TMWDS Chapter 12

'Well, I did have a past of listening rather closely to that kind of talk myself, once.'

Yvonne's habit of mocking her appearance had a fairly long history.

Ever since hitting adolescence, Yvonne had made a habit of tagging Ionna with names like ugly, monster, skeleton, and mocking her with them.

Thanks to that, right up through her social debut season—when she'd received dance requests from no small number of men—Ionna had genuinely believed her own face to be hideous.

After that particular season, Yvonne's insults had shifted to "a vulgar bitch, just like her mother"—which was, of course, no improvement at all.

Bracing a hand against the wall, Ionna murmured, as though soothing her.

"Don't worry, Yvonne. If the daughter starts slurring her words same as the son, even the Count won't sit still for that. I've got that much sense, at least."

Yvonne ground her teeth in indignation, but the strength seemed to have gone out of her legs, and she couldn't manage to stand—only her toes twitched helplessly against the floor.

Just then the sound of a door came from behind, as though Marsha had stepped back out into the hallway.

Ionna turned away from Yvonne without any lingering attachment.

Only then did Yvonne's maid hurry over and help her mistress up.

Half-risen, Yvonne, seemingly out of temper, shoved her own maid aside and fumed.

"You ignorant, vulgar thing! The likes of you daring to yap such insolence at me?"

Ionna ignored Yvonne's cursing and headed for the lower floor.

At that, Yvonne rushed to the top of the stairs and grabbed the railing.

"Wait! I said wait!"

When Ionna still didn't stop, Yvonne's eyes squeezed shut.

Yvonne screamed as though wringing the words out of herself. Her voice was like thunder.

"You ruined our whole family!"

"…….."

"And what did you ever do right, that you get to walk around this house with your head held so high—when you couldn't even bring yourself to beg our forgiveness!"

After that scream, loud enough to shake the entire house, swept past, silence settled thick over everything.

Ionna, somewhere along the way, had stopped walking and was looking back up at Yvonne over the banister.

Yvonne bit her lip and spat out, sharp:

"Don't forget. Because of you, we didn't even get to see Mother's last moments."

It was a subject Yvonne liked to reach for whenever she wanted to lay her grievance at Ionna's feet.

Watching Yvonne's hand tremble where it gripped the railing, Ionna found herself, of all things, growing tired of it.

Tired of having to go through this over and over again, and of having to chew back over the reason for it each time.

The person the late Countess Modrov had called for in her final moments, five years ago, had been—just as Yvonne said—neither her husband nor her own children.

It had been the cursed bastard her husband had brought into the house so long ago.

That it had been Ionna, of all people, and no one else, who'd stood by their mother's deathbed was something Nils and Yvonne had raged over for a very long time.

Yvonne had disliked Ionna from the start regardless, but from that day on, her old resentment had simply gained itself a more convincing justification.

Every time Yvonne brought up their mother's death, Ionna found herself thinking. Might it have been better, after all, to simply tell them the Countess's final words?

But after mulling it over, what she arrived at was, in the end, always the same conclusion.

"It's a shame. I'm the only one who remembers her final words."

Ionna answered, pulling her hat low, the reply almost passing indifferently. Then she went on down the stairs.

Fortunately or not, no footsteps followed after her.

"……Ha, ha. I imagine our youngest got a bit jealous, hearing that Ionna had made a match with a man as young and fine as yourself, Your Grace. She's usually a well-behaved child—it's just, well, ha……"

Even the Count himself seemed to know how flimsy an excuse it was, judging by the way his voice trailed off, powerless.

That last laugh had come out closer to a sigh.

Studying the man's face, gone the color of dirt entirely, Leroy found himself privately impressed.

'So I hadn't misheard, after all.'

He hadn't expected the Imperial family to introduce him to a properly functioning household, but this was beyond even his imagination.

It wasn't every day, after all, that a man arrived to formally meet the woman he was to marry, only to run headlong into a family feud instead.

He hadn't caught every word of the exchange, but the handful of phrases that had reached his ears were enough on their own to leave a considerable impression on Leroy.

'You ignorant, vulgar thing!'

'You ruined our whole family!'

'What did you ever do right…… that you get to walk around with your head held so high. When you couldn't even…… forgiveness!'

