Eleanora and Drocell returned the next day—they had left the imposter Earl of Mandalay back at the Yard. Ciel had agreed to allow the doll-butler to remain at Phantomhive for a time, just until they could track down the real Earl Mandalay.

And that, of course, was just perfect for Drocell, but it was absolute torture for Sebastian.

After Eleanora had returned safely—and after a good night's sleep after her ordeal—Sebastian had wanted to return to his earlier angry shunning. After all, she had broken his heart. No, not broken it—

She had ripped it apart, stomped on it, shredded it into pieces, shattered it, crushed it, tore it up, slashed it apart, hacked it into littler pieces, threw it into a cesspool, and then fed to a bunch of rabid dogs with bowel problems, all while laughing without a care.

And then she had broken his heart.

The very least that he could do was give her the cold shoulder for several years or so, and even that was pure mercy compared to what she had done to him. The term "heartbreak" is completely inaccurate—everything hurts when one has been rejected, and it hurts for a very long time with a cold, feverish, stinging, cutting pain that refuses to go away no matter what one does. He had lived a long life and had experienced many painful things, but absolutely nothing compared to what he had felt when he had heard that Eleanora didn't return his feelings at all. He wished that he had known that before he had confessed to her like an absolute moron.

But even confessing to her had been a mistake! He had just gotten caught up in the moment—what with the intimacy and all—and he had made a silly mistake. That was excusable—everybody made mistakes, after all.

If only this mistake didn't hurt so much…

But in any case, he hadn't been in the mood to deal with Eleanora anymore. He was sick and tired of the emotional rollercoaster and he wanted off. And just when he was sure that he was well and truly off, this…Drocell comes in and screws him all up again.

The reason why a husband shuns his wife is because he wants her to feel sad. He wants her to feel regretful and he wants her to come running back to him with tears in her eyes and beg for clemency so that he can nobly forgive her and then they can kiss and make up and maybe end the tearful reunion in bed. Was that really so much to ask for? NO.

And this Drocell was single-handedly ruining it all!

His presence didn't seem to make Eleanora sad—quite on the contrary, it seemed to make her happy. And how could she possibly feel regretful and remorseful when she was happy?

The whole thing gave Sebastian that strange, thick feeling again—what was it called again? The young Master had called it 'jealousy,' which was absolutely ridiculous. Demons didn't get jealous. Humans got jealous of demons, but demons never got jealous of humans. That was sheer nonsense.

He wasn't jealous. He just didn't like some random stranger barging into his life and making his wife laugh and smile. That was the husband's job; that was his job; not some Drocell's!

And if making Eleanora happy wasn't enough, Drocell started interfering with other things too.

One day, Sebastian came up to Eleanora and told her to go quickly into town and pick up some packages for the young Master.

"But how can I carry all of them back here on my own?" she had asked.

"You can take a cab," Sebastian had said, and then he had turned around to resume the shunning process, when he heard that…that…thing Drocell speak up.

"I—can—come—with—you—Eleanora."

"Oh, really? Thank you!"

Sebastian tried not to mind that. After all, men could go and help women carry things around. That was a gentlemanly thing to do. It didn't mean that he had ulterior motives, or that Eleanora liked Drocell more than she liked him.

But when they came back, Eleanora was walking with her arm slung through Drocell's.

Sebastian felt a powerful surge of the thick, gross feeling when he saw that. That was his gesture of tolerance. Eleanora did that with him. That was her arm which should have been through his'; that was her smile which should have been directed at him, not at some idiot porcelain freak!

It only got worse from there. Eleanora and Drocell would take moonlit walks, arm-in-arm. Drocell would help her with all of her chores and they could almost always be found talking together about this-and-that.

Sebastian wouldn't have minded the moonlit walks if they had been walking a kilometer apart from each other. He wouldn't have minded Drocell helping her with the chores as long as they could do them together in separate rooms. And he wouldn't have minded them talking together as long as they talked exclusively about work-related things, which they basically never did.

This is all a very roundabout way of saying that Sebastian didn't like anything they were doing together—to put it bluntly, he HATED EVERY SINGLE BIT OF IT.

The feeling of jealousy never left him now, and it was always accompanied by a healthy bit of rage. He hated it when they walked; he hated it when they talked; he hated it when they looked at each other; he even started hating them breathing in each other's direction. He felt like a walking ball of pure, sizzling fury—if emotions could generate electricity, Sebastian could have single-handedly illuminated every room in Buckingham Palace, nonstop, for about a week—and that just on the power of his emotions in a single hour.

But despite the intensity of his anger and jealousy in the daytime, all of those would melt away in the evenings, leaving only the quieter, calmer, but nonetheless equally horrible emotion of pure misery.

"Why him?" he kept on asking himself as he tried to go to sleep, tossing and turning. "Why him? Why wasn't it me? Why did it have to be him? Why couldn't it be me? Why him? Why him? Why him?"

And then the anger and jealousy would resume at full-power in the morning.

One morning, he came into the kitchen just in time to see Drocell bestowing a light but loving kiss on Eleanora's willing cheek.

He was glad when a group of men tried to murder the Earl that afternoon. It helped him vent out his frustration—he just imagined that every would-be assassin was Drocell. It was nothing short of a miracle that any man out of that group managed to survive at all.

He naturally tried making moves on Eleanora; he tried to show her that, a) he still harbored affections for her and b) Drocell was an unworthy idiot who was clearly hopelessly inferior to the perfect, handsome, intelligent, kind, merciful, loving, powerful man who she was already conveniently married to. No matter which way he sliced it, he couldn't understand why so many women continually threw themselves at his feet, willing to do absolutely anything for his love, and the one woman—the one woman who really mattered—liked somebody else. It was simply unthinkable. It was so unthinkable that it had to be some mistake, and he would prove that mistake to her—just as soon as he got her away from Drocell for one-tenth of a second.

