“…….”
A brief silence fell between the two of them after her sudden action.
Her hair, messed up between his fingers, and his face, held completely defenseless, were fully exposed.
Beatrice stared at him for a moment, then narrowed her eyes a little.
‘……Ah, seriously. He’s disgustingly handsome.’
His blue eyes, widened in surprise, and his slightly parted lips were so annoyingly handsome that they only made her already unsteady thoughts even more scattered.
“Um, Beatrice?”
“……Shh. Be quiet. I’m thinking.”
Beatrice bought herself some time with sheer force of will, then tried to find the words in her head. After a while, she finally said one thing.
“You’re suspicious.”
“……What?”
“You’ve been very suspicious for a while now.”
“Suspicious how?”
It had been something she blurted out to get through the situation, but once she said it, there were a lot of things to say.
Especially since he kept slipping away so naturally, even while clearly knowing exactly what she meant!
“You keep pushing me back with this ‘you don’t need to know’ nonsense, telling me not to move from a safe place.”
“…….”
“And that question you just asked me, about where I’m going. That wasn’t you being genuinely curious about where I was going, was it?”
The more she spoke, the more sincere she became.
Beatrice tightened her grip and pressed closer to him as she continued.
“I was trying to wait a bit, thinking maybe you got some huge shock while regressing or something, but seriously. Hey. Even my mom and dad aren’t as sensitive as you.”
“…If I were in the count and Zedric’s position, I think I’d probably be the same.”
“What did you say?”
Beatrice leaned in as if she hadn’t heard him well, and Clyde’s body was pushed back even further than before.
“No, wait a second.”
“Wait for what?”
At this rate, he looked like he would sink straight into the sofa, so Clyde lightly grabbed her wrist.
“Just wait a second. First get off me. And take your hands off my face. Hey, this is….”
“This is where you start acting shady. If I let go, you’ll just twist the subject like a snake and pretend you don’t know anything, and I know it.”
She could see it all without even looking.
Beatrice snorted and put more weight on him as if she would never let him go.
It was a silent invitation to confess and see the light.
Seeing that it wasn’t working at all, Clyde protested with an aggrieved expression.
“No, Beatrice. Is it that strange for me to care about your safety?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re my childhood friend, my wife, and a comrade who regressed together with me too.”
“Just say you’re possessed by a ghost.”
Childhood friends were supposed to be a relationship where you let each other run loose at a reasonable distance.
Even if you worried, it was not supposed to be this itchy kind of worrying.
‘If he had always been like this before, he definitely wouldn’t have left me lying in a flowerbed after I passed out drunk on strawberry wine during the academy festival!’
Back then, instead of carrying Beatrice, who had climbed into the flowerbed and called it a bed, back to her room, Clyde had asked whether she needed a blanket.
Then, after she nodded in her sleep and said yes, he had generously covered her with his coat, complete with his name tag, and left.
He even took a picture of it with an obscura for records!
‘Of course, the flowerbed where I fell asleep was in the center of a crowded garden, so it wasn’t something I could completely freak out over! The kids had also woken me up quickly after hearing it from Clyde.’
Still, the point was that back then, he hadn’t acted like this.
If it had been the suspicious Clyde from recently…
‘He would’ve stopped me from drinking strawberry wine in the first place, wouldn’t he?’
It was a reasonably valid conclusion.
Beatrice pressed his cheeks, trying to solve things with his face like the cheater he was, and clicked her tongue.
“Hey, just be honest and say it. I can pretty much guess how your brain works when you overthink everything. Something happened in the past that would shock me if I heard about it now, right? Something related to me, or something closely connected to me.”
“…….”
“If you asked me to take your hand and work together, then I’ll trust you for now. Don’t go scaring people for no reason.”
“What are you going on about now?”
“What? Don’t you know? People die when they start acting unlike themselves.”
Her voice was so firm it sounded like he might die right there.
Clyde quietly stared at her for a while, then let out a low sigh.
Then he pulled away the hand of Beatrice’s that was squishing both his cheeks.
