MB Chapter 8

【 Present 】

"Has the proposal letter been sent?"

"Yes—first thing this morning. It's been sent, but..."

But?

The unfinished sentence made the Marquess turn to his aide. Kolave Peroto wore the expression of a man deeply, privately skeptical.

"Will she actually accept?"

"She will."

She had said so herself. Willingly, without coercion.

She had seemed somewhat unwell at the time—but she hadn't been drunk, and she didn't strike him as the sort to reverse course on her own word.

Entzi Bethelgius was thinking, idly, of Goiyo Rubiette—when his fingers gave an involuntary twitch. Something unnecessary had surfaced alongside her.

He muttered under his breath.

"Bolder than I expected."

"The young lady of Rubiette? She didn't seem that way to me."

"Appearances aren't the whole of it. I only moved in to tease her a little."

He heard what he was saying. The words, half-formed, stopped themselves. But Kolave had already caught everything he needed.

"You kissed?"

"It didn't go that far."

"Just an ordinary kiss, then? Surprising—but then again, who really lives exactly as they look?"

The breezy indifference on the aide's face. The Marquess's eyebrow rose at a slow, precise angle.

Breezy. About a kiss.

"Why do you look like that? As though it were your first."

"..."

"Surely that isn't—no. Really? In the whole empire, the most striking face there is, and at twenty-four you're telling me that was your first—a face that, by rights, should have had two thousand admirers and a romantic history twice as long as mine—you have less experience than me? That is, frankly, a case of all flash and no—"

"If you'd like to keep your romantic history intact, I'd suggest stopping now."

Hup. Kolave closed his mouth. He had gotten somewhat carried away; the Marquess so rarely offered an angle of attack.

"I am simply careful," Entzi said. "What good has being as careless as you ever done anyone?"

"My romantic experience is exactly average, but... careful is a virtue. You're absolutely right, My Lord."

Kolave rolled his eyes in a way that suggested he found the sentiment barely tolerable. He was not a man gifted with tact; flattery sat on him with the grace of ill-fitting clothes. He pivoted, with characteristic bluntness, to change the subject.

"In any case, the timing was fortunate. To think she'd just broken off her engagement with Lord Alte."

"Well. Yes."

"Lord Alte escorted her to the ball that night, didn't he? It didn't look like a quarrel. Come to think of it—why did they break it off? Is the rumor true, about the stepsister? Should I look into it?"

"Don't take such an aggressive interest in other people's private affairs. It's unseemly."

She's not exactly a stranger to us, Kolave muttered under his breath, deflated. The Marquess ignored him and leaned back in his chair.

Why did Goiyo Rubiette break her engagement to Therio Alte? He didn't need to think very hard about that. He cast his mind back to the ball.

"His character is simply rotten," Entzi said.

"...Pardon?"

"Lord Alte. I saw him in person. A dilapidated locomotive, if ever I saw one. The Rubiette girl finally recognized it, a little late—so she had the good sense to have him scrapped."

"His reputation is quite decent, though. He'd have to be worse than that to deserve 'scrapped'... Though now that I think about it, if even Lord Alte's disposition doesn't satisfy you, this proposal hasn't got a chance. You're the locomotive that ought to be scrapped—no, the bomb mounted on the locomotive."

"Kolave, do they sell spare throats in the capital?"

One would think you had two necks, Kolave thought, watching the Marquess ask the question with a pleasant smile. He had not located a spare neck anywhere in the capital; the one he had was accordingly worth preserving.

"And if that young woman agreed to accept my proposal—doesn't that answer your concern? A woman with judgment could tell at a glance that I'm worth a thousand times more than some scrap heap."

"Ah. Yes..."

Whether she truly said she'd accept is still an open question, Kolave thought privately. But the exchange had yielded something useful, so he let the point go.

"In any case, since Your Lordship says she'll accept, I'll take that as settled and begin preparing the ceremony. December, as you specified."

