BPOTWC Chapter 34

To everyone's surprise, Lysander—Maximilian's own brother—attended the ceremony.

He'd dragged himself all the way to Sheridan though the Dowager Queen begged him not to—simply because he'd dug in his heels and wouldn't be told otherwise.

"Funny. These small-time nobles think a royal command's some kind of game, do they?"

Lysander had recognized at a glance that the bride had been switched, and after the ceremony he had gone to Maximilian's study to spit out his fury.

This had been possible only because he had, some time before, had an aide procure a portrait of Asella Darlington and studied it closely.

"Well, aren't they clever—dug up some woman who looks passably alike."

"Similar, is she?"

"Some bastard the Count got on the side, no doubt. That elegant silver hair—not exactly common stock among commoners……."

Lysander stretched and threw both legs up over the long sofa.

"Seems the King's word has gotten to be a fair joke around here. Well—that won't do. I'll have to see they get properly paid back for it."

To have dared deceive the royal family—under ordinary circumstances, the Count ought to have forfeited his honor at the very least, and could well have been put to death.

"What would you like to do about it, brother?"

At his question, Maximilian fell briefly into thought.

A "counterfeit" bride, sent to a man who always pursued what was right. The correct answer, in truth, was already decided.

But Maximilian could not bring himself to say the Count should be punished.

This marriage had never been particularly desirable to begin with.

And considering Dowager Queen Amelda's true aim—to narrow Maximilian's standing—the existence of a false bride was, if anything, rather helpful.

Maximilian did not wish to draw any further wariness from the Dowager Queen than he already had.

"If Your Majesty permits it, I have no objection to leaving things as they are."

"……What?"

Had his answer come as a surprise? Lysander sat up and asked again.

"A prince like you, marrying that…… that sort of woman?!"

"Strictly speaking, the ceremony has already taken place."

"Ha!"

Lysander looked at Maximilian with eyes that plainly could not understand him.

"Has my own brother forgotten how to rage?! Or does His Most Noble, Purebred Highness have himself some particular taste for playing kind to mongrels?!"

Maximilian kept his silence.

Fortunately, Lysander did not press him further.

"……Do as you like."

"Thank you."

And with that, Lysander didn't linger in Sheridan another moment—he left at once, as if he'd simply had his fill of Maximilian's wishy-washy non-answers.

That was how the marriage began, and in it, Maximilian resolved not to trouble himself much over his bride, this "false Asella."

Life here would be little better than a prison to her—why should he go out of his way to add to that suffering?

Despite his indifference, she seemed to be putting down roots, after a fashion, in this cold land.

She managed the household staff well and quickly, and maintained a good reputation among the knights besides.

Maximilian thought that whatever her false rank, she was without doubt a genuinely good person.

And so he had resolved that he would, someday, without fail, set her free.

Not spending their nights together was an extension of that same thought.

If it could be testified that they had never shared a bed, this marriage could be made to have never existed at all.

That way, someday, she too could start fresh with a good man.

This had not changed. Not until now.

……Or so he'd thought——

Maximilian found himself recalling Clarisse, who had been sitting across from him, drawing.

The child had drawn his face on the left side of a white sheet of paper, then held it out to him, saying, "I'm all done."

He looked back and forth between the left side, crammed packed full with the drawing, and the comparatively bare right, and felt a certain worry take hold.

He recalled having once heard that children with poor eyesight tended to crowd their drawings onto one side like this.

He raised the question carefully.

"What was your intention in filling only one side of the page?"

"I'm so glad you noticed."

Seeing Clarisse answer with a bright smile, Maximilian was relieved to find it had, apparently, been a deliberate composition.

"This side, here."

The child rubbed her palm over the blank white space, smiling as if shy.

"That's the Duchess's seat."

"……."

"You and the Duchess like each other, don't you?"

Maximilian thought about it for a moment, but soon nodded.

Recalling their conversation from the dinner not long ago, there was really no other answer he could give.

"So I wanted to draw you two side by side. The place beside the Duke belongs to the Duchess."

"Is that so."

"And of course, the place beside the Duchess is always the Duke's, for the rest of her life."

No—that would not be so.

Maximilian thought this reflexively, and yet, oddly enough, Clarisse's words did not sit uncomfortably with him at all.

If anything……

They were pleasant to hear.

That she would exist at his side for the rest of her life…… what a thing to say, straight out of some novel.

How strange a thing, was it not?

To harbor such a…… such a vile possessiveness, toward someone he would have to send away.

'Possess…… ive desire.'

Maximilian repeated the name of the feeling that had just occurred to him—with distaste.

Only now did he grasp one fact.

