Virginity

The sun comes up late in Heliaria, and the day begins on time regardless.

The moment day broke, the child and her nanny came down to the dining room with the puppy.

Ardine wore the hair at either side of her head in thin dangling braids, like a pair of insect antennae. Pai had plaited them, and looked a little wan for it; the exacting child had demanded braids of precisely the thickness she wanted.

The child looked delighted. She was pleased with her hair, she had slept well, and that afternoon she had her appointment for the mage test.

“Na-na-na, mm-mm. Na-na.”

“Chomp-chomp-chomp-chomp.”

“Hmm-hmm-hmmm, na-na-na.”

“Chomp-chomp-chomp.”

Reni smacked its lips over its food between the snatches of humming, cutting in like a backing chorus.

“Chomp-chomp-chomp.”

“Aren’t you eating well, Reni. What a pretty puppy.”

Anna the maid said it, spooning a little more food into the bowl.

“Whiiine, whine.”

“Aww, aww.”

“Huff-huff.”

“Is it good? It’s good, isn’t it.”

Anna, who said her family kept a dog back home, had taken one look at the scrawny, mangy ‘dog’, stamped her feet over the state of it, and gone off to make up a special dish. Her own recipe worked wonders. Within a few days Reni’s coat had turned glossy and its strength had come back.

“Everyone’s come down early.”

Keith greeted them as he came in through the archway. Strictly speaking, he was the one running later than usual. Yet Anna folded her hands respectfully at her waist all the same.

“Your Grace.”

“Hut.”

Pai had been nodding off; at the sound her shoulders gave a violent jerk. The face she had spent all night looking at sat diagonally across from her. She scrubbed at the corner of her mouth with the back of her hand while Keith seated himself awkwardly at the head of the table.

“Did you sleep well, Ardine?”

Keith asked with his eyes fixed on his niece. Ardine answered as she jabbed her fork at the carrots, picking them out one by one.

“Mm-hm. And mister?”

He glanced at Pai, who was keeping a close watch on Ardine’s fork.

“I slept well.”

“Today’s the day Ari gets her mage test.”

“So it is. The mage isn’t down yet, I see.”

“Hamel’s not up yet— …I mean, he has not yet risen. Haaaaawm.”

Pai broke off mid-answer, overtaken by a yawn. Tears welled up, and the rims of her eyes flushed pink.

“Pai, dinchoo sleeb wew?”

Ardine asked with a whole heap of carrots stuffed into her mouth.

“We swallow our food before we talk, my lady.”

— Gulp!

“Pai, didn’t you sleep well?!”

“Mmm, I know… I was up all night looking after Lord Keith. Haaawm.”

“…!”

The child’s busy fork stopped. The maid wheeling in the trolley and Anna wiping Reni’s mouth both froze exactly where they were.

“…”

They all looked at Keith at once. Under those eyes, which seemed to be waiting for an explanation, a cold sweat beaded on his back.

“If I may offer a justification—”

“A justification.”

Pai, every trace of sleep gone from her face, looked at Keith squarely.

“Of all the many words there are. Not an explanation — a justification.”

She knew how to read a nuance. It stung, too, that Keith would treat the night before as something to be ashamed of.

However strong I may be, hard work is still hard work.

She could hoist a great strapping mercenary clean off the ground, true, but hurling a man like a shot put and carrying one carefully for several hundred meters are two different things.

It isn’t as though he’s some single delicate blossom — more of a muscle-pig than he looks, is what he is (?).

“There’s nothing to justify. I spent the night at your side, and I washed your feet for you. That’s all there was to it.”

“Oh my my!”

Feet, of all things.

Anna and the maid, who knew nothing whatever of the circumstances, traded a covert glance.

Surely they didn’t…?

Oh, they did, didn’t they?

Come to think of it, few parts of the body are as private as the feet. People go through life in shoes without exception, and bare feet come out only for sleeping and washing. Noble lords do have their feet rubbed by their inferiors now and then, of course, but how could that mean the same thing as kneading away at a lover’s feet?

And besides, with slippery oil slathered on thick and the feet being worked and kneaded, would a person not want to knead elsewhere as well?

“Mm-hm. Heh-heh-heh, hem-hem!”

