Chapter 37

Prince Leonard’s eyes widened for a split second, but he quickly regained his composure.

“My apologies.”

Even so, Prince Leonard was staring at me quite intently.

When we had met at the royal palace before, he hadn’t spared me a single glance.

“Knowing you, Nazelbert, I knew you wouldn’t neglect your wife regardless of who she was. I’m relieved to see you’re getting along better than I imagined… Hey, don’t glare at me. No one is going to steal your wife.”

“Your Highness, I’m certainly not glaring. However, it is a fact that Agnes and I are on excellent terms.”

Lord Nazel was smiling brightly. There was no hostility in the air.

I felt a small wave of relief, realizing the Second Prince wasn’t the type of person to attack with spiteful words.

Thanks to him, the feeling of being in “enemy territory” had faded slightly for Lord Nazel.

“I’d like to speak with you again.”

“Anytime. It would be my pleasure.”

Smile, smile, smile—

Was it just my imagination that it looked like more than just two people sharing a friendly grin?

Since this was a place where so many people gathered, I suppose they could only engage in harmless small talk.

In fact, both of them were still the targets of passionate gazes from the surrounding ladies.

Prince Leonard had other guests to greet.

We linked arms again and began to move away… or so I thought, until the son of the Earl who owned the estate approached us. His wife was right there with him.

This man, the Earl’s son, was the one who had publicly jilted me and caused me such great humiliation in the past. The wife beside him had also joined in, mocking me back when I was the “Potato Lady.” Now, it was nothing more than a stale, bitter memory.

For the record, his wife had been the daughter of a Viscount at the time.

“Well now, Lord Nazelbert. Welcome to my family’s garden.”

As he spoke, the Earl’s son stole a glance at me.

Glance, glance, glance!

I couldn’t help but notice when he was staring that much.

I had already told Lord Nazelbert about how I’d been so publicly dumped by this man.

It seemed Lord Nazel also noticed the Earl’s son’s wandering eyes. And then—

“Why, if it isn’t Lord Yarata. Congratulations on your marriage.”

He offered his congratulations with a soft, airy smile.

As expected of Lord Nazel! I should offer my congratulations as well.

It wouldn’t do to dwell on the past forever, right?

“Congratulations.”

Wait… Lord Yarata, the Earl’s son, wore a complicated expression, as if he wanted to say something.

“Is something the matter?”

When I asked, he hurriedly replied, “No, it’s nothing!” with a bright red face.

While Lord Yarata conversed with Lord Nazel, he kept stealing glances at me, prompting his wife to glare at him with a look of pure fury.

After a short while, Lord Nazel whispered, “Shall we go?” and pulled me by the hand.

Having him by my side felt incredibly reassuring.

Guided by his hand, I continued to move through the venue.

Lord Yarata, the Earl’s son, was drowning in regret.

The young lady whose engagement proposal he had rejected and wiped clean had appeared before his eyes having become breathtakingly beautiful. She was a completely different person from the girl he remembered.

“To think that was the ‘Potato Lady’… It’s practically a scam.”

The Eventail family were old-fashioned, stubborn nobles who were treated like social pariahs in high society.

Every woman from that house wore thick makeup that looked like something out of a ghost story: white-painted faces, blue eyelids, and bright red cheeks and lips. They were easy to spot, always clad in those trademark dingy, yellowish dresses.

No matter how high their status, marrying someone like that would make a man the laughingstock of the social circle.

He had wanted absolutely nothing to do with it.

At the party intended to finalize the engagement, he had run as fast as he could in the opposite direction, rushing into an engagement with a reasonably pretty Viscount’s daughter he’d hit it off with instead.

He had been so relieved to have dodged a bullet.

“…The one that got away was a whale.”

Yarata slumped his shoulders in defeat, watching Agnes walk away in domestic bliss with Nazelbert.

“Still, I never imagined the great Nazelbert would fall so hard for a specific woman. I always thought he was a stoic type with zero interest in the opposite sex.”

He hadn’t been able to take his eyes off the beautiful Agnes, but every time he stole a glance, Nazelbert had intimidated him with a smile.

The man was dead serious.

To make matters worse, his new wife—the former Viscount’s daughter—was currently pinching him hard on the backside from behind.

Though he had rushed into marriage with her, she had turned out to be incredibly selfish and a total spendthrift. Above all else, she was terrifying.

He realized now that she had only married him for his status and had been “wearing a cat’s skin” when they first met.

However, since they were already officially registered, there was no escaping his fearsome wife now.

“Thinking of the Potato Lady reminds me… Come to think of it, those people are here today too.”

While averting his eyes from his terrifying spouse, Yarata pictured a certain conspicuous family dressed in hopelessly outdated attire.

They were bad enough individually, but as a group, the sheer impact they had was overwhelming… or so he thought.