TMWDS Chapter 14

He could not tell what he had just heard.

Leroy looked at Ionna with an expression asking for an explanation, but she only stood there, waiting for his answer with a resolute look in her eyes.

It took him a long while before he could even choose his words.

“Didn't you say you had no memory of our previous meetings?”

“Yes, that's correct. Is that a problem?”

“……then I mean to say that, having seen my face only twice, there was no real opportunity for you to develop romantic feelings toward me.”

“Ah.”

Ionna made a small sound of realization, as though something had only just occurred to her. Then, with a slight frown, she added,

“I wasn't confessing romantic feelings, either.”

Leroy was, by now, growing accustomed to her throwing cold water on his more severe imaginings.

He found himself almost relieved, and waited for her next explanation.

“Duke Leroy. I understand that this marriage arrangement must feel considerably unpleasant and humiliating to you.”

That an unexpected party sympathized with his situation left him a little dazed.

Because of that, he failed to stop her before the conversation drifted somewhere entirely absurd.

“What I want to make clear, here, is this—I don't want you to receive this marriage that way.”

“I'm afraid that wish is unlikely to come true.”

Leroy cut in belatedly, his voice hardening.

He wasn't looking to hear something like well, things turned out this way, but let's try to get along from her.

“It'll be difficult. But I intend to make the effort.”

“This has nothing whatsoever to do with your effort—”

“Most people will understand this marriage as a reconciliation between House Hance and the Imperial family.”

Ionna suddenly raised her voice.

Leroy fell silent on reflex, and a soft curve appeared at the corner of her mouth.

“It looks like an amicable resolution, but in the end, it's House Hance bowing its head to the Imperial family. You've had to take on a woman of comparatively low standing, for no reason but that she's the Crown Prince's right hand.”

“…….”

“Put another way—the more authority I hold, the more the scale balances out. People will think the Imperial family isn't attempting a show of power, but genuinely extending a hand of reconciliation. But since this match was forced on you to begin with, there won't be the sort of substantive exchange there'd be in a fair arrangement.”

Forcing one's influence on another and offering it up as the price of reconciliation would certainly be received as two entirely different things.

But this was a proposition that couldn't hold. Because that had never been the Crown Prince's real intention in orchestrating any of this.

The woman before him was saying something that ran directly against her master's will.

She said, with force behind her voice,

“I will become the head of House Modrov.”

“…….”

“And beyond that—the dowry I pay toward this marriage will be the title and estate of a house with two hundred years of history alongside Lemann's own, along with every asset and every holding that has made it function.”

A silence followed.

The instant Ionna finished speaking, the first thought that came to Leroy was clear. This was absolute nonsense.

“Head of the house?”

“Yes.”

“Not because you covet the position, and not to seize the property from the legitimate children for yourself alone—but simply so you can hand your entire fortune over to me?”

A short, incredulous laugh escaped him before he could stop it.

“If you're going to run a con, you might at least say something more believable.”

“I didn't expect you to believe me right away.”

She remained unshaken despite his negative reaction.

She looked at him without a trace of hesitation and said,

“I have never once told a lie to the master I chose to serve. Not because I expected reward for my loyalty, but simply because I decided to be that way, and so I kept faith. There will come a day, Your Grace, when you feel the true weight of these words.”

“You speak of good faith while going against your own master's will?”

Leroy replied coldly.

Every word she used to try to convince him was contradictory.

In truth, most of what he experienced in her presence carried this same bewildering quality.

She kept pouring an incomprehensible kindness over him. So much so that he found it nearly impossible to believe it was real.

“I have already given His Highness Rihardt more loyalty than was ever required of me.”

“Then perhaps someday I'll come to regret ever having trusted you.”

“If you still find reason to think differently of me—even after I've died for you...”

At the chilling hypothetical, Leroy flinched, just barely.

What puzzled Leroy most was that all of it genuinely sounded like the truth.

If the Crown Prince had meant to plant a spy within House Hance, he'd have chosen a woman with a cleaner past. And he certainly wouldn't have revealed to Leroy that the two of them were lovers.

Perhaps she'd felt betrayed by her lover, and decided to betray him in kind.

Perhaps she simply couldn't bear the Crown Prince's order to marry another man. The straightest of wills sometimes broke entirely, rather than bending.

Abandoning an old lover and going on to live visibly, defiantly well with someone else would certainly make for a fitting revenge.

But even granting that—did the method she'd chosen to convince him really need to be this extreme?

“I have long been His Highness's loyal confidante, and it's only natural that you find it hard to trust me easily. Proving that what I told you today is sincere is, in the end, entirely my responsibility. But good faith, I think, isn't the sort of feeling that can grow from only one side.”

As though she'd anticipated his distrust from the very start, she went on explaining, calmly.

Just then, a gust of wind rose, and the chiffon hat that had been hanging precariously in place lifted high into the sky. Leroy blinked reflexively against the cold wind clawing at his face.

But the woman before him, seemingly indifferent to such a trivial matter, kept her eyes fixed only on him.

Perhaps she had, from the very first moment they'd met today.

“How much are you willing to invest, Your Grace, in testing my sincerity?”

“Hey.”

“…….”

“Excuse me—may I ask you something?”

“……Go ahead.”

At the persistent question, Marsha finally opened her closed mouth.

Yonas, who had been standing beside her, turned toward her quickly.

It was an eagerness bordering on presumptuous, but Marsha didn't seem particularly troubled by it.

Among servants left alone together, some quiet gossip about their masters wasn't unusual.

He was probably trying to dig into Ionna's background on the Duke's behalf, she guessed.

Sure enough, the question that followed matched Marsha's expectation exactly.

“Could you tell me a little about what kind of person your lady is?”

“I don't think I'll be giving you the answer you're hoping for.”

Marsha answered coldly.

At that, Yonas asked back, sounding thrown.

“What answer do you imagine I'm hoping for, that you'd take such an edge with me?”

Marsha stared at him blankly for a moment.

He seemed like someone with no particular talent for tact, so she supposed she could afford to drop a little of her own formality as well.

“What people usually want to dig up about a marriage prospect they aren't pleased with is a flaw.”

“It wasn't only ill talk I was after.”

“I hear my lady's reputation myself, from time to time. She's clearly succeeded a great deal professionally, but… well, beyond that, there's plenty of talk that only breeds prejudice in people.”

“By prejudice, you mean it isn't actually true?”

Everyone, without exception, called Ionna the Crown Prince's loyal hound.

Whatever closeness with the Crown Prince that phrase was meant to convey, comparing a person to a dog always carried at least some measure of contempt.

People believed Ionna had no interest in anything beyond winning the Crown Prince's favor. Her rare appearances in society and her thin web of relationships were read the same way.

Those who wanted to curry favor with the Crown Prince resented her rigid, uncompromising streak, and those who disliked the Crown Prince avoided Ionna simply for being his subordinate.

That she wasn't cunning enough to overturn such an image was, in Marsha's view, Ionna's one true flaw.

“My lady has spent her whole life enduring hardship. It's because she always puts others before herself. She doesn't hesitate to throw herself aside for someone else's sake, and yet she never expects that same person to act the way she does in return. There's hardly another kind of person more prone to losing out by living that way.”

Yonas didn't interrupt her—only listened carefully.

Marsha looked out toward the distant lakeshore and went on.

“I only hope my lady finds happiness. I think she deserves nothing less.”