Several days had passed since the imperial banquet. A peculiar energy hummed through Lia's bedroom at Crimson Manor. Sprawled stomach-down across her plush bed, Lia watched Luri's back with the unblinking focus of a cat as the maid sorted through her dresses.
"Luri." "Yes, my lady? Is something the matter?"
Luri turned around, blinking her green eyes, and Lia let a triumphant smile spread across her face.
"You got stuck out on that terrace with Jonny at the imperial banquet, didn't you? Just the two of you. What did you talk about? He even draped his cloak over you!" "Wh—! Oh—! My lady, that was—that was—!"
The moment Jonny's name left Lia's lips, Luri's pale cheeks flooded a deeper red than any rose in the garden. She stood there fidgeting, clutching the edge of the bedsheet in both hands—and that reaction was more than enough to confirm everything Lia, devoted reader of romance novels, had already suspected.
*I knew it! Luri is absolutely head over heels for Jonny!*
Lia pumped her fist under the covers, silently cheering. Every instinct in her body screamed to grab both their hands, slam them together, and announce, *"Today is officially Day One!"*—but unlike the breezy, oblivious heroines of her favorite novels, Lia had a surprisingly practical streak.
*Hold on. Jonny is a knight—minor nobility. Luri is a maid in our household. The gap in rank is one thing, but what really matters is whether that blockhead Jonny even sees Luri as a woman.*
The Jonny that Lia knew was handsome and dependable, but strip away his loyalty and there wasn't much left—a textbook, by-the-book knight with a head full of duty and not much else. She could picture him perfectly: glancing over at Luri with that easy grin of his, saying things like, *"Our Luri is so hardworking,"* or *"She's like a cute little sister to me."* That blurry, dangerous line between sisterly affection and something more.
What if Lia pushed too hard, too fast, and Jonny—oblivious as ever—drew a firm line? What if he got it into his rigid, honor-bound head that a knight and a maid simply didn't mix, and started keeping his distance? Lia's mind ran through the possibilities: Luri, heartbroken, leaving the manor. Luri crying herself to sleep every night.
"Luri—what do you think of Sir Jonny? The atmosphere on that terrace seemed pretty nice."
Lia lowered her voice and asked carefully, testing the waters. Luri's ears went scarlet as she dropped her gaze to the floor.
"……He's—he's wonderful. I know someone like me has no business even dreaming about someone like him. He's so admirable, and so kind…… Just being able to admire him from a distance is enough. It's just—that night, I suppose I let myself want a little more than I should have. I'm sorry for keeping it from you, my lady."
Luri's quiet confession made Lia's chest ache. Push too hard and she might shatter her sweet maid's heart into pieces. Lia decided to change her approach.
*All right. No obvious matchmaking—that's off the table. What I need is a subtle operation. Something that makes that oblivious idiot Jonny start seeing Luri as a woman.*
That afternoon, at the manor's training yard.
The sky was the kind of blue that sweeps every last speck of dust from your lungs just by looking at it—a flawless, unblemished afternoon that left no room for sorrow of any kind.
"Hah! Hah!"
Jonny was working up a sweat under that glorious sky, swinging a wooden practice sword, when he spotted Lia sitting in the viewing area with a glass of lemonade. He broke into a wide grin and jogged over. His light brown hair caught the sunlight and gleamed.
"My lady, what brings you to the training yard? It must be terribly dusty out here." "Oh, I just wanted to watch you train. But Jonny—you were stuck on that terrace at the banquet. What did you and Luri talk about?"
Lia rested her chin in her hand and slipped the question in casually. Jonny laughed without a trace of self-consciousness.
"Oh, this and that. The door locked on us, so Luri had a bit of a rough time. I thought she'd be trembling with fright, but she surprised me—held herself together and kept the conversation going pretty well." "Really? Does she feel like a cute little sister to you, or—?" "Hmm…… I suppose, sort of?"
Jonny rolled his eyes upward, turning the memory over in his mind—Luri's emerald eyes catching the moonlight, the flush on her cheeks when he'd settled his cloak around her shoulders. He'd always thought of her as simply *a hardworking, sweet girl*, but the strange, charged air of that narrow terrace had felt distinctly different from anything a little sister had ever made him feel.
"She just…… catches my eye a little more than I expected, I suppose. Ha."
He scratched the back of his neck and gave an awkward laugh. It was faint—barely there—but it was unmistakably the first flicker of something. Lia erupted internally.
*Yes! He's not completely indifferent!*
Lia resolved to engineer small, precise little *moments*—just enough to tip Jonny from vague awareness into genuine recognition. Have Luri deliver his favorite snacks. Put Luri in charge of mending his training uniform. Nothing dramatic. Just a nudge here, a nudge there.
And so, as Lia walked back from the training yard with her head full of *The Secret Operation to Make a Knight Fall for a Maid*—
"……What exactly took you to the training yard, my lady. The dust has turned your hair from red to grey."
