♡ TL: Khadija SK
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On the day Hazel received Theodore’s marriage proposal, the Viscount Easton household turned upside down.
Charlotte and Lady Easton followed her everywhere, relentlessly pressing for details of her conversation with Theodore.
Hazel realized that answering honestly was the only way to escape their persistence, so she did her best to explain. But there wasn’t much to say.
It was impossible for her to admit that Theodore claimed to have fallen in love with her at first sight or to mention his compliment that she was beautiful.
Charlotte and Lady Easton weren’t the type to be satisfied with such brief details.
So Hazel had to sate their curiosity with other tidbits, like his elegant appearance or his unusual agility for a nobleman.
Somehow, she ended up recounting what sounded like praise. At that, Charlotte’s expression shifted.
“You’re smitten with him too, aren’t you~?”
“No.”
Hazel replied immediately, without hesitation.
Charlotte tilted her head, puzzled by Hazel’s response. She argued that if Hazel wasn’t interested, how could she list so many praises, and if she didn’t like him, how could she notice his good qualities?
Hazel explained that her logic was flawed.
“I only described him objectively. If it sounded like praise, it’s because what he possesses is good in itself. But Charlotte, not everything that’s good means I want it. Just as I don’t desire to eat every ripe red apple I see.”
Charlotte didn’t fully grasp Hazel’s words, but she nodded reluctantly in agreement.
She knew that pushing further might provoke Hazel’s stubbornness and ruin things.
Yet she genuinely hoped things would work out between Hazel and Theodore.
“You two looked so harmonious together!”
Next to Hazel, whose indifference sometimes made her seem gloomy, Theodore was constantly smiling.
Even Hazel’s somber expression, often criticized, looked charming beside him.
Hazel’s dark purple dress, which might appear black, and Theodore’s dark yet elegantly embroidered attire revealed their clearly different tastes, but together they were pleasing to the eye.
Charlotte had realized from the moment she saw Theodore that he was the only man capable of compensating for what were considered flaws in Hazel’s demeanor.
They were complete opposites, but perhaps that’s why it might works.
Charlotte imagined a happy marriage between Hazel and Theodore. But her daydreams quickly shattered, and the Easton household was thrown into chaos once more.
When Hazel thought she had satisfied Charlotte and Lady Easton’s curiosity enough, she opened her mouth:
“I refused the proposal.”
Silence blanketed the room for a moment. After a stillness akin to the calm before a storm, Charlotte leapt from her seat:
“Sister!!!! Have you gone mad?”
“Ann, fetch me some cold water.”
Lady Easton placed a hand on her forehead and leaned back against the sofa’s armrest.
Ann looked shocked as well, but after Hazel checked Lady Easton’s eyes as she seemed to faint, Ann dashed to the kitchen.
“You’re fine, Mother. No need to exaggerate.”
Hazel added calmly after checking Lady Easton’s pulse:
“A little rest, and you’ll recover quickly. Breathe deeply.”
“Sister!”
Charlotte shouted fiercely, prompting Hazel to cover her ears.
“How could you refuse the proposal?”
“It’s not hard. It’s the fourth time already.”
“The previous ones don’t compare to today! He’s the Duke of Bernier!”
It was Theodore who had been rejected, but Charlotte was the one on the verge of tears, clutching her chest as if in pain.
Suddenly, Hazel felt curious.
Had Theodore been saddened by her rejection?
She replayed their moments in her mind and lightly shook her head.
Theodore had seemed surprised by her refusal, but not affected.
His ever-present smile was proof of that.
“Speak, sister. How could you refuse a proposal so easily?”
“Because it was a lighthearted proposal.”
“What’s lighthearted about a proposal? It’s choosing a partner for your entire life!”
Charlotte stomped her foot in frustration.
This time, Hazel partially agreed with her.
Choosing a spouse isn’t a trivial matter. But Theodore’s proposal had indeed been lighthearted.
If it had to be weighed, it was as light as a feather.
Hazel shrugged and opened her novel.
Charlotte and Lady Easton were stunned by her composure.
“Hazel, listen to me before I burn every book in this room.”
Hazel’s fingers, flipping through the book, trembled at Lady Easton’s threat.
Lady Easton was capable of burning the books Hazel had painstakingly collected—or even the entire room.
A mother’s power was that immense.
Hazel quickly closed the book and looked at her mother.
After drinking the cold water, color returned to her pale face.
“I understand that refusing today was unavoidable. You must have been shocked.”
It wasn’t about shock, but Hazel kept her mouth shut.
As the eldest Easton daughter, who had spent the most time with Lady Easton, she knew when to speak and when to stay silent.
It was a skill Andre envied greatly.
“But even so—oh my goodness, give me a second chance, please.”
Suddenly, Lady Easton clasped her hands together and looked at the ceiling while praying.
She whispered incomprehensible words for a moment, then turned to Hazel with eyes flashing like lightning.