"Yes. Oh—for the designer: Bridget would suit her better than Arlé. She's slighter than I expected."

"That's harassment, My Lord."

"My, you are determined today. Keep at it."

"That was a joke on my part!"

So was mine, the Marquess replied, indifferently, and stretched.

He caught a glimpse through the window: the sun hanging directly overhead. The sun, over Solaris. What an extravagance.

"My Lord... forgive me for asking, but—you're not proposing to this young woman because you have feelings for her, are you?"

"Don't be absurd."

"That's what I thought."

Whatever feelings he might hold for Goiyo Rubiette—at most, they would be pity. To fall for a woman he'd met for a single day—what kind of fairy tale did that sound like?

Entzi Bethelgius had never been anything close to a fairy tale. If pressed to name a genre, he would have said horror. Thriller, at a stretch.

"It's nothing of the sort. Mind your own business."

The Marquess spoke with a decisiveness slightly in excess of what the moment required.

Knock-knock. A rap at the door. Entzi gave his assent; the study door opened and someone entered. It was Vled—the man he had sent to House Rubiette with the proposal letter.

"Back early. Did you bring an answer?"

"Yes, My Lord. As you said—she accepted. The ceremony arrangements as well; all the suggestions Your Lordship proposed."

"Good Lord, she actually—"

"Naturally."

Entzi thanked Vled and waved a hand of dismissal. But Vled hesitated at the threshold instead of departing. The gray eyes narrowed.

"My Lord."

"Did Duke Rubiette attach separate conditions?"

"No, nothing of that sort. It's just—when I arrived with the letter, there was already a visitor."

A visitor? At that hour of the morning?

He ought to mention it, Vled said, in case it might affect the marriage—and, after a beat of reluctance, continued.

"Yes, My Lord. It was the Young Duke of Alte. Lord Therio Alte."

"Therio Alte. The former fiancé of the Rubiette girl, you mean."

A careful nod. Kolave watched the confirmation land. The Marquess raised two fingers to his temple.

After the scene he had made on the terrace—to show up at her door the very next morning—

A helpless exasperation rose in him at Therio Alte's sheer, relentless persistence.

"Ah, that goddamn scrap heap."

Vled and Kolave blinked, at a loss. Entzi ignored them both and lifted the long coat hanging on the wall. The black coat he favored—calibrated to be precisely, deliberately imposing—settled across his shoulders.

Where are you going, My Lord? Kolave asked, reflexively.

"I'd prefer to think you're not actually asking me that."

"...Pardon?"

"I'd rather not be made sad by the limitations of my own aide. I'll be back shortly—get the documents processed while I'm out."

Entzi Bethelgius left the mansion.

"Who is here?"

Goiyo asked again. Hoping, distantly, that her ears had simply malfunctioned.

But Annie was merciless in her confirmation.

"Lord Alte, miss. He arrived this morning and is waiting for you to wake."

"Therio knows I was at the ball last night."

"He said he'd wait as long as it takes, until you're up."

Goiyo exhaled—long and full. Under ordinary circumstances, she would never have done so in front of anyone. That she was managing not to frown at all was, at this moment, already something of an achievement.

Each day accumulated its quiet toll, a slow hemorrhage of patience—and here, before the one person whose judgment she did not have to navigate, the reserves were too depleted to perform restraint.

"Has he perhaps come to see Melishi?"

"No, miss. I understand Lady Melishi went out—she has an engagement."

"Melishi went out at this hour?"

"Yes, she did. She and the Madam—they've gone to be fitted for a dress for the engagement ceremony."

The ball was last night. The condition Goiyo had set for Therio was now fulfilled. With that chapter closed, it would be the engagement arrangements that pressed most urgently.

Still—was there such urgency as to go out at dawn? The dressmakers might not even have opened yet.

'If you were going anyway, you could have waited a little and dragged your fiancé with you.'

A useless thought. Goiyo swallowed it.

