Of course, not all of those feelings were caused by her love for Liam…….

Lately, her feelings for Liam had been akin to looking at an old postcard gathering dust. The comfortable, warm feeling she used to get when she thought of him had long since been tainted with guilt, and she was occasionally overcome by an instinctive sense of impatience. Her anxiety was understandable, given that they hadn’t seen each other in person lately, only through letters.

Could this lukewarm feeling still be love?

She barely swallowed the churning in her stomach as she obsessively replayed the moment she’d held Liam’s bloodied hand. It was the second most perfect moment in her love life, the only one she could still be sure of. The first, of course, was going to be her wedding to him. Suddenly, she missed Liam terribly; she’d been away from him too long.

It was getting late at night. Belviana pulled her thin sweater tighter around her and paced across the garden. If she didn’t hurry, she’d be late for her appointment with Aiden.

After a few tries, she opened the rusty letterbox. It was clean and empty, just like last time, with a green ribbon tied around the inside to mark the arrival of Liam’s message. Ever since Aiden had intercepted the letter, the green ribbon had been their code word.

Belviana placed the envelope with the necklace in the deepest compartment. As she carefully covered the letter with bushes to hide it from prying eyes, a few drops of rain fell on the bridge of her nose. It was about to turn into a downpour. As she hurried out of the garden, she ran into an unexpected figure near the round gazebo.

“Unnie.”

“…….”

“I need to talk to you for a minute.”

A stern-faced Liliette stood stiffly at the end of a narrow bushy path. She hadn’t spotted her by accident in the first place, but rather she had followed her out into the garden to see if she’d come out to talk. Belviana hesitated for a moment, unable to reply at her leisure, since she’d been shy of even a greeting since the events of the last luncheon.

“It’s going to rain soon, unless you have something urgent to do, maybe next time…….”

“I won’t be long, and it’s not like anyone needs to hear it.”

“I’m a little busy right now, maybe next time…….”

“I saw your letter.”

It was only at those words that Belviana, who had been trying to ignore them, lifted her head to face Liliette. Liliette’s stiff face was as white as her own. She wasn’t even sure which letter she was referring to; she’d been answering Liam’s many letters lately, but each one had been tied with a green ribbon that would have given them away if they’d been intercepted. Barely able to swallow the saliva that had collected in her mouth, Belviana blurted out.

“What…… you have my letter?”

She’d tried to avoid mentioning her escape plan in the letter as much as possible, but the leaked letter might have contained a few words, and there was still plenty of wiggle room. Liam’s letter hadn’t been addressed correctly, and Belviana’s reply had been largely vague, so there were plenty of excuses to get out. But what Liliette had said was something else entirely.

“I just happened to see this letter you wrote to Aiden…….”

Liliette hesitated for a moment, as if she couldn’t quite get the words out of her mouth.

“The, uh, love letter.”

This wasn’t the answer she’d been expecting, and Belviana was a little more than a little taken aback. A love letter to Aiden, even setting aside the absurdity of the phrase, had been the only thing she’d written to Liam in recent years. The relief that flooded through her almost made her laugh.

“I don’t know what you’re getting at, Aiden and I have no contact whatsoever, so this must be a prank.”

“…….”

“If it really was a letter I wrote to Aiden, I don’t know how you got your hands on it.”

“…….”

“If you don’t have anything else to say, can I go?”

“Stop lying to me. I found it myself yesterday afternoon. …… under Aiden’s bed.”

Moving slightly to avoid Liliette, Belviana stopped as if nailed after a few steps. A look of sheer horror crossed her small face.

“……You’ve been in Aiden’s room?”

“If you’re going to give me advice, stop. I know it’s not very classy to go through other people’s stuff.”

Liliette added sharply, getting in Belviana’s face, which had gone white in an instant. Belviana was overwhelmingly relieved when she realized that Liliette had not, in any way, entered the bedroom with Aiden’s permission. Relieved. To what, she does not know. Belviana was quickly becoming annoyed with this unending series of circumstances and emotions.

“I don’t know what you saw, but I didn’t write that letter.”

“It was in your handwriting, and you won’t deny that I’ve gotten party invitations from you many times.”

There’s probably no such thing as a letter, but if there is, it’s definitely Aiden’s. Maybe he knew Liliette was searching his room and had left it there as a gesture to keep her away. As children, they had often copied each other’s handwriting, but that was a childhood thing, and her handwriting had changed many times since then……. After a moment’s hesitation, Belviana stammered.

“Even if you really did pick up something like that, how do you know it was really written by me…….”

“What I’m trying to say is, I’m not trying to tell you if you really wrote that letter or not. This is your last warning, don’t approach Aiden anymore.”

“……Why would I?”

Feeling a strange chill and revulsion, Belviana reflexively spat out the words her normal self would never spit out. Even putting aside her complicated feelings for Aiden, Liliette’s words were generally presumptuous; she wasn’t even his lover yet, and her position in the manor was little more than a guest. Even her future position was not enough to demand anything from her, as she firmly believed that Belviana’s future was as a duchess. Liliette bit her lip until it was white, then spoke with a fierce edge.

“You know I want him, obviously, and yet you ask for him in such a dirty, vulgar way……. You just wanted to get your hands on the man I love…….”

“…….”

“Tomorrow, right away, I’m going to submit your letter to the newspaper.”

“……what?”

“Then you’ll have to spend the rest of your life trying to prove that you didn’t write that letter, because it was so perfectly your handwriting.”

If it made it into the papers, it would only take a moment for the rumor to spread. Her lips twitched, not that she hadn’t imagined the moment when someone would find out about her relationship with Aiden.

Belviana. That lecherous young lady of Lester.

A wench who knew no honor.