Why it was that she found him so difficult, so uncomfortable, to be near. She, being clever, must have sensed that something so vile had taken root in his heart. No one, after all, could smile at a man who dared harbor such a filthy urge to possess another human being.

And so Maximilian thought that, somehow, he must not let this unworthy feeling of his show to her.

……That really had been his intention.

——Or so he meant it to be.

'You think your fake mother's got any hope of keeping her neck after this? I'll write to my father and have him kill her right this instant!'

'You're the daughter of a maid…… no, not even that, are you? A beggar's whelp dumped in the woods, that's all you are—and you think the Duke would keep you here once he learns it?'

At the very moment this intruder—suspicious beyond all match to begin with—laid her true intentions bare, right down to the floor—

He very nearly forgot his gentlemanly manners and seized her by the hair.

That he did not was owing to the gaze of his wife, who, even in a moment such as this, looked upon that rude woman with something like pity. What was there to pity in a person like that, that she should look at her so sorrowfully?

Fortunately, passing judgment on the unwelcome guest proved no great difficulty. This marriage had, from the start, been sanctioned by the King himself—so there wasn't the slightest thing to feel scruple over, whatever the woman said.

His true difficulty arose only after the matter was over.

"……Or would anyone have done, for you?"

He had no idea what to say to Brielle's question.

To speak honestly, she was right. It hadn't mattered who it was. So long as Dowager Queen Amelda set aside her suspicions of Maximilian himself and stopped hounding him over it……

But he could not bring himself to say so to the lovely woman looking at him.

Above all, he did not want to see her disappointed, in tears.

"It was never…… that anyone would have done."

The words that shot out of him were a perfect lie. He had not known he was so skilled at lying. At this rate, wasn't he the "fraud," if anything?

No—truly, he was.

Had he not, knowing full well she was concealing her rank, kept his own silence about it for a very long time?

"There was never any deception to begin with. If anything, it is I who ought to beg your forgiveness—for deceiving you."

He offered his apology for exactly that.

At once, she began to cry.

There seemed to be some deep "relief" mixed into that crying, and Maximilian, without quite meaning to, found himself harboring a certain hope.

Perhaps…… perhaps she hadn't hated her life in Sheridan quite so much, after all?

Once that thought arose, a question he had kept for a very long time slipped out of him of its own accord.

"I have wanted to ask you your name."

That he could easily have found it out on his own, and had not—perhaps that was because he had wanted, above all, to hear it from her own lips.

Brielle, who had briefly buried her face in her handkerchief, lifted her head.

Her eyes, faintly reddened, looked somehow endearing, and he could not tear his gaze away from her tear-streaked face.

At last, she gave him her answer.

"Brielle."

"……."

"Brielle…… Woods. It's plain, isn't it? When the young lady gave my name earlier…… I was truly startled."

"No."

Maximilian shook his head.

"Not Brielle Woods."

"I'm sorry……?"

Brielle sniffled and lifted her head.

"Brielle…… Sheridan."

In a sudden surge of that same possessive desire, Maximilian shackled the name of this cold winter castle to hers. She, so pure of heart, seemed not to understand what a terrible possessiveness those words had come from.

Otherwise……

"It's strange, hearing my name said like that."

She could not possibly have smiled like sunlight, the way she did.

Asella was to receive the punishment she wanted least of all.

She was to be sent back to Count and Countess Darlington.

And along with her, neatly packaged, would go the ducal physician's diagnosis confirming her pregnancy.

"No! Please, Your Grace. My father will send me to a convent! Please, I beg you!"

Asella prostrated herself flat before Maximilian, heedless of how it soiled her clothes.

"There's no need to worry."

At Maximilian's calmly delivered words, Asella lifted her head cautiously, a flicker of hope taking hold.

"He won't have so much as a coin left to donate to any convent."

"……What?"

The Duke had Betsy brought up from the dungeon—the maid the Count's household had sent to watch over Brielle.

"Escort your mistress back."

"……!"

Betsy shook her head, her face gone deathly pale.

Returning to the Count's household under these circumstances meant, without question, being cast out into the dead of winter without so much as a letter of reference.

"Please, Your Grace, let me serve the Duchess here! I'll do anything. I—I don't even need wages. Please?!"

The sight of the emaciated maid, prostrate on the floor and pleading through tears, might well have moved the heart of anyone watching. But Maximilian had already heard the whole of her conduct in full.

Though it had been her duty to wait on her mistress, she'd talked down to Brielle and treated her as beneath her, whenever the mood struck.

He had heard she had once withheld meals from her over some baseless claim that she'd gained weight, and Maximilian did not wish, under any circumstances, to keep Betsy anywhere near Brielle.

He gave no response at all to Betsy's pleading, and turned instead toward Quentin, who was in charge of the transport.

"Deliver this letter to the Count. No reply is required."