"Aren't you going to get ready, miss?"

"Ready... yes. I should."

She said it with the flat affect of someone setting out for an unpleasant errand.

Therio Alte had called her strange, these recent days—but that sentiment had now reversed entirely.

He had become strange.

She had broken the engagement. She had freed him to be with the person he wanted. Why, in the world, had he left Melishi alone and come looking for her?

She turned it over in her mind and could find no angle from which her own behavior had been exceptional. She had been tired, and begged off longer conversations—but she had, in fact, been unwell. Even last night, she'd felt the thread of a fever coming on, though it seemed to have resolved itself by morning.

"Bring me something to wear, won't you? Simple. And—if possible, something that makes me look a little unwell."

Even if she hadn't been unwell—she no longer remembered what normal had looked like, in those days when she and Therio Alte had been easy with each other. That had been too long ago, in a life that felt like someone else's.

Goiyo exhaled again, quietly, into the still room.

"Does your head feel all right?"

'Why does concern always sound like an insult coming from him.'

Goiyo gave a stiff nod.

Good, Therio said, and touched the back of his own neck, and looked at the floor. He could not quite meet her eyes. That much, at least, suggested some lingering remorse about the previous evening.

"I'm sorry about yesterday—I'd had a bit to drink. You know how I am, Goiyo. When I'm tense, I go to pieces over a glass or two. I didn't—your shoulder, it didn't bruise, did it?"

"I'm fine. Is that what you came to say?"

"That as well, but..."

He let out a long breath.

"I felt we had more to talk about."

"More to talk about. Like Melishi? Melishi's out at the moment—she's getting fitted for the engagement dress."

Would you like her address? Goiyo nearly said it. She wanted to say it, to send him on his way. But it wasn't, apparently, the right answer. Therio's expression tightened, slightly.

"That's not what I mean right now. There's more between us than just Melishi."

What else could there possibly be, between Goiyo Rubiette and Therio Alte, beyond Melishi Rubiette?

She looked at him—the man who had been her fiancé—with eyes that held nothing particular in them.

"Goiyo—did I do something wrong? At first I thought you were angry about Melishi, but it doesn't quite add up. You were the one who asked to break the engagement first, and you looked... you truly seemed unaffected."

"You find it strange that I no longer treat you with the same closeness as before?"

"...Yes."

He had been drinking last night—she hadn't caught the smell, but he must have been. He had not heard a word she said.

The absurdity of it passed through her like nausea. Goiyo made herself look at him without contempt and smoothed everything she could from her expression.

"Therio. We were friends from childhood. Then feelings changed, and we became something more. Until very recently—yes, we were engaged."

"Is it the broken engagement that's bothering you? Have I become uncomfortable for you?"

"You seem to think that when an engagement breaks, two people simply become friends again."

'How does he manage it—to arrange everything so conveniently in his own favor?'

She thought of the day Therio had first confessed his feelings for her. How she had been flustered, and then furious, and then frightened—terrified of losing what they had. How she had agonized over it.

If he had always believed, simply, that the friendship was guaranteed regardless—what had he thought was happening, on that day? Why had she been angry? What had she been afraid of?

She had thought Therio Alte's confession was brave. But looking back—it had not been courage at all. It had been the carelessness of someone who knows he has nothing to lose. A leap from a height of absolute safety.

The Therio Alte she had believed in—sensitive, considerate—where had that man gone, and who was this one, sitting across from her?

What poor judgment I've always had. She smiled to herself, faintly, bitterly, and looked at him.

"When we became lovers, the friendship had already ended, Therio."

"What?"

"I am no longer your fiancée. Not your lover. And—far longer than that—I have not been your friend."

Goiyo blinked, slowly, deliberately. Her eyes—their deep, still color—settled into a kind of finality. She had the look of someone saying goodbye.

"So, Lord Alte—I would ask that you refrain from calling on me privately from here on."