Whatever the case, these were not words that could pass between family members on good terms.

Should he count it a small mercy, at least, that it hadn't been his intended's voice?

Still—he couldn't exactly say he was pleased to be hearing that sort of abuse hurled at someone, one-sidedly, regardless.

"I see."

Leroy replied shortly.

He had no wish to say something he didn't mean, just to rescue the man in front of him from his awkward spot.

At Leroy's cold manner, Count Modrov began breaking into a cold sweat.

Perhaps, from the other man's side, this whole situation felt rather unfair.

He surely hadn't anticipated that his guest, on top of not observing the courtesy of arriving on time, would show up a full ten minutes early.

Not that Leroy was entirely without an excuse of his own, mind.

"You might as well have gone in and waited inside."

"It hardly seemed proper manners to arrive early on my own whim and catch a household still unprepared for guests."

"If they knew the guest's carriage had just been circling the neighborhood, they'd be far more startled by that, I'd think. Is that the more courteous option?"

"If the other party doesn't know, then of course it is."

That was how he'd managed to put down Yonas's complaining, though it wasn't as though Leroy himself stood on particularly solid ground.

Arriving a full hour early and loitering around the neighborhood was excessive by whatever nation's standard of etiquette one measured it against.

Watching the scenery repeat past the window, Leroy had, in the end, admitted to himself that he'd been looking forward to today's meeting rather more than he cared to acknowledge.

In the end, he'd decided—for Yonas's sake, who kept complaining of back pain, or perhaps using that as his excuse—to commit the breach of arriving a full ten minutes early.

Thanks to that, he'd also come to learn something of the Count's household and its inner workings, which he supposed counted as a small gain, if a gain at all.

"But more to the point, Your Grace—rather than standing about here, why don't we head to the parlor. Make yourselves comfortable, and I'll go and fetch my daughter……"

"That shouldn't be necessary. It looks as though she's already on her way down."

Leroy cut off Count Modrov's suggestion and looked up toward the top of the stairs.

Just then, the sound of heels was drawing closer from the floor above.

The instant the woman rounded the landing and came into view, Leroy froze, reflexively.

Was it the change in her attire? An entirely different impression of a woman stood before him than the one he'd crossed paths with a few days ago in the palace corridor.

'If the man standing here were some fickle-arsed womanizer, he'd probably have proposed on the spot.'

Entertaining the ridiculous notion, Leroy swiftly gathered his composure back together.

It wasn't so absurd a reaction, either—the woman was, without question, striking enough to provoke exactly that.

She'd caught the eye even in a plain uniform; it was only natural she'd draw attention when properly done up.

Looking at her full lower lip, a shade that matched the color of her eyes exactly, Leroy deliberately let his gaze slide away soon after. He couldn't deny that he'd been giving a lady a look bordering on impropriety.

He wasn't the only one who'd noticed the other's presence—the woman coming down into the entrance hall wore a flicker of the same startlement on her own face.

Realizing her guest had arrived earlier than expected, the woman glanced reflexively up toward the second floor. She seemed conscious of the quarrel that had just taken place.

But the hesitation lasted only a moment; soon she came toward them with an unwavering stride.

Baron Modrov welcomed his adopted daughter with an exaggerated show of warmth.

"Ionna. I was just about to send someone up for you, and here you are already. His Grace has only just arrived."

"Good day, Duke Leroy. My apologies for the delay in greeting you. If you'd sent word ahead, I would have come down sooner."

"I ought to apologize myself, for arriving so impatiently early. I found myself looking forward to today's meeting rather more than I expected."

Stepping forward naturally after Baron Modrov, Leroy took Ionna's hand.

He pressed a light kiss to the back of it, and when he lifted his head, her smiling face came into view.

It was an expression that seemed to know full well the courtesy he'd just offered hadn't been entirely sincere.

He hadn't expected her to blush the way most ladies did, but even so, this reaction was rather unexpected.

"……I've been counting the days until I might see you again myself."

She answered slowly, in a composed voice.

Between her faintly lowered lashes, her red eyes carried a flicker of something that looked, unmistakably, like genuine gladness.

She really was a strange woman.

Especially in that the empty pleasantry she offered looked, for all the world, sincere.