BPOTWC Chapter 35

Quentin looked with discomfort at the two wailing women before accepting the letter Maximilian held out.

"Yes, Your Grace."

The Duke drew out another envelope and handed it to him as well. On its front, written in Brielle's own hand, were the words To my dear mother.

"See that this reaches Mrs. Woods."

"Ah…… that would be the Duchess's mother, you mean?"

"Yes. Whatever manner of woman she is, you are to show her the utmost courtesy."

"'Oh, Your Grace, honestly—goes without saying, don't it."

Quentin tucked Brielle's letter into his coat as well, grinning broadly.

"They say a daughter always takes after her mother. I imagine Mrs. Woods must be just as beautiful and graceful as our own Snowflower Queen. Wouldn't you say so too, m'lord, eh?"

"……I suppose so."

Maximilian answered somehow awkwardly and slyly turned his gaze aside.

"Your Grace, don't tell me you're actually embarrassed?!"

He was not.

He absolutely was not, and yet Maximilian, like a man caught at the very heart of the matter, could produce no answer at all.

"Lads, come look at this, would you?! Our Duke's gone red as a—augh! Don't look at me like that, I beg you! You'll take years off my life, I—ah, never mind."

Quentin spotted, some way off, the Duchess and Clarisse sweeping snow together, and quickly shut his mouth.

"Enough of that. Get moving."

"Aah, right you are. We'll see you in the capital, then."

"Indeed."

The waiting soldiers pushed Asella and Betsy together into a single carriage.

Quentin, riding in the lead carriage, gave the signal, and the procession set off toward the Count's estate.

Clarisse watched this from one side of the garden, broom in hand.

'Oh, thank goodness.'

When she'd found out the Duchess was lying to the Duke—she'd worried. Worried dark clouds might come rolling over all of Sheridan.

'But it was all right, though. Because the Duke and the Duchess—they really do love each other.'

And Clarisse felt deeply grateful, too, toward the inner wall, who had been watching over them all this while.

''Such a relief, that the inner wall told me.'

Clarisse decided she ought to listen even more closely to what the inner wall told her from now on.

If only to repay the Duke and Duchess for their kindness.

'No—it isn't only the two of them I'm grateful to.'

There were so many others in this house, besides them, who worked hard for Clarisse's sake.

Rosalie and Sir Benson, always watching over her close by. The cook, who made such good food. The gardener, who showed her some new tree or plant every time she played outside. Even—even the servant who brought the firewood……

Clarisse wanted to repay every single one of them.

Even if, being a prisoner, there wasn't much of anything grand she could do.

"Time for your outdoor activity?"

Maximilian soon approached from where she stood.

"Good afternoon, Your Grace!"

Clarisse offered a proper greeting at once.

"I'm learning to sweep snow. They say all the children in Sheridan need to know how."

Out of courtesy to the Duke, Clarisse tried to take off the hat covering her ears.

But he instead pulled the ribbon tied to the hat, fastening it more firmly in place. The fur trim at its edges wrapped around her cheeks, and she felt warmer still.

"You mustn't catch cold."

Clarisse fiddled with the knot of the ribbon and answered gamely.

"I won't get sick at all, I promise."

"Good."

Maximilian glanced briefly past her shoulder.

Brielle was standing there, and Clarisse decided it might be best if she quietly stepped away for a while.

"So, um—I found a really, really long branch over there. Could I go pick it up? Just…… by myself, I mean!"

Clarisse put particular emphasis on the word alone. If she didn't, she worried the kind Duchess might follow after her.

"Yes—you did say you've been recording the length and shape of the branches you find each day, didn't you."

"Yes! Maybe I'll find the very longest one of all!"

"You mustn't leave the garden grounds."

"Of course. Thank you for allowing it."

Clarisse bowed to the two of them and turned to run off at once.

Some distance away, she looked back at the two of them standing side by side……

Maximilian happened to be wearing a hat, and Brielle, a ribbon in her hair.

"Just like that snowman, after all."

Thinking this, Clarisse trotted off happily toward the outer wall.

With Clarisse gone and the two of them suddenly left alone, an awkward silence settled between them.

"Ah, um."

Perhaps the silence had grown unbearable, for Brielle spoke up first.

"I asked the old gardener to teach her how to sweep snow. Clarisse had said she wanted to learn."

That she'd chosen a good teacher was plain enough just from the tidy, cleared drifts of snow.

