"Your partner is a knight, and here he is stuck in a place like this because of a maid like me…… I'm so sorry."
After a long silence, Ruri ducked her head and fidgeted with her fingers as she murmured the words. As a minor noble, Jonny belonged in that glittering ballroom, mingling with the daughters of great houses—not shut away in the dark with someone in her position.
Jonny studied her profile for a moment. Her green eyes caught the moonlight and shimmered, and her lashes trembled with barely contained nerves—somehow, in this moment, she looked even more endearing than usual. Jonny had always been a straightforward, loyal knight with no ulterior motives, yet even he could feel it now: something subtle and fizzing had begun to seep into the narrow, quiet space between them.
"I'm not missing anything."
He pushed his light-brown hair back and said it like it was nothing.
"A noisy, fake ballroom? I'd much rather be out here watching the stars with you."
"I—what……?"
Ruri looked up in surprise, and Jonny met her gaze with a warm smile, his violet eyes soft at the corners. That gentle expression knocked the breath right out of her. She had promised herself—over and over—that she would never let this feeling show, not with the gap between their stations. But in the flutter of the night breeze, the distance between them was closing, little by little, in secret.
While Jonny and Ruri were quietly nurturing that fizzing, moonlit feeling out on the terrace, the imperial ballroom had become a silent battlefield—every eligible young lord jockeying for position around Lia. The moment Jonny disappeared, the suitors who had sent their proposals saw their opening and swarmed.
What they found blocking their path was an immovable wall of steel: Ed, the most capable and quietly dangerous butler in the Crimson household.
"Lady Lia, are you here alone? I find myself questioning Sir Jonny's judgment. Leaving a lady this radiant without an escort—truly unconscionable."
The first to approach was the eldest son of a marquess family, famous in social circles for his silver tongue. He reached for Lia's hand, lips already descending, when Ed materialized between them with a silver tray, smooth as silk. What the young marquess's lips met was not Lia's pale hand—it was the chilled rim of a first-rate champagne flute that Ed had inserted with surgical precision.
"Young Lord Marquess, how kind of you to make the journey over. I'm afraid my lady is still recovering from the fatigue of our recent travels and is feeling rather delicate this evening. She simply hasn't the energy to smile at your witticisms."
"I didn't come here to trade wit—!"
"If you didn't come to be witty, that makes you considerably more dangerous."
Ed bowed with perfect courtesy, but the blue eyes behind his glasses were as cold as a frozen lake.
"Furthermore, there is a rumor circulating that last month, your lordship pledged your family's mining shares as collateral at a well-known gambling establishment in the capital. I worry that prolonged conversation with someone of such loose financial habits might further erode my lady's already fragile grasp of economic matters. I must ask you to excuse yourself."
Having his most damaging secret recited aloud, in the middle of a blazing ballroom, by a smiling butler—the young marquess went white as a sheet and retreated at speed. Lia watched him go, champagne flute in hand, and shot Ed a look for the crack about her economic sensibilities. Then she burst out laughing anyway.
"Wow, Ed. He gambles? I knew he had a shifty face. Good thing you caught it!"
"I only did what was necessary, my lady."
Ed smiled graciously and gave the hem of her dress a small, precise adjustment.
A moment later, a haughty young count from the southern provinces strode over with all the confidence of a man who had never been told no. He opened with Lia's famous train journey, clearly hoping to find common ground.
"My lady, the southern coastal railway is simply breathtaking, isn't it? I rode through on my private carriage just last year—the scenery is absolutely—"
"Oh! The southern coastal line? I've been there too, it really is amaz—"
Lia was already lighting up when Ed stepped smoothly behind her and draped a soft silk scarf around her shoulders, cutting the young count off mid-sentence.
"The southern coastal railway, you say. That particular line was the site of two separate derailments last autumn due to ground subsidence—it holds the distinction of being the most hazardous stretch of track in the Empire. That you speak of it so admiringly does make one wonder about the engineering standards of the railway workshop your family owns."
"How—how dare you! A mere butler, insulting a noble family's livelihood?!"
The young count sputtered and flushed, but Ed was already refilling Lia's glass without so much as a blink.
"Not an insult—a caution. The Count has no intention of investing a single gold coin in shoddy workmanship that cannot guarantee safety. I would suggest, for the sake of your lordship's reputation, that you take your leave before the guards take notice of this commotion."
The young count stormed off, sputtering, no match for Ed's cool, methodical devastation.
From the far corners of the ballroom, the remaining suitors watched the whole sequence unfold and quietly swallowed their ambitions. That smile of his was warm—almost playful—but the information he wielded and the way he wielded it were terrifying. One wrong step and tomorrow morning's society papers would be plastered with every skeleton in your family's closet. The feeling was visceral.
"Hmm, why does everyone keep leaving in such a huff? Society people are so hard to read."
Lia tilted her head and crunched on a petit four, genuinely puzzled.
Ed turned to her with the most gentle, harmless smile in the world. Behind his back, another cluster of would-be suitors caught one look at his eyes and quietly reversed course.
"They simply aren't equal to you, my lady. Who could manage your particular brand of fussiness?"
"You're teasing me again."
"Well. My lady need only enjoy the evening."
Ed produced his handkerchief and carefully wiped away the tiny crumbs of pastry from her fingers—every last one.
Out on the moonlit terrace, Jonny had no idea. While he and Ruri shivered in the night air, Ed had been methodically dismantling every male presence within a three-meter radius of Lia. And as he watched her laugh—bright and unguarded, leaning on no one but him—Ed savored something richer and darker than any fine wine in the room: the quiet, possessive pleasure of being the only one she needed.
