COARV Chapter 15

"I've been waiting all this time specifically to escort her. So—"

"Lady Seria."

Lesche cut him off, flat and final. Then he turned to me and asked,

"Better if the lady chooses. Who will you go to the main castle with?"

I set my hand on Lesche's arm without a moment's hesitation, not Kallis's.

"I'll trouble you for it, Your Highness."

"'Trouble.'"

He seemed to smile faintly, though I had no idea why.

"A strong word, between a married couple."

"……."

At the word married, Kallis's face went stiff as lead. I didn't look at him any longer and turned away.

Knowing full well both Kallis and Lina would watch my back the whole way, I walked with everything I had, in the manner befitting a noblewoman. Only once I'd walked far enough that their gazes could no longer reach me did some of the tension finally drain out of my body.

Just then, Lesche spoke.

"Your hands are cold."

"I was outside for a long time. That must be why."

"For a long time? Linon."

Lesche called out to Linon, trailing dutifully behind us.

"Yes, Your Highness."

"Weren't you the one who came all this way with her? You could've at least taken off your jacket for her."

Does this man think I'm some kind of jacket collector…? But I couldn't help the laugh that slipped out anyway.

Linon offered his excuse, all courtesy.

"I truly did want to take off my jacket and cover Lady Seria with it. But there was a chance I'd catch a cold myself, so I had no choice, Your Highness."

"Carry two jackets from now on."

"Yes, sir."

I finally burst out laughing.

The main castle wasn't far. After being treated by a healing priest and having my arm freshly rebound, I felt considerably more refreshed, and asked Lesche,

"Your Highness, would you happen to be able to offer me a cup of tea?"

"Isn't the usual custom for the host to offer the tea?"

"It's just that my annex seems to have been occupied by certain parties."

"Want me to kick them out?"

"Marquess Haneton's one thing, but the Saint too? The priests would faint in a row. Don't do anything that'll cause trouble."

"I've never once found it particularly troublesome."

"You're joking, right?"

"Do I sound like I'm joking?"

While I was still weighing how to answer, Lesche jerked his chin toward the door.

"Let's go to my office."

The office?

I was mildly taken aback. Seria Stern had come to Berke territory for the glacier inspection nearly every winter without fail.

And Lesche had, at the very least, always indulged her with a single cup of tea on the first day. Well—of course, that had literally just meant tea and nothing else. Neither the original novel nor the fragments of memory left behind in Seria's body suggested they'd exchanged anything resembling real conversation with Lesche beyond that.

And even that much had only ever happened in the main castle's guest parlor.

This was my first time ever setting foot in Lesche's office. Seated across from him on the sofa positioned to one side, I bowed my head first.

"Your Highness."

Feeling that a simple bow wasn't quite enough, I stood to kneel properly—and failed. Lesche yanked my arm up before I could get anywhere near the floor. Having hoisted me up like a paper doll, Lesche—

"My lady, did you hit your head, by any chance?"

Was looking at me like I was some kind of lunatic.

"My… my head's fine."

"Then what exactly are you doing?"

"I wasn't quite thinking clearly, up until now…."

Kallis and Lina's secret outing, the wedding thrown into chaos. My sudden, unexpected marriage to Lesche Berke, on top of it all. With so many things hitting me at once, my head had been a mess—and it was only now that my thoughts had finally, properly caught up.

To the fact that I hadn't given Lesche a proper thanks yet.

"Thank you for saving my life. I mean it—truly, thank you."

I owed Lesche my life. Which meant Lesche Berke had now become my benefactor. Normally, in a case like this, one would say they'd repay the debt in their family's name—but unfortunately, Seria was on extremely poor terms with House Keliden.

Given that I'm already using Stern as my family name at this point.

Best to consider it a severed tie. Which meant treating the house as if it didn't exist was the wiser approach.

"Your Highness. As you know, I'm essentially estranged from my birth family, House Keliden… so instead, I'll repay Your Highness's kindness with everything I'm able to give."

"……?"

Lesche looked at me with a furrowed brow, then tugged my arm. He sat me down right beside him. Before the thought what kind of strength is this even had time to fade, Lesche asked,

"My lady."

"Yes?"

"Are you really Seria Stern?"

"…Sorry? Of course I am."

Caught off guard by the question that struck right at the heart of things, my answer still, fortunately, came out steady. As expected of a male lead—I remembered Seria and him being fairly distant, and it was strange how good he was at landing lines that hit close to home, even in jest.

Lesche scanned my face thoroughly and asked,

"Might you have swapped souls with the Saint, perhaps?"

"What… absolutely not."

That much, at least, I could say with total certainty. Lesche just stared straight into my eyes after hearing my answer, whether still turning something over in his mind or unable to shake off his suspicion entirely.

If I looked away now, it'd be like my own guilty conscience giving me away, so I held my gaze steady and stared right back at Lesche. And looking at him like that, this man really was—

Really quite handsome.