"The old gardener's seemed rather low in spirits lately, but I think teaching Clarisse today may have lifted his mood a little."

"I'm glad to hear it. It may be, I suppose, because it's near the fifth anniversary of his wife's passing. Hm. And…… well."

Maximilian cleared his throat needlessly and changed the subject.

"Did you have any final words for… that woman?"

"For the young lady, do you mean?"

At that unchanged honorific—'young lady,' still—Maximilian felt a flicker of discomfort, though he let none of it show as he answered. "I heard you were mistreated by her for a long while."

"That…… is true, I suppose."

Brielle readjusted her grip on the broom she was holding and only now looked properly at Maximilian.

"But all that while, I too was receiving help toward my mother's medical costs. I didn't want to be the one to come forward and boast, simply because circumstances had changed a little."

"That is a kindness of spirit worthy of respect."

It had been a sincere compliment, but she only smiled faintly and shook her head.

"If you knew my true feelings, Your Grace, you wouldn't say such a thing."

"Your true feelings?"

"As for me, Your Grace——."

She paused a moment and drew a deep breath.

"I only realized—pretending not to know, letting her see I was doing well… that would torment her more than anything else could."

"……."

"So rather than respect, shouldn't I be condemned for such a wicked heart?"

At the question, put to him with her lips rounded in earnest inquiry, Maximilian looked slightly aside.

Some distance off, Clarisse came into view, straining and grunting as she lifted a long branch.

"……I."

He gave his answer with his gaze fixed on the child.

"I think your way of doing things is admirable."

At last Clarisse raised the branch, longer than her own leg, high above her head.

The delighted child bounced up and down on her toes.

"Miss Brielle."

He spoke her name carefully, and she started, her answer coming out startled.

"Y-yes?"

"I received word yesterday from the central hospital in the capital. A room has been prepared for Mrs. Woods."

The letter the Duke had sent to the Count's household had also stipulated the treatment Brielle's adoptive mother, Mrs. Woods, was to receive.

That she was now to be treated as "the Duchess's mother," and would receive care at a hospital in the capital.

"Thank you so much. I don't know how I'll ever repay this kindness."

"Not at all. We shall be traveling to the capital soon ourselves, so you'll be able to see her before long."

In truth, Maximilian had also considered bringing Mrs. Woods to Sheridan itself.

But this was too harsh a climate for a patient from another region to endure.

'……Besides.'

He glanced briefly at Brielle.

'It would only come to this—using her mother as a pretext to keep her tethered here.'

That would be little different from the very atrocities Count Darlington himself had committed.

This whole matter had freed Brielle from a long-standing suffering. But it did not change the fact that she had been made to accept a marriage she had never wanted.

'Someday, I would have to let her go.'

He made himself repeat it.

That a thing he'd always been able to think without any trouble at all should now feel so strangely hard to bear——

"Waaah!"

Into the silence between the two of them flew Clarisse's clear voice.

She seemed to have found something in the spot she'd uncovered after moving the long branch. The child set her branch down carefully beside her and picked something up off the ground.

"Grandfather! I found a treasure in the garden!"

And she waved both arms wildly toward the gardener, sweeping snow some distance away.

A treasure, of all things?

The Duke regarded the child with a puzzled look. He had not known there was anything resembling treasure buried in his garden.

Clarisse lifted the object she'd picked up high into the air.

"Ta-da! A cute little thimble!"

Over a mere thimble, "treasure"……?

Maximilian's confusion was soon resolved.

At the word thimble, the gardener flung down the broom he was holding and came running, snatching it up at once. Truly as though handling a treasure, with the greatest of care.

"Good heavens! I thought I'd never find it again!"

He brushed the dirt from the thimble, carefully, so carefully, and clutched it to his chest.

"Thank you. Thank you so much."

"Hehe."

"But how in the world did you find it? No matter how I searched, it never turned up, and here I've been sighing at that wall every day……"

"Um, I'm not really sure either. But I'm happy I found your treasure. You won't sigh at the wall anymore, will you?"

"Of course not!"

"That's good. Oof!"

Clarisse lifted the long branch again, letting out a laugh of effort.

The Duke, watching this quietly, recalled what Brielle had said to him a little while before.

'Clarisse had asked, of her own accord, to learn snow-sweeping from the gardener, hadn't she……?'

And "by chance," she had found the man's wife's lost thimble, calling it a "treasure" and returning it to him?