The imperial gala's music had faded to nothing, and the nobility were drifting one by one toward the courtyard to find their carriages. Thanks to Ed's airtight perimeter, Lia had made it through the entire evening without so much as a fingertip offered to any unwanted suitor.
But at the very threshold of departure, an ambush.
He was Ked Valkar, eldest son of a viscount family—a young man who had spent the evening thoroughly captivated by the Crimson family's wealth and Lia's beauty in equal measure.
The moment Ed turned to open the carriage door and smooth the seat, Ked moved. He was in front of Lia before anyone could intercept, bowing with practiced elegance.
"Lady Lia, not having been at your side for the whole of this evening is the greatest regret of my life."
Ked was one of the few persistent suitors who had survived the pile of applications Lia had handed off for disposal. Before Ed could step between them, Ked reached toward her hand and murmured sweetly:
"Please grant me the honor of escorting you at the next social club gathering. I look forward to that occasion—and bid you good night."
Rather than pressing his lips to her hand, he held her gaze with a devastating smile—and then he was gone, like smoke.
Lia just laughed it off. "Oh, was that young Lord Ked? He's certainly in a hurry," she said, unbothered.
The man standing behind her was not unbothered.
A vein had appeared at Ed's temple, faint but unmistakable. The blue eyes tracking Ked's departure were burning with a cold, quiet fury—the kind that could bury an entire viscountcy without raising its voice.
*Ked Valkar…… the next social gathering. There won't be one. Not for you.*
He ground his teeth once, composed himself, and turned back to Lia with the face of a perfectly capable butler.
"My lady, the carriage is waiting…… though before we depart, I believe we need to retrieve something that was misplaced."
"Misplaced? What did we lose?"
"Indeed. The household's knight and lady's maid appear to have become stranded somewhere unbecoming and are failing to perform their duties. Their employer's mercy compels us to collect them."
"……Hm?"
At that same moment—the imperial terrace where Jonny and Ruri were still very much stranded.
The cold night air hung over the terrace like a held breath. The grandeur of the daytime had dissolved, leaving only moonlight pooling across the polished white marble. Tall arched columns cast long, deep shadows, and between them the silver light broke apart and scattered. Beyond the balustrade, the imperial gardens crouched in the dark, rustling and sighing with each gust of wind. Stone lanterns placed at the corners of the terrace for the benefit of those with poor night vision cast a soft amber glow—just enough to illuminate the tips of two pairs of shoes.
The awkward silence had stretched long enough that Ruri finally broke it.
"Sir Jonny, I really am not cold. Please take your cloak back……"
"Forget it. You've been shivering since we got out here."
Ruri sat huddled at one end of the bench, wrapped in Jonny's cloak. Jonny sat at the other end, looking up at the night sky, unbothered by the chill. The stiffness of two hours ago had dissolved between them, replaced by something quieter—a strange, unspoken closeness made of nothing but shared breathing and moonlight. The wall of their difference in station felt, just for now, a little further away.
What shattered that romantic silence was not a crash or a bang.
*Click.*
The door opened with a sound so precise and well-oiled it was almost surgical. Jonny and Ruri spun around simultaneously to find Ed standing in the doorway, lantern in hand, wearing a mildly amused expression. Behind him, Lia peered over his shoulder with wide eyes. "Wait—why are you two coming out of there?"
"Playtime is over, you two. My lady would like to go home."
Jonny let out a short, disbelieving laugh and stood up from the bench.
"Ed, isn't this a bit much? You locked your own escort knight in a closet."
"You flatter me, Sir Jonny. Thanks to the arrangement, my lady's evening was entirely peaceful and safe."
Ed replied without flinching. Jonny clicked his tongue and, without thinking, gave Ruri a brief pat on the shoulder.
Meanwhile, the sudden appearance of Ed and Lia had snapped Ruri back to reality. Her face went the color of a ripe tomato as she scrambled to the front.
"M-Mr. Ed! A-and my lady! I—the door was locked, and—!"
"……I'm rooting for you……?"
A true noblewoman knows how to wish happiness upon the people she cares about. Lia smiled. Ruri made a strangled noise and waved her hands in frantic denial. Ed, however, took one look at Ruri's scarlet face and the cloak still around her shoulders, stepped close, and murmured quietly:
"Well done, Ruri. I confess it took me a little longer than usual to open the door—I didn't want to interrupt your…… deep conversation."
"What?! No—that's not—it really wasn't like that—!"
While Ruri stamped her feet in mortified agony and wished the marble floor would swallow her whole, Ed had already turned and was walking away down the cold corridor.
Whatever tender feelings Jonny and Ruri had cultivated on that terrace, they were already far from Ed's mind. His thoughts were occupied entirely by one thing: a detailed, methodical plan for how to erase Ked Valkar, Viscount's son, from polite society before he could get anywhere near Lia at next week's gathering.
"Sir Jonny, Ruri—if you don't hurry, you'll be walking home."
As Ed disappeared into the dark with his dangerous intentions perfectly concealed, Jonny felt a soldier's instinct prickle at the back of his neck, and Ruri was too busy trying to muffle the sound of her own heartbeat to notice. And Lia was turning the terrace scene over in her mind. She had, privately, considered Jonny as a potential match—but……
*Ruri's face was so red. It was the cutest thing. But how do I help them?*
Coming right out and playing matchmaker felt too forward for a proper young lady. But staying silent while her beloved lady's maid's first love bloomed right in front of her? Absolutely out of the question. Lia's very adorable dilemma had only just begun.