Episode 54

For three years, Marcus had struggled, torn with inner conflict—but at last, he made his decision. He called for Logan.

“…I know you probably despise me, but I still need to say this.”

Logan frowned. He was well aware that this young master had grown increasingly quiet. He knew, too, that Marcus had sunk into a spiral of self-loathing. But he hadn’t realized it had gotten this bad. As someone who was paid to serve, Logan resolved to fulfill his duty—and that meant offering at least a sliver of honesty, perhaps even encouragement.

“What are you saying? I may not admire you, sir, but ‘despise’ is a bit much. I don’t despise my employer.”

“…She may have had a child.”

“Starting now, I shall despise you.”

There was a reason Logan Meyer had a reputation as the capital’s finest secretary.

He was quick on the uptake. He understood instantly what Marcus Hanger was saying. That foolish young man from three years ago hadn’t even made the slightest effort to avoid conceiving a child.

Logan sifted through all the appropriate criticisms one might throw at an irresponsible man, picking out only the ones he could reasonably throw at his employer.

“I used to take some comfort in thinking that while my employer might make a fool of himself now and then, at least he wasn’t the kind to do something damnable. But it turns out I was wrong. You have successfully ruined my perception.”

Marcus buried his face in his hands.

“I was completely swept up in the idea of marrying her, Logan.”

“As Lord Hanger himself once said.”

“…Right. To sleep with someone under the promise of marriage—that’s the kind of trick a swindler would pull. I know.”

Marcus slowly lowered his hands and looked up at Logan. It was the third summer without her, but what lingered on Marcus’s face wasn’t the heat—it was a bitter, penetrating chill. His features had grown sharper, his expression carved by the long, cold erosion of regret.

“But if I take responsibility, then I’m not a swindler.”

He’d thought it through, over and over. Whether this was the right thing to do.

He’d already come to the conclusion that she no longer loved him. There was no other explanation for her disappearance—vanishing without a trace, never once reappearing.

“…It might be a meaningless obsession.”

“I know. But I don’t care.”

“Sir. The young lady is a conservative woman. If she did… bear your child, what do you think she would have done?”

Logan struck right at the heart of the matter Marcus had been mulling over for years.

He had thought the same. Elouise Starwood—kindly put, was conservative; bluntly put, she was hopelessly old-fashioned. In the capital, people scoffed at her for following archaic manners to the letter. She wouldn’t even wear the typical low-cut gowns.

If she had truly conceived a child with Marcus Hanger, there was no way she would have endured it without finding him.

Not out of love. But because she simply wasn’t the kind of woman who would raise a child without its father when she knew exactly who he was. She had fought to preserve her niece’s reputation; she would’ve done the same for her own child.

Logan pointed out something else.

“The Deveres family has placed a bounty on that legendary diamond, and yet she hasn’t come forward. That means she still has it. Which also means she does not possess the funds to raise two children on her own.”

“Logan.”

“I, for one, have a different theory. The young lady may have…”

Logan stopped there. He couldn’t bring himself to say it aloud.

Things like—how a naive woman and her young niece, both more innocent than himself, could’ve fallen into the hands of people far more ruthless.

Of course, it was absurd. If something like that had happened, the jewelry and gems she carried would’ve turned up on the black market by now. The fact that they hadn’t meant she was likely still alive. But all Logan wanted at this point was for his master to give up. Anyone who saw the young man wandering the manor halls at dawn with that corpse-like expression would wish the same.

“That’s not it.”

As if he’d read Logan’s mind, Marcus firmly cut him off before he could speak another word. It wasn’t because he had come to a logical conclusion—far from it. He simply preferred the idea that she didn’t love him anymore over the possibility that she was gone from the world. He refused to believe she might be dead. Even if she hated him now, even if she truly loathed him, he would not let her go.

“Don’t say another word, Logan.”

“…”

“Change the search parameters. A woman in her mid-thirties with a young girl and an infant.”

“Sir Hanger…?”

“…Do as you see fit, Logan.”

Marcus once again buried his face in his palms. He was utterly exhausted. Regret wasn’t like bitter herbs—it turned for the worse the more you chewed.

He would see her again, no matter what.

But the thought of facing a woman who no longer loved him terrified him.

Marcus longed for that inevitable reunion to come soon. And yet, at the same time, he wanted it postponed forever.

And then, he crossed paths with someone he hadn’t expected.

It was not the woman he so desperately yearned for.

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