BPOTWC Chapter 33

"My lady!"

Brielle grabbed her arm again, but Asella wrenched herself free with a violent twist.

"Let go of me! I'll tell His Grace everything, every bit of it. You think I'll let you go on living fat and easy while I—?!"

"Wait, please, my lady! My lady!"

At Brielle's desperate call, Asella smirked.

"What, still trying to con me too? Have you no conscience at all?"

"That's not—"

"You're a maid's daughter—no, not even that! Not even her real one! A beggar's whelp dumped in the woods, and you play the lady! You think His Grace would keep you in this position if he knew?"

Unable to hold back her fury any longer, she hauled one hand up high, ready to strike.

At that instant, Brielle, eyes squeezed shut, felt someone step in front of her.

"...?"

When Brielle opened her eyes, Maximilian was standing there. His jaw was set hard.

"Your... Grace."

Brielle called out to him in a trembling voice.

But then, wondering whether she even had the right to address him at all, she squeezed her eyes shut again and turned her face away.

'It's... over.'

She heard him let out a low sigh. He must be furious—naturally, given the circumstances.

"Your Grace! You may not have known until now, but that woman is—!"

Behind him, Asella began tattling in an oddly delighted voice.

Brielle bit her lip.

'At the very least... I didn't want it to come out like this.'

To have the truth revealed through someone else's mouth, and through Asella making such a spectacle of it, no less.

A wave of shame washed over her, and Brielle bowed her head even lower.

"I know."

"Of course you didn't—wait, what did you say?"

"I've already known that my wife isn't 'Asella Darlington.'"

"What...?"

Asella wasn't the only one caught off guard. Brielle's mind, too, went briefly blank.

Known—since when? How?

"From the very first."

Saying this, Maximilian turned to face Asella.

"I knew from the very moment I first saw her."

"Y-you're lying! Then why did you...!"

He offered no answer to the question of why he'd gone through with the marriage anyway.

Instead, he simply turned toward Benson, who had come up beside him, and gave an order.

"Take the criminal away. She threatened the Duchess."

"Yes, sir."

Benson took hold of Asella's arm at once, and she pleaded with Maximilian, her face stricken with panic.

"Y-Your Grace! That woman is the fraud! I'm your real wife! You can't do this to me!"

Even at that desperate plea, Maximilian's tone remained as calm as ever.

"What you said a moment ago—that you'd have someone killed—that can be prosecuted as a criminal threat."

"No, that's not—I didn't mean I'd kill her, I meant—!"

"She is someone who loves her mother more than anyone else in this world. That is more than enough to constitute the crime. Take her away now."

Even as Benson dragged her off, Asella kept shouting.

That woman's the fraud. Everyone's being fooled—she's nothing but a maid. I'm the real Duchess.

But no one responded to any of it.

Brielle watched Asella being dragged away, then quietly turned to look at Maximilian's back.

He stood there, unmoving.

Brielle was quite certain she must be a fool.

After what had just happened, there had been any number of things she should have said to Maximilian.

Apology and gratitude, of course, and beyond that, the whole truth she'd kept hidden until now.

And yet the only thing she'd managed to get out was:

"A woman with child, prisoner or not, must be given a room with a hearth."

Nothing but worry for Asella's baby.

She supposed it was the sort of thing that needed saying, but surely there had been something better than that.

"...I see."

That her words had landed rather poorly was plain enough from the slight strain on Maximilian's face.

"If only she weren't with child..."

"...What?"

"...Never mind. I'll see that she's treated fairly. In accordance with the law."

Why did he look as though he regretted something? Surely that was only her imagination.

"...And."

She lifted a hand near her heart and drew a shaking breath.

"I owe you an apology, Your Grace."

Brielle bowed deeply at the waist.

"What she said wasn't wrong in the least. I've held this seat through false pretenses all this while, and claimed privileges that were never mine to claim."

"....."

"I am..."

Brielle bit her lip for a moment. It was mortifying beyond words, having to say this to the man she loved.

"...a fraud."

"Did you not hear me?"

"What?"

At his question, Brielle finally lifted her head.

"I was not deceived."

"B-but..."

"From the very first."

"That can't be. If you'd known, how could you possibly have..."

