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In the harsh city of London.
The rain fell heavily on a cloudy afternoon, the sky's wailing scorching the bodies that shrank with a fierce cold that trembled the hearts sheltering in delicate ribs.
The horses galloped against the wind through the streets of the upscale English quarter, drawing the path outside like a troubled painting for his eyes, lost in the clutches of a winter that clouded him, making him like a huge stone that raged savagely on his chest.
"Take the horses to the stable until I call for you, Patrick." Louie shaded his body with his black umbrella as he followed his coachman one day obediently as he led the horses around Sigrid's family home toward the deserted stable, devoid of a single soul
He walked with a sullen face towards the door of the house, deafened by the pouring rain around him, which merged with the annoying buzzing of his mind that had accompanied him since two difficult nights during which he had been furious more than he could count.
"Good day, Lydia. Is Harold awake?" he said to the housemaid and his friend's nanny, who put her hand to her chest and exhaled with such relief that it surprised him. "Thank heavens you're back! He's upstairs in his room."
He frowned in confusion as he lifted his hat and left it beside his umbrella before striding into the room of the man with the twisted beliefs, who sat at the writing table in the corner of the room, examining a large, bulky volume, unaware of Louis's knocking on his open door
"Martin... Marvin... Marlin... damn it." He muttered in a very annoyed tone, his finger leisurely tracing a page of the Old English Church Register before he was startled by two taps on his shoulder that made him turn around with wide eyes.
"What in God's name are you doing?" He chuckled, and Harold wiped his face, a happy smile spreading across his lips as he greeted his friend with a warm hug. "I'm glad you're here at last, Louie."
"What are you doing with this huge record?" Louis Rama shrugged at the spread volume from Harold's shoulder, who pulled away with a heavy, exhausted sigh and a hint of mild irritation. "I'm looking for a name. I've been doing that for three days and haven't found anything."
"A new woman?" Louis murmured, leaning back on a nearby bench, temporarily pushing away his worries and irritations, preoccupied with the usual problem of his companion and the anxiety that afflicts him whenever he is attracted to a woman.
"And not just any woman! She's giving me the creeps." He circled like a bee in his nightgown, his face agitated, and Louis nodded monotonously, knowing everything he was about to say by heart. This was a situation that had been repeated for a long time
"...I did everything to woo her. I sent her flowers every morning, I wrote her flirtatious letters that never failed to turn a girl's heart upside down. Did you know she refused to even tell me her name? I only knew her last name... Marchelle."
"Maybe she's just not into you, Harold."
Harold stopped in his tracks, looking at him with a look of protest. Perhaps what bothered Louis most about his friend was his refusal to accept that not every woman he met should be infatuated with him. He didn't see it as true.
"No. She just plays the difficult English lady. Even when she tried to tease her little son to..."
"Her son?" Louis interrupted indignantly, sitting up straight and glaring at the man with the twisted hair. "For God's sake, Harold! Are you courting a married woman with her son? Have you lost your mind?"
Pursing his lips rigidly, Harold relaxed his limbs on the opposite seat, letting out a heavy sigh and knitting his brows tightly together. "Nothing she does indicates she's married. Chances are she's a widow."
"Didn't you say she refused to tell you her name? How do you know she doesn't show if she's married or widowed to stop bothering her?" Louis snapped, but he couldn't resist it for long; he blinked hopelessly.
"She's just intriguing me, Louis. I've been poring over the old church register for a while, hoping to find her family tree and at least know who she is."
He sat in his chair, his face sullen, looking into Harold's watchful eyes, and stilled. Despite his disapproval of his friend's reckless actions, he'd been in a very similar situation himself, and knew only too well what that suffocating feeling was.
"What's her name again?" he breathed, and Harold craned his neck eagerly toward him. "Marchiel."
"That's a French surname. You're not likely to find anything about it in the church register if she was French, or her husband was French. I'll ask my grandmother; she might know anything about it."
He smiled gently at Harold's pleased lightening as the forty-year-old matron entered, wheeling the tea trolley and his expensive, ornate cups beside them. She shook her head slightly.
"I don't know what you're doing to make him shut up, but I'm grateful you're here. At least you'll spare me the hassle of him babbling to himself all day." Lydia addressed Louis, giving Harold a reproachful look that both young men laughed at.
Louis raised his tea cup to his lips as the woman left, giving Harold a certain look before turning to him with inquisitive eyes. "So, tell me, how is Albert? Has he found a solution to your current problem?"
Louis's features flattened slowly, a confused pang welling up inside him as he shook his head in surprise. "Not exactly. He told me to sell his wedding ring since it had belonged to my mother, but I refused. And when I opened my bag yesterday after returning from Ilkan, he had sneaked the ring into my clothes."
"So problem solved!" Harold admitted with an enthusiasm that Louis didn't share, his face gently shriveling, laced with a hidden irritation that caught his friend's confused eyes. "...What's wrong?"
"I'm not selling the ring."