“If, just if. If the Duke of Bernier proposes again… or does something resembling courtship, think about it for one day before refusing. No, promise me you’ll think about it for a week. And positively, too.”
Hazel opened her mouth but couldn’t say anything.
A day, a week, or even a month of thinking wouldn’t change her mind.
Not because there was anything wrong with the Duke of Bernier, but because she had her own plans.
Marriage was an obstacle to her goals, and the problems it could cause might even harm the Duke of Bernier.
But she couldn’t explain all of that in detail.
What Hazel was planning, her goal, was the kind of thing even her loving mother or her sister, with whom she shared all her secrets, would struggle to understand.
Yet since her mother pleaded with her like this—through threats—she agreed.
“…I’ll do that. But I don’t think the Duke of Bernier will come back.”
Hazel added gently that there was no reason for the proposal to be limited to the Easton family, and since she had rejected him firmly, he wouldn’t return even if they wanted him to, as his pride would be wounded.
Lady Easton clutched her forehead and collapsed.
This time, her faint was real.
***
In the days that followed, fortunately for Hazel—and for the Easton family as well—there was no sign of Theodore.
But it was possible to know where he went and what he did.
“They say he attended a ball hosted by Baron Valance two days ago.”
Theodore had become the center of high society lately.
Whether it was good fortune or not, Hazel didn’t need to exert effort to hear detailed accounts of his movements, as if she were seeing him herself.
“They say he only danced with Lady Valance.”
At high-society balls, dancing was a way to express interest in the opposite sex. Except when dancing with a married person, where it carried meanings like courtesy, respect, or returning a favor.
In other words, Theodore had attended the marriage market but hadn’t chosen a target.
Hazel concluded he was someone uninterested in women.
But Charlotte and Lady Easton had a different opinion.
“He hasn’t forgotten you yet. He’s still hung up on you.”
“Mother, I don’t think so. If that were true, he wouldn’t have completely ignored me for the past five days.”
“That…”
No one could refute Hazel’s words.
For Lady Easton, who had been a star of society in her youth, a man who loved a woman would offer her everything.
Love meant seeing her in the morning and writing to her in the evening that he missed her, or sneaking out at dawn to gaze at her window and returning in the morning to sing her a romantic song and court her genuinely.
From that perspective, one could say Theodore’s feelings had cooled, but Lady Easton’s intuition told her:
“It’s not over yet.”
Hazel looked at Lady Easton with a face full of words, but she swallowed both her sigh and her response.
She didn’t have the right to take away her mother’s hope, too.
At any rate, the attention directed at her was bound to fade soon.
Because soon enough, the drawing room would be filled with Charlotte’s suitors, as expected.
And indeed, her prediction wasn’t wrong.
An hour later, the room was filled with men who had come to court Charlotte.
Hazel exchanged polite greetings, then immediately fixed her eyes on her book.
“Hazel, at least join the conversation.”
Lady Easton pinched Hazel’s side firmly.
Her words, spoken through a tightly closed mouth, carried clear frustration, while her facial expression maintained a calm smile.
The mother was truly remarkable.
How could she master the art of speaking without opening her mouth?
“Mother, it doesn’t seem like there’s a man here who wants to talk to me.”
A tall man, a short man, a man with a protruding belly, a man with curly hair, a one-eyed man, a man flaunting his title…
There were various men in the room, but all their attention was directed solely at Charlotte.
‘It’s hard to unify people’s opinions, but it’s nice that they agree in a place like this, at least.’
Hazel thought such a fleeting notion.
“That’s because you only look at your book.”
“Are you saying the problem is with me?”
“I can’t say it isn’t.”
“Mother, try thinking differently for once. The problem might be with the men who can’t capture my attention more than my book does.”
Today was more tedious than usual.
How many times had this repeated?
Men praising Charlotte with the same phrases, bringing similar bouquets, reciting poetic lines that felt familiar—no, they must have been heard before…
Everything was identical to what had happened a year ago.
“Did they start a department for teaching cheap courtship at the academy without my knowledge?”
Hazel shook her head in disappointment.
Hazel’s retort wasn’t entirely wrong, so Lady Easton clamped her mouth shut.
Hazel gave a faint smile, having won a rare argument, and returned her head to her book.
“If there’s a man who can make that book fall from your hands, I’ll do everything in my power to marry you to him.”
“Fine, if such a man exists.”
Hazel replied nonchalantly, fully convinced that no such man would appear.
But life always holds unexpected surprises.
“The Duke Theodore Caron Bernier has arrived!”
Hazel’s shoulders flinched at the news of a man she thought would never return.
Lady Easton seized the moment of distraction and swiftly struck Hazel’s hand.
Thud.
Hazel’s book fell to the floor.
It might require careful analysis of causality, but the man who caused the book to fall from Hazel’s hand entered the room with a radiant, dazzling smile.
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omg the mother saw her chance!!