The little room in the east wing. Fresh firewood had been laid on the hearth. A desk without a single document on it. No quill, no seal, no mountain of approval trays. Only two cups of tea and the usual plate of baked sweets.
Rosalind sat with no projections in hand, her fingers folded together in her lap.
"Three years before you came here," Lucas went on slowly, still gazing out the window.
Thin winter light brushed faintly across his cheekbones. The usual angle of the "Ice Grand Duke" had slipped, just slightly. Only one person in the world was there to see that slip: Rosalind. The man himself remained unaware of it.
"There was a party hosted by the Crown Prince. At the royal court in Albert's capital. The end of winter. For political reasons, I had no choice but to attend. There were some three hundred noble young ladies in the hall. Every last one of them wanted my attention."
"...That is not difficult to imagine."
"By the wall, there was one young lady, alone, reading a book."
Rosalind's blink came, just once, a fraction late.
"Silver-haired. Talking to no one, spoken to by no one, she had a leather-bound book open in the shadow of the pillar farthest from the chandelier. A book on economics. I even remember the title. A volume on supply and demand, and on deadweight loss."
"...Is that so."
"I went over. I spoke to her. Without lifting her eyes from the page, she answered me like this."
For the first time, Lucas turned his gaze back to her.
"'When designing a system, you must account even for the deadweight loss—the wealth that vanishes without ever passing into anyone's hands.'"
For three seconds, Rosalind had no idea what he was talking about.
Then, on the fourth, she realized those words had come out of her own mouth.
"..."
"..."
"...So that gentleman was you, Your Grace?"
"I couldn't forget that one remark."
Lucas did not look away.
"All this time. For three years, I followed your work from a distance. —Not surveillance. I simply couldn't get someone I'd crossed paths with only once out of my head."
Having come that far, he suddenly lowered his voice.
"...No. Even 'three years' doesn't feel right."
His profile was that of a man bewildered by his own words.
"Probably from before that. —From before I was born. I feel like I've been searching for you all along."
Rosalind got the pressure of her folded fingers slightly wrong.
"Please wait. Three years ago, I was only fifteen. I had only just taken over management of the estate, and my official duties as a candidate for Crown Princess had not yet begun in earnest. In other words, a full three years before I was even approached about the advisory post, Your Grace was—"
"Yes."
"...And how, operationally, am I meant to process that?"
"There's no need to process it."
Lucas tilted his head slightly. The man who would ordinarily deliver a speech before hundreds without a single stumble dropped his gaze to an empty point on the desk, tried to say what came next, and lost the words.
"...No."
"Your Grace?"
"...I'm sorry. The rest..."
He faltered.
For the first time, Rosalind heard him falter.
Somewhere in her head, the corporate-slave office worker's habit of observation switched on by itself. The habit that had read the hesitations of executives across conference tables now swung its needle for this one man in front of her.
It wasn't that he lacked the vocabulary. He was misjudging the weight of the words he chose.
What that meant, Rosalind still couldn't pull out of any drawer marked "outside work."
The firewood in the hearth gave a sharp crack.
The silence stretched on.
Lucas was looking at the plate of baked sweets on the desk. The plate Rosalind usually reached for without thinking. The one he had kept stocked on the office desk every morning, without anyone noticing.
As if to fill that silence, he called her—in a voice so small it was almost a breath.
"...Rosie."
A beat.
Rosalind's right hand went still in her lap.
"Your Grace, that is—"
"Rosie."
The second time. His voice had grown just a little steadier than the first.
"Let me call you that. Only when we're alone."
Rosalind's mouth was already poised to return something sardonic. Labor comes with compensation. Under which clause of the contract does a change in form of address fall? But her tongue wouldn't move.
"Your Grace."
"You don't have to answer right now."
"..."
"Your work report can wait until tomorrow."
"...Yes."
For some reason, Rosalind recited the steps of standing up in her head. Push back the chair. Rise. Curtsy. Leave the room. She knew the steps, yet the first move refused to begin.
Lucas was watching her.
Not waiting for an answer, not pursuing her—just watching, from the same distance he had kept for those three years.
At last Rosalind pushed back her chair.
"Your Grace."
"Mm."
"...The third-quarter projections. Tomorrow, then, once more."
"Yes."
She curtsied her leave and put her hand on the door.
—The moment her hand closed on the knob, Rosalind realized.
Lucas still hadn't said what he'd actually meant to say.
I've been watching for three years. And Rosie. With only that, he had closed his mouth for today. He had carried the rest over to tomorrow.
Out in the east wing corridor, she shut the door, took three steps, and stopped. The vertical mullions of the winter windows laid stripes across the corridor floor. She was standing on one of them.
—Rosie.
She tested the sound in her mouth once more. Only on her breath, so no one would hear.
No one had ever called Ritsuko Tanaka by a nickname.
Why that memory surfaced now, here, Rosalind couldn't yet put into words. But the weight of the slip of paper resting over her heart had grown one degree heavier than it had been last night.
Rosalind stepped off the stripe. She began to walk. Back straight. And yet, for some reason, the insides of her cheeks were still hot.
—Tomorrow.
If she opened that door again tomorrow, he would say the rest.
What it would be, Rosalind still couldn't put into words.
All she knew was that no clause in her contract had a box for processing it.