Forgotten Juliet

“Ah… yes. She was fine. She didn’t receive any treatment, so she must not have been injured.”

“Okay. That’s enough.”

The man nodded lightly, turned around with a straightforward attitude.

Angie watched his back for a moment before calling out without realizing it.

“Excuse me, sir!”

Will it be okay?

Angie, who quickly followed the man, ended up telling him all the information she knew.

“She had a ring, so when I asked, she said her husband was working at the east gate. She got off at Roadel, so she probably went to Carcassonne or somewhere around there.”

It wasn’t much information.

“This, this is all I know…”

“Thank you for your cooperation.”

The man who had been quietly listening thanked her politely, nodded his head and left.

“Then.”

Hadin, too, politely bowed and followed the other man out of the station.

Even after they left, Angie couldn’t leave her place for a long time. Holding a box in a daze, Angie recalled a critical fact.

‘I remembered.’

Why the sandalwood scent was familiar.

Sandalwood belonged to a rather expensive scent.

It was impossible for Angie, who had no interest in luxury items like fragrances, to know what sandalwood was.

Nevertheless, the reason Angie asked her colleague what the scent was because of a passenger a few days ago.

A woman who didn’t talk much and had a shadowy atmosphere.

The faint sandalwood scent wafted from her wrist and the hem of her clothes, just like the man just now.

Angie hoped that she hadn’t done the worst thing to that nameless passenger.

* * *

‘Carcassonne.’

The thought that it was likely Juliet came first.

“My lord.”

Hadin followed quickly with an umbrella. Lennox was still lost in thought until they climbed into the carriage parked on the quiet roadside in the rain.

Hadin, who had folded the umbrella, followed him into the carriage.

“A festival of the dead.”

Lennox easily recalled the reason Juliet would have gone to Carcassonne.

Several times, Juliet habitually talked about the festival held in Carcassonne.

“People wear bright masks and parade to prevent death from finding them.”

She hated noisy places, but she liked those festivals. But he never thought about it deeply. Even though she said she wanted to visit it someday, she never asked him to take her or if she could go with him.

That was always the way with Juliet Monad.

It was strange that he didn’t notice it sooner.

In retrospect, it was a boundary-setting behavior. Instead of sending a hopeful look, expecting something, Juliet talked about what she wanted to do after leaving his side.

At some point, Juliet put him outside the line. And the line blurred his judgment. Despite the fact that he was the one who drew the line asking not to expect more.

Lennox fumbled with the object clenched in his hand out of habit.

It could be a coincidence.

Juliet might have just come to the east gate to see the festival she had always wanted to see.

And coincidentally, the city where the festival is held could be the city where her former fiancé lives.

All of this could just be a coincidence.

But Lennox knew how thin his patience was.

He didn’t want to assume the possibility that, just in case, all this wasn’t just a coincidence.

“…My lord.”

A hint of anxiety crossed Hadin’s face.

“Vincente Bowman.”

“Is he still in the East?”

“Yes, he is.”

Hadin answered faithfully, but couldn’t hide his uneasiness.

It had been a long time since Duke Carlyle brought up that name.

Vincente Bowman was a common nobleman, the second son of Marquise Bowman and a military officer.

He was a handsome young man with a not-so-bad reputation in the past.

In other words, he wasn’t an extraordinary figure worthy of being remembered by Duke Carlyle.

However, Duke Carlyle remembered the name Vincente Bowman for one reason.

Because he was once engaged to the only daughter of the Monad family. More precisely, it was before Juliet lost her parents and the family fell into complete ruin seven years ago.

Juliet never told Lennox about the engagement.

The Duke wasn’t particularly interested in the past romantic relationships of his lover, which was not surprising.

Therefore, the fact that Lennox found out Juliet Monad had a fiancé was purely accidental.

A few years ago, Lennox Carlyle happened to run into Marquis Bowman in the capital.

Until then, Lennox didn’t even know what the Bowman family did. He hadn’t heard the name, nor was he interested.

However, like the other guests who attended the party that day, Marquis Bowman tried hard to gain the favor of Duke Carlyle.

“Come to think of it, we do have something in common, Your Highness the Duke.”

Marquis Bowman made a desperate attempt to find common ground. His efforts were not in vain.

Usually, it’s a basic principle in most social techniques to identify commonalities with the other party.

However, the Marquis’ choice of topic was the worst.

