The Fiancé And His Secretary

A creature that put a spell on people, fine. But if it was a creature this good-looking, Dong-hui was willing to let him work his spell on her as often as he liked.

“I heard you’d been ill. I’m sorry I couldn’t come sooner — business kept me too busy.”

Ray’s murmur was fond, and Dong-hui stammered out an answer.

“Th-that happens. I-I understand.”

Stop stammering.
Calm down.

“Thank you. I knew you’d understand.”

He said it almost in a whisper, and then broke into a smile. A few more dazzling smiles like that and her heart was going to hammer its way clean out of her chest.

She was in the middle of shouting What kind of luck is this! inside her own head.

“It’s been such a long time, Lady Chloe.”

The sight of Ray’s face had knocked Dong-hui’s wits clean out of her, and the bright voice, arriving a beat late, brought her sharply back to herself. It came from a lovely woman standing behind Ray. Her hair was a brilliant gold like sunlight and her eyes a pink like cherry-blossom petals, and together they put Dong-hui in mind of sweet ice cream.

“Who…”

Dong-hui asked, working hard not to let herself be cowed. Chloe’s face in the mirror was very pretty indeed, but for the woman standing opposite her now, “pretty” was not enough of a word.

“Oh my, have you forgotten me in that little time? It’s Erma.”
“Erma?”

Erma’s hand was resting on Ray’s shoulder. Nobody could have looked at the two of them and thought them ordinary acquaintances, and Dong-hui’s eyebrows went up. The heart that had been making such a fuss over Ray went cold in an instant.

“Erma is my secretary and an old friend, you know that. After all the years we’ve known each other, why make something of it now?”

Ray said it with a smile as bright and clear as sunshine.

Secretary and old friend.
Meaning they’re stuck together all the time.

Perhaps conscious of Dong-hui staring at the place where the two of them touched, Erma gave a thin little laugh and drew her hand away.

Oh-ho.
Would you look at these two.

Her hazy head cleared as though someone had thrown cold water over it.

Now, this sort of thing I really cannot stand.

Dong-hui smiled crookedly, let go of the bolt-upright posture she had been holding and settled back at a slant against the chair. Then she crossed her legs and picked up the teacup she had set down. It had cooled a little in the meantime, but it was still fragrant.

“You came to see your fiancée and you brought your secretary?”

Dong-hui’s voice had gone far harder and colder than it had been at first, but Ray seemed not to notice; he answered still wearing that clear, bright smile.

“I came straight from work. Sorry.”

Nothing in his expression looked the least bit sorry.

Erma, or Perm, or whatever it was, now settled herself boldly into the seat beside Ray. Sitting there side by side, the two of them made a dazzlingly well-matched pair.

“What did you come for?”

Dong-hui’s clamoring heart cooled further by the second.

“What do you mean, what for? I came to collect what you promised me last time.”
“And what did I promise?”

Something felt off, and Dong-hui’s voice sharpened of its own accord.

“You said you’d invest in my business.”
“I did?”

She pointed a finger at her own chest as she asked.

“First you pretended not to know Erma, and now this — the joke’s getting a bit thick today, isn’t it? It’s funny, though, so it’s all right. Anything at all to do with you, Chloe, is all right by me.”

I don’t think it’s going to be all right by me.

Instead of answering, Dong-hui fixed him with a cold stare and waited for what came next.

“They say there’s money moving on the Grace estate these days? It must all be lining up so that things go well for the two of us. I was just about to—”

“What business was it?”
“What?”

Chloe had never cut him off mid-sentence before, and Ray’s eyes went wide with confusion.

“I said, what business. I’ve been so forgetful lately I can’t remember.”
“Chloe, your memory really has gotten bad. How would you know anything about my business?”

The situation was worse than she had thought. Dong-hui was the one with cause to be dumbfounded here, and yet it was Ray who kept letting out little snorts of laughter, as though he were the one who could not believe it.

“I said I’d invest without even knowing what the business was?”
“Because you trust me. What’s good for me is good for you. Chloe.”

His voice had turned sweet as honey.

What the hell!
She ran the estate into a state like this, and then promised to carry money to her fiancé?
To a man who plainly takes me for an absolute soft touch?

She did not have to look to know how pathetic the household staff must have thought it.

Ray, without the faintest notion of the riot going on in Dong-hui’s mind, went on in a voice so sweet it might have dripped honey.

“I don’t need much. It was fifty gold we agreed on originally, but they say the Grace estate has plenty of money these days, so make it five hundred gold. You’ve no idea how lucky I am to have a fiancée like you, Chloe.”

He jumped up, came around and sat himself down beside Chloe, saying it in that sweet voice. The moment he settled in next to her, a thick smell of perfume jabbed up her nostrils.

With long, beautiful fingers he stroked Chloe’s cheek gently. Everywhere the white fingers passed, Dong-hui felt the gooseflesh rise. The smell of perfume coming off him was strong enough to leave her nose paralyzed.

“Do you think I could take it with me today?”

His lips came closer and closer to Dong-hui’s cheek. She ignored Ray and his cheap tricks at her side and stared instead at Erma, sitting opposite. Erma had been scowling hard, put out about something, and the instant her eyes met Chloe’s she broke into a broad smile, as though she had never done anything of the kind.