His tone was decisive as he put the glass aside and walked around the room on his feet, Harold's uncomprehending gaze clinging to him. The mere recollection of what had happened the previous two nights made him irritated and miserable.
"Why?"
He hadn't liked him for a while. He kept his back to him to hide his distracted gaze before sighing, turning to him, choosing his words very carefully. "When...you meet a woman, and she feels different, even like she's the one. Is it a good idea to tell her this right away, or should we wait a while?"
He was anticipating his friend's every move as a response to his question
Harold's eyes widened with anticipation as he jumped up, mouth agape, grinning broadly at Louis incredulously. "Don't say! You met a woman? Wow, have you fallen in love with a countrywoman?"
"Not a countrywoman. No." He had no desire to spill the beans. Louis didn't want Harold to think he'd taken his advice and proposed to the same woman he'd so vehemently rejected a week earlier.
The irony of fate.
"...She's an aristocratic lady. We met in Ilgan and had a wonderful week together." He bit his tongue in a half-smile, remembering the picturesque town days that had separated him from the chaos of his hard life.
"Do I know her?" Harold looked at him with unfailing eagerness, then nodded after a pause. "I don't think so."
"That's all right. Now, sit down... and tell me what happened without omission." He obliged, leaning back in his seat, careful to keep his fingers away from his friend's happy face. He knew how eager the other was to see him fall in love for the first time, and he was saddened to know how he would react after he told the truth.
"I asked her to marry me." He cut it short. Harold's mouth fell open this time in incomprehension and he glared at him in disapproval. "For God's sake! You can't just ask any woman to marry you, Louis! If a woman is into you, if you show her you love her she'll make you love after her!"
"She's not that type."
"Trust me. All women are."
"Not her."
Yes, his voice was loud as he wandered for seconds in his memory, which gathered all his nights with the beautiful blonde, who would blame him until the last word he said. No one knew what he knew. No one saw her the way he did. She wasn't the humiliating type.
Harold gently wiped his face and looked at him, breathing. "And what did she say?"
Silence.
Just as she did. She didn't answer him. He still remembered her shocked face before his expectant eyes. He felt her feel what she had done to him all those days ago. He felt her discover that she had won a unique place in his heart when he had resolved never to speak to her again, but he forgot all that with her first smile.
He never understood her reaction.
He hung his neck and lightly knitted his eyebrows in displeasure. "She didn't answer."
"Oh my God! See? Women like to feel desired! What did you expect her to say? 'I marry you?' It doesn't work that way, Louie!"
"And what did you want me to do? Weren't you the one who urged me to marry you?" Louis, in turn, lashed out at Harold's indignant glare and reproachful words. He may have lacked his friend's experience with women, but he didn't see anything wrong with what he did.
"But not like this! At least you could have waited until you came back and told you what to do. How is it now that you were rejected by the first woman you asked to marry you?"
"She didn't!" Louis became obstinate. He considered her silence to be merely stubbornness, and he wasn't going to simply leave her after everything she'd done to him. Not while he hung between the sky of hope and the land of brokenness.
Harold let out a very long, very heavy sigh as he leaned back in his seat, calming down from his outburst. He was an expert on women and on the politics of love he'd followed throughout his teenage years, and he wasn't going to let his friend fall into any woman's trap that easily
"What's done is done. Forget it and think about it carefully. If you want to get married, leave it to me and your grandmother to handle it for you." He dictated calmly, torn by Louis's alert erection as he stared at him in confusion. "Grandmother? What does Grandmother have to do with it now?"
That was Harold's turn to remain silent.
You see, his friend still didn't know about his meeting with his grandmother a week ago, or the intention of the elderly woman Harold had rooted in her to find the perfect wife for her grandson who had traveled and gone off to fall in love with another woman.
How complicated things were now.
"Listen, I only did it for your own good. I never thought you'd meet another woman in Ilgan and things would develop between you..." Harold texted eagerly, facing Louis' questioning eyes, before recounting the details of his meeting with his grandmother and explaining his pure intentions in the matter .
The sky's weeping continued like waterfalls overhead, and the winds lashed his face with gloomy stings, which contracted as he followed the stern, elegant features of the streets with knitted brows.
It wasn't surprising that he left his friend's house angry, even if he appeared to Harold otherwise. But he was angry at what fate had handed him, which was plotting against him on the other side. Tanna wasn't convinced by Harold's claim that he could love one woman and marry another.
He wasn't that kind of person.
When he finally got out of front of the house around three in the afternoon, the first thing he saw was Palom's house. She was inside, undoubtedly, skillfully painting one of her enchanting paintings, strutting around in a gown as stunning as herself.
He had been trying to talk to her since his last hour in Ilgan, and she hadn't answered the door. Even the first moment after he saw her get out of the carriage the previous evening and the maid told him she was asleep. He didn't know whether she was angry with him or avoiding him
He thought she would be more flexible in her response, and not so harsh. At least she would have put his heart at ease with a final refusal, as he had seen her do with the publisher Arthur Nicholas's request. So what purpose, then, was her silence intended to torment him?