"Have I ever, even once, called you 'Asella'?"

"....."

He hadn't.

But she'd assumed that was only because their relationship was so distant that he simply never used her name at all...

"Th-that may be, but if I'm not the real bride under a marriage overseen by His Majesty, that becomes a problem."

Brielle tried desperately to prove her own guilt. Somehow it felt as though Maximilian were defending her.

"His Majesty knows as well."

"What?!"

"The royal court is not so easily deceived."

"Then how could...?"

"I gave my word that I would carry it through."

"Why...—why would you?"

He paused, considering, and looked away for a moment.

Brielle waited anxiously, but the answer that finally came, after a long while, was only:

"...I don't quite know myself."

Even he seemed a little troubled by his own vague answer.

"Did you pity me?"

"That's not it."

"Or... would anyone have done?"

Brielle knew that Maximilian's former fiancée had married King Lysander to become Queen.

Perhaps the wound from her betrayal had run deep enough that he no longer cared who he married.

Anyone would have done.

"That anyone would have done...—that was never true."

But Maximilian denied this at once.

"You are not a fraud."

"....."

"I was never deceived to begin with. If anything, it is I who deceived you, and I who ought to ask your forgiveness."

Brielle gazed at his handsome face for a long moment before finally managing to speak.

"...This doesn't make any sense. None of it."

Her voice trembled.

Brielle felt a deep pang of conscience at the realization that she was, in fact, relieved.

Her ungrateful heart raced without permission, swelling with hope about Maximilian that she had no right to feel.

That perhaps she might be allowed to remain by his side a little while longer, or something along those lines...

'No—stop. Not something like me...'

Maximilian had been a prince.

Not as a figure of speech—he was, truly, of royal blood. That a man so noble should keep a mere maid at his side as his wife.

Brielle's very existence would become a stain upon him.

'And yet.'

At his words—that she hadn't been deceived, that it had never been a matter of anyone doing—Brielle hated herself for the strange hope taking root inside her.

"You mustn't cry."

Only when he said this quietly did Brielle realize tears had gathered at the corners of her eyes.

"I—I'm sorry. How dare I."

Brielle quickly wiped at her eyes with her sleeve.

"I wasn't trying to earn your pity. That was never my intention, not in the slightest..."

Brielle hurried to add this explanation, afraid he might misread the meaning of her tears. That was truly not what this was.

If anything, she would have preferred he go on being as strict with her as usual.

"I don't think that at all. I only..."

Through her blurred vision, he looked, somehow, at a loss.

"I didn't quite know what to call you to comfort you. That was all that troubled me."

"...What?"

Maximilian drew a handkerchief from within his coat and held it out to her.

"I wanted to ask your name."

And then he let his gaze drop elsewhere.

"I have... this whole time."

Maximilian had been the former king's eldest son.

Naturally, he had been raised and educated as one destined to become king himself one day.

But when his mother died suddenly and Amelda, the king's second wife, became Queen, the entire landscape shifted at once.

Before long, the old king's death followed, and Amelda, drawing on the influence of her wealthy family, arranged for her son Lysander to inherit the throne.

Maximilian, having no maternal family of any real standing to speak of, was pushed aside from the position of heir without recourse.

To make matters worse, when his fiancée announced her engagement to Lysander, he lost, in truth, everything.

His fiancée, from a house of long and distinguished lineage, had been the last remaining hope left to him.

And yet Maximilian showed no resentment toward the fiancée who had unilaterally broken off their engagement, nor any hatred toward his brother.

He went so far as to attend their wedding himself and offer his congratulations in person.

That composure led people to wonder whether he might be harboring some other hope of his own.

Such rumors only deepened Dowager Queen Amelda's unease.

Her son, having finally become king, could not be allowed to lose his seat now.

She turned her mind to how she might bring Maximilian even lower.

Appointing him lord of the harsh northern castle of Sheridan had been the first step.

Beyond that, Amelda had pressed her son into arranging a marriage for Maximilian with the powerless, resourceless Count of Darlington's house.

Maximilian had no opportunity to respond to this marriage in any way at all. It had been carried out by royal decree.

The couple, forced into marriage, met for the first time in Sheridan and held a modest ceremony there at once.