Ed appeared behind her without a sound, materializing from nowhere, and extended a cool damp cloth with a composed expression. The warm smile on his face was perfectly in place. The look in his eyes behind it was something else entirely—glacial, like the ice shelves that drifted in the seas of the far north.
"Oh, Ed! It's nothing. I was just watching Jonny train." "I see. Sir Jonny's blunt and graceless swordsmanship offers nothing of value to your refined sensibilities, my lady. If you have no particular fondness for inhaling dust, I would suggest the greenhouse in the garden for your afternoon walks going forward."
Ed smoothly redirected her attention away from Jonny and guided her back toward the manor.
Lia let herself be escorted, her mind already drifting happily back to the question of how best to bring Jonny and Luri together. She had absolutely no idea that the butler walking behind her had clocked exactly where every last drop of her attention was directed—and was quietly grinding his teeth about it.
After an entire afternoon of deliberating, Lia found herself stuck. *Delivering Jonny's favorite snacks* and *putting Luri in charge of his uniform repairs* were as far as her ideas went. She decided to consult the one person she trusted to think of something better.
"Ed, come here a second. I have something really important to tell you. Top secret."
Lia cracked the study door open and beckoned him over. Ed set down the thick volume on administrative theory he'd been holding and crossed the room to her with his usual unhurried, impeccable stride.
"A secret, my lady? I am happy to listen, provided this does not involve purchasing another train ticket without the Count's knowledge." "It doesn't! That is not what this is!"
Lia peered up and down the hallway with theatrical suspicion to make sure no servants were within earshot, then caught the edge of Ed's sleeve and tugged him closer, dropping her voice.
"So—I think Luri is in love with Sir Jonny." "……Luri. With Sir Jonny."
The faintest crease appeared between Ed's brows.
"Yes! And I want to help them get together. But if I push too hard and Jonny says something like *'she's like a little sister to me'* and turns her down flat, Luri's heart is going to be absolutely destroyed. What if she gets rejected and cries for weeks? So I want to do this in a really subtle, natural way—something that makes Sir Jonny start seeing Luri as a woman. What do you think? Any good ideas?"
The moment Lia's bright, earnest request landed, Ed's mind began to move very quickly.
*Luri is in love with Sir Jonny……*
He already knew. And yet a quietly satisfied smile touched the corner of his mouth all the same. Jonny had been hovering in Lia's orbit under the banner of *personal escort* for far too long—a persistent thorn in Ed's side. But if Jonny's attention could be redirected entirely toward the maid Luri? The opportunities for Jonny to escort Lia, to look at Lia, would diminish considerably.
And now Lia herself was asking him to engineer it. He had been handed a perfectly legitimate reason to pull Jonny away from her.
Ed completed his calculations without so much as a flicker crossing his face, and looked up with the most trustworthy, warmly devoted smile a butler had ever worn.
"I understand what you're hoping for, my lady. When there is a difference in station, outside interference—especially the hasty kind—tends to do more harm than good. That is doubly true for a man like Sir Jonny, whose thinking runs along rather fixed lines." "Exactly! That's exactly what I said! So what do we do?"
Ed met her eyes and began, in a low and unhurried voice, to lay his trap.
"The first step is to give the two of them a *shared secret*. Have Luri bring Sir Jonny his late-night meals, for instance, or put her solely in charge of managing the knights' emergency medical supplies. A man instinctively lowers his guard around the hands that touch the most private corners of his daily life." "Ed—are you actually a genius? This is incredible!" "And more importantly……"
Ed stepped closer and murmured the next part near her ear, his voice dropping to something almost conspiratorial.
"You need to arrange a *situation* in which Sir Jonny has no choice but to come to Luri's aid. Say Luri is in the dark archive late at night, reaching for a heavy book on a high shelf, and loses her balance—and Sir Jonny happens to be passing by at that exact moment. All you need to do, my lady, is send him on an errand beforehand: ask him to retrieve the knights' record ledger from the archive." "A near-fall in a dark room—someone catching her?! That's the most classic romance novel setup in existence!"
Lia was so excited she grabbed Ed by both shoulders and shook him. Ed felt her hands close around him and, somewhere behind the composed expression, let a deep, unhurried satisfaction settle in.
"I'm glad it pleases you, my lady. If this works, Sir Jonny will find himself spending far more time preoccupied with Luri in some corner of the training yard than he ever spends escorting you. A most desirable outcome, I think." "Yes! Then let's start tonight—the archive operation, first thing! Ed, you're the best!"
Lia dashed off to her room, buzzing with excitement, already plotting the details.
Ed stood alone in the study. He reached up with one white-gloved hand and slowly smoothed the shoulder Lia had grabbed.
Lia was burning with pure, wholehearted conviction—she was going to bring two of her servants together and it was going to be *wonderful*. She had no idea that Ed was using that very innocence to quietly clear the field, pruning away every presence that drifted too close to her, until only he remained.
"Yes, my lady. Shake the board as much as you like."
He turned toward the corridor as the evening shadows deepened, and smiled—just to himself—before disappearing into the dark.
"While that knight's eyes are fixed on a maid…… the only one who needs to be looking at you is me."