“Heh-heh-heeeh.”

Seeing Anna and the maid let those suggestive laughs escape them, Keith hurried to deny it.

“It is nothing of the sort.”

“Yes, yes, of course it isn’t. Naturally not. Kh-hhhm. My lady, if you’ve finished eating, shall we go out for a walk? Reni too.”

Anna patted Reni’s plump little rump and made Ardine an offer she could not refuse.

“Ari will!”

Ardine crammed a fist-sized potato roll into both cheeks and hopped down off her child’s chair.

“Ari’s going to wear the purple coat.”

“And shall we put the rabbit-fur robe on over it?”

“Mm.”

“Then the two of you have a nice co—omfortable talk. Just think of it as His Grace the Duke’s own bedchamber and take it nice and leee—isurely.”

“Wait—”

Keith stretched an arm out after the retreating backs of his niece, of Anna, of the maid, and it was no use. The hand caught hold of nothing at all and dropped back down empty.

Only the two of them were left in the dining room.

“…”

“Mmm! This salad really is delicious. The dressing has a lovely fragrance. It smells of spring.”

Pai made a great show of being occupied elsewhere and put a fresh green leaf into her mouth.

“Aren’t you hungry? You did a great deal of moving about, after all.”

“…Please stop.”

“Hm? Stop what?”

“Letting that sort of… nuance slip on purpose. That is what I mean.”

There, you see. He can read it perfectly well himself.

She found him all the more provoking for it and answered in a sulky tone.

“I only told it exactly as it was. You were quite violent last night, you know. When I tried to take hold of your shoulder, you struck my hand away so savagely.”

“Surely I did not lay a hand on you?”

Her reproach, dressed up as a complaint, glanced off in a direction she had not expected. Keith’s face went ashen and he stammered.

“D— did I hurt you…”

“It’s nothing like that. Oh dear, there’s no talking to you.”

Remorse toward her and a terrible self-reproach mixed together in his clouded eyes. Pai laid her hand gently over the back of his, where the veins stood up, and explained as though patting him calm.

“You only knocked my hand away, that’s all. I wasn’t hurt. I’m perfectly fine.”

“…”

“And look. You’re keeping still now, aren’t you.”

“…”

She glanced down at their overlapping hands and gave a bright smile. Keith still wore the look of a man too sorry to know what to do with himself, though the air of self-reproach had faded a little at least.

Pai took her hand away as though it were nothing, so that he would not feel burdened by it, and straightened up in her seat.

“And as for letting that sort of nuance slip… in any case, we are courting.”

“…Yes.”

“I thought it would be good to let them see us getting on well. If it was sudden, I’m sorry.”

Keith let out a short sigh. He tapped the marble table, tap, tap, before he carefully met her eyes. Then, just as Pai had done to him, he closed his hand around her white one.

The man’s hand was large and warm.

Even the maid who had brought the meal had withdrawn; there was nobody in the dining room but the two of them, and still he lowered his voice as far as it would go and whispered.

“The fault is mine. You played your part properly, and I spoiled it through my own inexperience. The truth is, having never courted a woman…”

“Sorry?”

“I will be clumsy at it, but I shall make an effort.”

“What was that?”

“An effort—”

“Before that.”

“Ah — because I have no experience of courting a woman…”

“Really?”

“Sorry?”

“Is it true that you have no experience of courting a woman?”

Their hands, layered one on another like flower petals, turned clammy. Keith’s face had gone red, and Pai laid her other hand on top of his so he could not escape.

“An answer, please.”

“…That is so.”

“…”

“Is— is that a problem for our contract?”

A tense look in his eyes, a trembling breath. The hands stacked layer upon layer were hot, as though held close to a campfire.

“There’s no problem with it, but it does leave me feeling a bit odd.”

“May I ask why?”

“Well… it makes me feel exactly like a thief, doesn’t it.”

Holding hands, an embrace… yes, she had braced herself as far as an embrace. But being told that every one of those acts would be his first left her oddly uneasy. Contract or no contract…

Keith, meanwhile, somehow looked all the more resolute.

“No. I shall learn diligently.”

Learn what, from whom, and how, exactly.

“Kissing, too… I will never disappoint you.”

“…”

You’ve thought it through as far as that?