“It’s about Juliet Monad.”

Foolishly, he mentioned the name of the Duke’s lover.

But nonetheless, Marquis Bowman achieved his goal.

That night at the party, he monopolized the attention of Duke Carlyle like no one else.

“I once thought about arranging her with our second son. Well, it’s a thing of the past. Haha.”

The attention the Marquis wished for might have been of a different kind, but anyway, after that day, Lennox Carlyle began to take a great interest in the Marquis Bowman House.

“Vincente Bowman.”

More specifically, it was limited to Vincente Bowman, the second son of Marquis Bowman.

“Find out what the bastard is up to.”

Right after the party that day, Duke Carlyle ordered Hadin to investigate.

Hadin presented a meticulous report on everything known about Vincente Bowman, without a single error.

In fact, until then, Hadin hadn’t expected the investigation to be related to Juliet Monad.

The report stated that he was a fairly handsome officer who was engaged to the only daughter of the Monad family in the past, and that he would have become a son-in-law and inherited the title of Count Monad if the family hadn’t fallen.

To put it simply, there was nothing to describe Vincente Bowman’s unremarkable life without mentioning Juliet Monad.

But at that time, Hadin considered it a completely separate, unrelated issue.

For example, he thought Duke Carlyle might have ordered the investigation of the son of the Bowman family to find a business weakness.

This was because the Lennox Carlyle he knew wasn’t interested in his lover’s past.

He was unscrupulous in his use of people, yet on the other hand, he was indifferent to his lover. It didn’t matter who her past fiance was or who she got along with.

Whether to say it’s eerily impartial or terrifyingly fair.

But since that day, Lennox had nothing to do with the Bowman House. He never mentioned Vincente Bowman again, not even in passing.

Therefore, Hadin had forgotten about Vincente Bowman over the past few years.

“Find him.”

“Who are you referring to?”

Just a few days ago. Until, that is, just before the owner of the blue room, who seemed to hold his position forever, fled from the Duke’s mansion.

And then Hadin learned some quite surprising news about Vincente Bowman’s recent circumstances.

A few years ago, up until the last time he collected information, Vincente Bowman was a promising young military man with a pretty decent career.

While it’s a bit awkward to call it a career path, he was steadily progressing on a relatively good promotion track.

He wasn’t outstanding but his family background was decent, his abilities were acceptable, and he seemed to be a talent who could aim for a fairly high position in a few years.

In borrowed terms, he was something like a ‘promising talent with a promising future’.

However, Vincente Bowman suddenly veered off the standard track right after that and was transferred to a remote outpost in the East.

Being suddenly dispatched to the East was an extremely rare case.

And the time Vincente Bowman was sent away from the capital to the East exactly coincided with the time Hadin had delivered the information about him at the request of Duke Carlyle.

Hadin couldn’t dispel a reasonable suspicion that Duke Carlyle was involved in this affair.

In fact, when he checked again recently, Vincente Bowman was severely addicted to gambling, drowning in gambling debts, cut off from his family and struggling.

Hadin was confused. From the beginning, his job was not to judge but to execute orders as received.

Despite this, Hadin couldn’t judge whether his master’s suspicions were valid or whether he was blinded by momentary emotions.

“A wedding ring.”

A well-shaped hand gently tapped the window frame.

“It’s strange. I never gave such a thing.”

Lennox knew exactly what he was angry about.

Three years ago, when he first learned of the existence of Vincente Bowman.

What made him the angriest was not Marquis Bowman, who opened his mouth without knowing the topic, or his pathetic son.

He was angry at Juliet, who said nothing.

Three years had passed, but nothing had changed. The one who still made him the most anxious was that woman.

Juliet Monad’s social circle was surprisingly narrow. There was hardly any trace of contact with anyone, showing how quietly she lived even in the North.

In Juliet’s overly clean interpersonal relationships, if you were to pick a man who had any contact with her in the past or present, there was only one.

“…My lady doesn’t know how to be greedy.”

If Juliet Monad had been greedy, it would have been much easier.

He could have decided whether to lose interest and discard her, or become frustrated at not having her and break her.

His eyes opened slowly, and the man filled with grief was nowhere to be seen, and his usual cold face returned.

The man reflected in the clear window looked like a finely honed sword.

“Let’s go.”

“Where shall I take you?”

Lennox gave a bitter laugh and answered briefly.

“To Carcassonne.”