He shook his head lightly, and with a voice that sounded half resigned, he said,
“Let me say this first: guessing and knowing are different things.”
“Being vaguely suspicious and getting dragged around by it is more annoying than anything.”
“Hey, you… fine. Just get up first and say it again.”
Making sure she wouldn’t fall over, Clyde supported her waist with one hand and lifted his upper body slightly.
And just then, when the two of them had temporarily grown closer—
Knock knock! Click!
The door suddenly opened with a light knock.
“Bia, Clyde isn’t in the guest room. He’s here, right? My brother said he has something to give him since he’s leaving far away, so I’m just borrowing… wait….”
The second son of Count Hartwell, Carlisle, had opened the door naturally, and his eyes met the unexpectedly tangled pair inside.
“……”
“……”
A heavy silence fell between the three of them.
No one moved. No one knew what to say.
In the awkward stillness, the first person to recover was Carlisle, who had opened the door.
“Hmm.”
After swallowing once, he dropped his gaze for a moment, then looked up again.
Then, with the most composed expression he could manage, he nodded.
“Right. So you two made up well……. Uh. That’s a relief, man.”
That was what he said, but his voice sounded absolutely nothing like relief.
Only then did Beatrice come to her senses. Her face turned bright red as she jolted upright.
“No! That’s not it…!”
“It’s okay, it’s okay.”
Carlisle cut her off, nodding with a kindly smile.
It was the kind of smile that said he understood everything, at least as the younger brother, even if the eldest might not.
“You must be embarrassed, so you don’t have to explain. My mistake. I still haven’t fully gotten used to the fact that you’re married.”
“No, I’m telling you, that’s not it!”
“That’s right, we, um, it’s not like that….”
“Oh, oh. Yes. If you say it’s not, then it’s not. I’ve got enough sense for that.”
His tone made it clear he had no intention of listening.
Whether Beatrice grabbed the back of her neck in frustration or not, Carlisle looked like he had already quickly sorted his feelings out.
To be fair, from his perspective, it was only natural.
They weren’t fully living separately yet, but they were still a married couple.
And today was the last night Beatrice would spend with Clyde before he left for a while!
‘They say married quarrels are like cutting water with a knife…’
He awkwardly scratched the back of his head and stepped back, reaching for the doorknob.
“Don’t worry. I’ll keep it a secret from my brother. I’ll cover for you.”
“Cover for what? Brother, Carlisle, hey!”
But it was already too late.
Even as she kept calling his name, he calmly closed the door, and just before it shut completely, he added one last thing.
“Oh, and just in case, lock the door.”
“…….”
Click.
Beyond the fully closed door, the sound of brisk footsteps grew farther and farther away again.
Beatrice stared blankly at that and muttered in despair.
“……I told you it wasn’t like that, so why lock the door, you crazy older brother bastard…….”
And of all people, it had been Carlisle.
He was hopeless at lying or hiding anything, and always got thoroughly shaken down by his eldest brother Ian.
Soon enough, their eldest brother Ian, their parents, and the whole household would probably know everything that had just happened!
‘Big Brother is sharp, so he probably won’t bring it up or act like he knows, and he’ll probably tell everyone to keep their mouths shut too… but still….’
Beatrice squeezed her eyes shut and rubbed her face dryly before muttering a short sentence to Clyde.
“…Hey, wanna run?”
“…To the imperial palace?”
“Yeah, to the imperial palace.”
Ordinarily, it was outside the permitted hours to enter the palace, but fortunately Clyde was a knight assigned directly under the Crown Prince.
And on top of that, he was scheduled to be deployed tomorrow.
‘And I may not have said it outright, but I’m still Her Majesty the Empress’s special envoy!’
The knight order had dormitories for knights who could not return home because of official duties, and Beatrice had the head maid, Kaya, to help her.
The two of them exchanged quick looks, then used every bit of experience from their childhood hide-and-seek games at the mansion to slip out of the Hartwell count family estate.
[We’re leaving first because we’re busy! I’ll be back! I’ll write! With love, Beatrice and Clyde.
P.S. I swear this is not a runaway plan.]
They even left a note so their family would not worry.
