural outcome, Lady Rebecca gave a small nod and took another spoonful of soup.
There she was, calmly eating her breakfast as though this situation were the most ordinary thing in the world.
Watching her eat, utterly indifferent to how I might be feeling, a question suddenly occurred to me.
"Are you quite unbothered by all this, My Lady?"
"...Whatever do you mean?"
"Eating breakfast with me while our parents lie dead drunk in their beds."
"...Pfft."
At my question, Rebecca suddenly let out a laugh.
Her expression was smiling in the most insufferable way, as if to say, I knew you'd bring this up.
"You seem rather preoccupied with being alone with me."
"..."
"Well, I suppose you've never had the chance to share a morning with a beauty like me. Don't be embarrassed. It's only natural."
It was a maddening remark I desperately wanted to argue with—and yet, tragically, Rebecca wasn't wrong.
The way she ate, slowly and with perfect noble etiquette, was genuinely beautiful—lovely enough that any ordinary man would have fallen for her on the spot.
Even I, who had traded barbed words with her only yesterday, had been staring blankly at Rebecca eating her breakfast right up until she asked what I was looking at.
"Cat got your tongue? Have you truly fallen for me?"
But regardless of all that, I couldn't simply leave her sitting there, smirking like she'd already won the war.
My pride—and my burning competitive spirit—simply would not permit it. I had to wipe that peculiarly infuriating expression off her face one way or another.
Having made up my mind, I rose from my seat.
"Then I'll take that as you being perfectly unbothered. Shall I?"
"...I'm sorry, what?"
Rebecca looked at me as though she hadn't the faintest idea what I was getting at.
It was more like—why is this man saying that out of nowhere?
For the lady who had failed to understand, I decided to kindly explain myself again.
"I asked whether sharing a breakfast alone with me meant nothing at all to you."
"Of course it doesn't. Why would I care what you think?"
"What are you staring at me for, then?"
"..."
"In that case, I suppose you won't mind if I feed you."
"Natur—... I beg your pardon?"
Rebecca glared at me as if she'd misheard.
Once again, I kindly repeated myself for the lady's benefit.
"I said I will feed you, My Lady."
"...Have you lost your mind?"
She asked me, point-blank, whether I was insane.
And that was probably the most polite way she could have put it.
In her head, she was likely thinking things like, what kind of lunatic says that? or this man is a certified madman.
The only reason she couldn't say those words outright was that I'd once frightened her off by threatening to take the matter to the newspapers.
Unfortunately for her, I was in perfectly sound health.
"No, I am in entirely sound mental condition."
"A sane man would... would offer to feed someone their breakfast?"
Rebecca stammered over her words, too embarrassed to even say it herself.
But the words I was about to produce were far, far more serious than that.
"Is feeding my beloved fiancée anything to be ashamed of?"
"Beloved... fiancée...?"
Now Rebecca was truly looking at me like I was out of my mind.
A moment ago it had been what is wrong with this weirdo... Now it was more like who let this lunatic loose in society?
"Yes. My beloved fiancée."
"...Do you mean any of that sincerely? ...No—don't answer that. I'd get goosebumps."
The moment I opened my mouth to reply, Rebecca cut me off before I could get a word out.
Then she began glancing warily around the room, checking whether anyone else might be nearby.
If anyone else of the Ducal household had actually heard what I'd just said, they probably would have died of sheer mortification on the spot.
I regarded this strange behavior of hers with puzzlement. Feeling my gaze, Rebecca frowned back at me.
"...What is that revolting look for?"
"Because I simply can't make sense of it."
"What on earth can't you make sense of—"
"You said I was of no concern to you whatsoever, didn't you?"
Only then did Rebecca appear to realize that she had, with her own hands, dug her own grave.
By her own logic, whether I fed her or not should have meant nothing to her.
Yet her hypersensitive reaction to my offer of feeding meant, undeniably, that I did matter to her.
Rebecca had trapped herself in a contradiction of her own making.
"Let me ask again. Am I of concern to you, My Lady?"
"...No. Why would I care about someone like—"
Her voice was smaller than before, but still her pride refused to bend.
Fitting, I suppose, for Lady Rebecca, whose ego burned every bit as fiercely as her competitive spirit.
I stepped toward her, a spoon gripped tight in one hand.
"...Why are you coming closer?"
As I approached, Rebecca shrank back like a cat beholding something utterly alien.
She stayed rooted to her chair, but she kept scooting her hips backward bit by bit, doing everything in her power to put distance between us.
I closed the gap in a single stride.
"I did tell you, didn't I? That I'd feed you, for the sake of my beloved fiancée."
"..."
Whatever retort she wanted to throw at me clearly made it all the way to her lips. But bound by the words she herself had spoken, she couldn't manage a single one.
I brought the spoon to the soup in front of Rebecca, and before long managed to scoop up a spoonful.
"...You're actually going to do it?"
Rebecca looked utterly bewildered, as if questioning whether the scene unfolding before her could possibly be real.
Her expression said she was struggling to believe that the man she'd fought tooth and nail with yesterday was the same one now offering to spoon-feed her.
I paid it no mind.
"Yes. So open up, quickly."
"..."
She stared at the spoon in my hand, agonizing for a long moment, before finally, reluctantly parting her lips the tiniest bit.
"Chew it nice and slowly, now."
And with that, I fed her the soup.
*Creak—*
It was at precisely that moment that the closed door of the dining room swung open.
"Rebecca? I'm so sorry, my darling. I drank far too much last night..."
In came the apologetic voice of the Duchess of Valencia, sweeping into the dining room.
"...Oh my."
"..."
Of course she did. There sat her daughter, receiving spoonful after spoonful from my hand like a baby bird, without a word of protest—and me, playing mother bird, feeding her.
Confronted with the utterly unexpected sight of her own mother—
"...Ah."
Rebecca's face flushed crimson, as though it were about to burst.