He was not disappointed when the maid told him this time that she was not home, causing him to drag his feet back toward his home's path with an angry face and a rebellious heart. Perhaps she was not the type who was stubborn enough to be loved by men around her.
But she was certainly teasing him and dodging his feelings like a beautiful hobby suitable for a woman who hadn't been called Madame Casanova for nothing. Perhaps she enjoyed seeing him searching for her eagerly, because she was accustomed to seeing men yearning for her.
And he would not be one of those men .
"Good evening, Grandma." He greeted the older woman in a low, unconsciously disappointed tone, dragging his feet upstairs to where his room contained every irritated breath and every angry threat.
If she thought he would crawl behind her like the others, she was definitely mistaken.
"Louis." He knocked on his open door, craning his neck from his reverie to greet his grandmother, who came forward with her cane and a beaming smile, handing him a private party invitation. He looked at it questioningly.
"Why this invitation?"
"Tomorrow night, Baron Alexander Lawrence is giving a party for his eldest daughter, Hazel. She's nineteen now, and his wife, Baroness Emilia, has sent us a private invitation."
His grandmother was explaining with such enthusiasm, chewing her eyes, that he now understood the reason for all this. He understood why the private invitation was inscribed with his name and not a regular public one
He learned that his grandmother and the Baroness had spoken at length and with clear insinuations at one of the teas in his absence about the same thing Harold had told him. Marriage and the establishment of aristocratic blood ties between the two families.
He put the invitation aside and sighed, his face flat. "That's very kind of her, but I'm coming home from Elkan tired and have a lot of things to attend to. So I won't be going."
He tried to convince himself that it wasn't about Sigin Palom or his faint hope that she might give him some answer soon, but deep down he knew that was why he had refused. He didn't want to make any promises until all avenues to her were cut off .
"I sent you a special invitation. You can't not go," the old lady snapped. She didn't want to spoil all her plans with such a prestigious and wealthy family as the Lawrences. How are you supposed to find a suitable wife if you abstain from parties, Louie?
"I don't want to get married now," he offered tersely, making her jaw clench roughly. "Well, I do. I want to see another Legrent grandson, Louie. The family name shouldn't die out because you're not interested in marrying!"
He breathed in despair. He didn't even have the energy left for an argument. He bristled at Harold for a moment for bringing up that commonplace, but he knew his time would come sooner or later. There wasn't a family that didn't want its name to live on forever, and unfortunately that was on his shoulders
He kissed his grandmother's hands warmly and smiled a small, forced smile. "I promise to think about this soon, but only after I'm done with what my father got me into first."
She didn't look convinced. She pursed her lips sharply and withdrew wordlessly, followed by his heavy sigh as he sat again by the window, engrossed in a random book, hoping to forget his reality, the extent of which he hadn't anticipated just days before in Ilkan.
He didn't know exactly how long he had been reading unconsciously; perhaps it had been hours, to the point that he had overlooked the pink veil of dusk sliding across the sky, dominating clouds that had shed all their tears harshly, stilling with the passage of time.
He rubbed his eyes wearily as he craned his long, drooping neck in pain. The sounds of a thin horseshoe rattling in the quiet neighborhood crept into his ears, allowing him to peer through his window with half an eye
Be alert. His eyelids closed in a tight frown as he saw the carriage parked on the other side of the road, parallel to his house. Arthur Nicholas... the first pedestrian, with his frail smile, was following him, a feminine figure draped in a seductive purple gown that made him clench his jaw in frustration .
It was better for Sigin Palom to avoid meeting him than to go on a walk with that publisher who didn't deserve that charming smile from her. He was infuriated; any kind of relationship between her and Nicholas amounted to intimate contact that Louis didn't even dare to think about.
He respected her and her space, unlike that juvenile publisher. He watched him kiss her hand with all warmth before she bid him farewell and set off for the door of her house with those confident steps that had previously intoxicated him.
He leaned back in his seat, frowning. She said she wasn't in love with Arthur Nicholas and had refused to marry him before, so why would she let him kiss her and go on a walk with him like a married couple? Why not him?
He cast his dark gaze towards the folded party invitation and made a decision, picking it up firmly. If she didn't take him into consideration, he wouldn't take her into consideration either. And if the policy of love was for one party to humiliate the other, he would set his own policy.
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" my sweethearts " ┆⤿ 💌
• I can't believe we've reached chapter ten and "We've finally reached the moment I've been waiting for."
• Since this chapter is considered a prelude to the next chapter, and on the occasion that we are in chapter ten, I would like to ask you a few questions ? !
• What is your impression so far of Louis's character?
• Seven's character is considered mysterious so far, but do you think what happened in her past made her reach the stage she is in, and what is your impression of her ?
• Written on March 8th • 🎀🕯️🦢
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