Because, of course, one couldn't go around making moves on women when they were clearly in the company of other men. That did absolutely nothing to endear oneself to the lady in question—you had to get the lady alone first, and then show her how wonderful you are.

So Sebastian tried to get her alone with him. He attempted to accomplish this by giving her a whole bunch of random chores and specifying that they were for one person only—i.e., no Drocells allowed. And then, once she had gone off to do that chore, he waited for a few minutes and then he would go around the house to where she just "happened" to be, and he would just be "conveniently" there, and so he would offer her his help, because he was there by pure "accident," and then he would be able to wow her, thus permanently winning her and awing her to the point where she would only have eyes for him, and not have any time for some nightmarish living doll.

And it would have been foolproof if the servants had been competent.

And if the young Master had been less brattish.

And if Drocell had been stabbed with a rusty pitchfork and had fallen off a cliff and had gotten devoured by rabid alligators.

Because every time he tried to implement his beautiful plan, something always distracted him from getting to Eleanora punctually, so that by the time he was able to finally go to where she was, Drocell had always beaten him to the punch and was already helping Eleanora—that, or she had already finished and was free to wander around with Drocell some more.

Drocell had been at Phantomhive for some time before Ciel had finally been able to track down the Earl of Mandalay.

"He's in a sanitarium in the country," Ciel told Sebastian. "It's a bit out-of-the-way; plus he's been gone for so long. That's what took us so long to find him."

"So now he can leave?" Sebastian asked, "he" meaning, of course, the dratted nemesis, Drocell.

"No, first I have to write a letter to the sanitarium and ask if we could arrange a visit," Ciel sighed. "And then we have to wait for a reply, and if we get approved, then we get rid of him."

"Why did it have to be him?" Sebastian asked under his breath.

Ciel sighed and turned around. They were in his study, but Sebastian had gone to the window and was staring out of it at Drocell and Eleanora, who were walking arm-in-arm and laughing. Then Drocell put his arm around Eleanora's waist and pulled her a bit closer to him and she smiled and didn't push him away.

Sebastian had been breathing in a very hot and heavy manner, to the point where he had fogged up the window. He looked a bit like a bull.

"Why him?" he asked again. "Why did it have to be him?"

Ciel rolled his eyes at this. Sebastian had gotten into the habit of asking this question five times a day per person, and he was sick of hearing it. He apparently didn't like Ciel's previous answers, which included: he's nicer than you; he's more respectful than you; he's handsomer than you; he's politer than you; he knows how to actually treat a lady right and Eleanora just likes him better than you.

"I don't know; maybe it's because of his hair color."

Sebastian scoffed at this.

"My Lord, that's ridiculous.

"María," he thought as he left the room, "that's brilliant!"

"No, it's not," he told himself as he made dinner. "It's preposterous."

"No, it's genius! Why didn't I think of it before?"

"Eleanora isn't so base as to love someone for their hair color."

"Why not? She's a woman, and woman care about silly things like that."

"But I'm a man, and I don't care for silly things like that."

"IT'S BECAUSE OF HIS HAIR COLOR. It HAS to be!"

Yes, women do care about silly things like hair color, it's true. But men take that silliness to a whole new level.

And Sebastian was a man first, and a demon second.

The next day, he had gone shopping with Eleanora—and Drocell, but only because he insisted on tagging along and it would have looked too obvious if Sebastian had said "like HEAVEN you're coming with us!" Above all else, Eleanora must never know that he was jealous. She would immediately lose respect for him if she ever found out. And he was pretty pleased with himself that he had been able to keep it a secret for so long.

He had been lagging behind the chatting Eleanora and Drocell—kind of like a third wheel—when his eye fell upon a stall selling various hair dyes.

"I'm just looking," he assured the woman selling the product, and he picked up a box—GUARANTEED TO MAKE YOUR HAIR A BEAUTIFUL ROSE RED, or so it claimed.

But this was ludicrous. He didn't want to dye his hair. He liked his hair color—black was an excellent shade for simply everything. And besides, what if he didn't look good as a redhead? He didn't even like redheads. He didn't know if Eleanora liked redheads or not…What was he even doing, looking at this stuff? Just drop the box and walk away. If a woman wanted you to change for her, she clearly wasn't worth your time. But then again, Eleanora hadn't said that she wanted him to change for her—he was changing for her because he wanted to, not because she had requested it. And maybe she would be blown away by the gesture—so thoughtful, so romantic!—that she would fall in love with him immediately. It was worth a shot, anyway.

No. No it wasn't. He was not going to dye his hair. Only fops like Drocell did that, and he was a gentleman. He set the box down and prepared to walk away.

Right in time to see Drocell buy Eleanora some fancy little trinket, and right in time to see her gasp in joy and stretch up and kiss his cheek.

Sebastian immediately turned around and plunked some money onto the table.

"Keep the change," he said and pocketed the hair dye, his face burning up. He would try it tonight—try it immediately after everyone had gone to sleep.

"Only," he thought as they went back to Phantomhive, "only I won't dye my hair completely red. I have more self-control than to do that. I'll just dye it a little bit—just to get a slightly red sheen. I won't go completely overboard…It'll be fine. It'll be great."

He smirked to himself as he watched Drocell help Eleanora up into a cab.

"Just wait, you horrible little mutant puppet—I'll win this war yet."

He was so happy that he only "accidentally" kicked Drocell a little bit in the cab when he saw him smelling Eleanora's hair.