Since first being transported into Seria's body, one of the thoughts that had struck me fairly often as I adjusted was how strange it felt, seeing the characters from the novel I'd read moving around, alive, right in front of me. I'd once been unable to tear my eyes away from Seria's reflection in the mirror for a good while.

Since the female lead Lina hadn't appeared yet, the original characters I could actually meet had been limited, but even so, I'd thought the male lead, Lesche, was genuinely astonishing.

He was exactly as the novel had described him. Dark red eyes that looked like they'd drunk in blood. Cold, sharp, with a hint of upturned white showing at the edges that made his expressionless face frightening enough to bring a cold sweat to my palms.

But every other part of him, too, faithfully followed the novel's description of its male lead. A brutally good-looking man.

A blessed height close to 190, long limbs, perfect shoulders. Muscle packed tight enough to be plainly visible even through his clothes, a naturally solid profile that radiated stability. It wasn't for nothing that ladies' tongues had wagged about him even back in the days when Lesche rarely showed his face in the capital at all.

A cold sweat suddenly broke out.

The fact that this insufferably impressive male lead, destined to hold a share of high society's gossip until the day he died of old age, had staked his very first marriage on saving my life—hit me all at once, viscerally.

His first marriage…. In this entire Gleick Empire, the one and only Grand Duke's first marriage….

"I'll… do my best not to get in the way of Your Highness's future marriage prospects."

"My marriage prospects?"

"Yep."

"That's a first—a woman worrying about my marriage prospects."

I immediately started crawling and scraping.

"I don't mean anything bad by it. Of course, even if Your Highness were to marry a second, third… no, a ninth time, you'd still set the hearts of every lady ablaze."

"……?"

Lesche's brow was now furrowed all the way up his forehead.

"So you think I'm a rake."

My eyes went round.

"That's not it!"

"Isn't it, though."

"It really isn't…."

I felt sheepish. But I genuinely had never once thought of Lesche as dissolute. Whatever he looked like, in the original novel Lesche Berke had no past, and no future, of getting close to any woman besides Lina. So there was no way I actually thought he was promiscuous, so why—

"Your Highness."

Worried again that I might be offending Lesche's mood, I spoke up anyway.

"While I'm temporarily married to you, if I say I'll do my utmost for Berke territory as Stern—would that offend Your Highness's sensibilities too?"

"……."

"Does… does it offend you?"

Maybe I should've just kept my mouth shut.

Lesche gazed at me for a while before asking,

"Why do you watch my mood so closely, my lady?"

"Sorry?"

"I've never once cut the budget allotted to you. Never confined you to your quarters as punishment, either."

"……."

Lesche asked again.

"Am I frightening?"

Strictly speaking, it wasn't Lesche himself that frightened me. It was the position he held. The male lead. In this novel's formula, any villainess entangled romantically with the heroine's man got brutally killed off. That was the problem.

So I decided to just say it honestly.

"It's not that Your Highness frightens me."

"Then?"

"It's just—Your Highness holds such an elevated position, so I'm being careful, that's all."

"Careful about rank, and yet you were shouting your head off at Marquess Haneton just now."

I cleared my throat.

"I thought you were about to kill him."

"……."

I lost control of my expression, just for a moment. I had no idea exactly what expression I'd ended up making, but Lesche let out a faint laugh at it. He let go of my arm, which he'd been holding the whole time, and leaned back comfortably against the sofa.

"If the lady's willing to do her utmost for the territory as Stern, the treasury officials will be delighted."

"I'll work hard."

Just as Lesche said, Berke territory's finance officials sharpened their attention every single winter over the movements of that year's Stern.

They had no choice, given that a Stern was required to come to Berke territory, home to the glacier, every winter and assist with the inspection. It was an obligation no Stern had ever skipped. The problem was that the length of the visit was entirely up to the Stern's own discretion.

Put bluntly, if a Stern helped with the inspection for exactly one day and then cleared out entirely, there was no law that could stop her.

Which meant every noble house in Berke territory scrambled to keep the Stern happy. If the Stern demanded her bedroom be decorated entirely in gold, they had to deliver, immediately.

Of course, no Stern had ever actually demanded anything quite that extravagant. However much luxury one might indulge in, Berke territory's winter, wrapped around its glacier, was brutal. Naturally so, being a magical lake harboring a north so harsh no ordinary person could survive there.

Better, in a winter like that, to head off to the warm, glittering capital and enjoy the winter social season than to spend it inspecting glaciers in the cold.

Inevitably, Berke's winter had become the Stern's season. To keep the Stern from leaving early, the storehouses stayed packed, always, with the most valuable goods available. The same went for food. Warm, extravagant dishes that wouldn't have shamed even visiting imperial royalty appeared on the table every single day.

Solidly, food alone was good.