I am not letting this pair of bastards off.
Idiot Chloe.
Stupid Chloe.
Pathetic Chloe.

No word was enough to describe the way Chloe, that soft touch, had behaved.

But the soft-touch Chloe was no more.

“When can you let me have it? I’d like to take it with me today.”

Ray pushed his lips in close enough to brush her cheek as he whispered. Dong-hui could not stand another second of it; she clamped a hand hard around those lips of his, plump as salted pollock roe¹, and ground her teeth.

“Get lost.”

He had been leaning in toward Chloe’s cheek, smiling at his leisure, and now that his snout was in her grip his eyes went wide enough to pop out of his head. Even those beautiful eyes looked, just now, like cheap plum-flavored candy.

“Mmf?”

Blinking at what had suddenly been done to him, Ray asked it with his lips still in her grip. The damp, squelchy feel of them against her fingertips was so unpleasant that Dong-hui’s face twisted and she took her hand off the pollock roe. Whatever he had put on his lips, they were slick and sticky.

“I said get lost.”

Dong-hui got to her feet without so much as a glance at Ray, who sat there blankly. Then she looked at Erma, whose face was every bit as vacant as Ray’s, and asked her a question.

“And what sort of place do you think this is, that you come tagging along?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Brazen and stupid with it. The two of you suit each other. I’ll get out of the way, so go and play together — and don’t come around begging for money like a couple of beggars.”
“Chloe! How can you say something so cruel!”

Ray sprang to his feet and said it as though he were calling her to account. Every time he moved the cheap perfume stabbed at her nose, until her sense of smell seemed ready to give out. Dong-hui screwed her face up as far as it would go, wheeled around, jabbed him in the chest and warned him.

“I have no intention of investing in you, and no intention of marrying a man who takes me for a soft touch. So would you get lost, you and that precious friend of yours? Butler!”
“Yes! My lady!”

Handsome had been waiting outside the door; startled by Chloe’s voice, he came scurrying in.

“Never let these people in again.”

The edge in the lord’s voice set Handsome’s eyes darting about as he tried to work out what had happened. There was not a soul among Grace Castle’s hired staff who did not know about Lord Chloe’s love for her fiancé and her obsession with him. And yet what was unfolding in front of him now was nothing at all like what he had known.

“Chloe! I think there’s been some misunderstanding — there’s nothing at all between me and Erma. There’s no one for me but you. What am I supposed to do if you do this to me now!”
“Ray!”

Shocked, it seemed, by what the flustered Ray had said, Erma caught hold of him and cried out. But Ray shook her off as she came to his side, stepped toward Chloe and pleaded. He had shaken her off so hard that Erma lost her balance, staggered and went down on the floor.

Tears welled up at once in Erma’s great eyes. Collapsed there on the floor like the Little Mermaid, she looked exactly like the heroine of a tragic romance.

“Ray!”
“Shut up! Why did you have to follow me all the way out here and cause all this!”

Ray bellowed at Erma, sitting there on the floor calling his name.

Dong-hui had no wish to deal with the disgusting pair of them a moment longer, and walked straight out of the drawing room. But Ray came out after her, caught her tight from behind and pleaded in a rush.

Never in her dreams had Dong-hui imagined she could come to hate a romantic back-hug scene this much.

“I didn’t know you disliked Erma this much. I’ll come alone from now on. All right? So don’t go. Come somewhere quiet with me and…”

The voice murmuring at her ear brought the gooseflesh up. Ray’s hand stroked slyly over Chloe’s stomach and came slowly upward.

Has this bastard lost his mind?

Dong-hui shuddered and tore his arm from around her waist. Then she turned around and gave him a bright little smile.

“Erma really is nothing to Ray?”
“Of course! There’s no one for me but you.”
“But what are we going to do?”
“Wh-what?”
“You’re nothing to me either.”
“Chloe!”

Ray glared and took a hard grip on Chloe’s arm. He put such strength into it that a cry came out of Dong-hui’s mouth all by itself.

“Aagh!”
“My lady!”

The butler had been watching from beside them at a loss; now he came running and pulled Ray off. Sleek and handsome in the face and apparently nothing else, Ray came away from Chloe limply, as though there were no strength in him. By build and by height alike he was a good deal smaller than Handsome.

“Butler. Clear these things away, quickly. My eyes and my nose are going to rot.”
“Yes, my lady.”

The words were barely out of the lord’s mouth before Handsome, as though he had been waiting for them, hauled the pair of them out with the other servants.

“Chloe! It doesn’t have to be the five hundred gold, just give me fifty at least! It was supposed to be today!”

Brazenness like that must be something the old Chloe raised in him.

Dong-hui shook her head from side to side and then shouted.

“Anna! Throw salt! Use the coarse salt!²”
“I beg your pardon? Salt as expensive as that, and you want it—”
“Expensive? Salt is? Then just throw them out.”

Dong-hui had been bellowing away, and at the news that salt was expensive she changed her tune in a hurry.

Salt was too good to waste on that pair.