TMWDS Chapter 20

It was obvious he was pretending to head for the exit while quietly ducking behind a pillar, but she didn't bother following him.

Her whole aim had simply been to shut him up.

"Oh? Ionna! Morning shift today? How'd it go with the person you met yesterday, was he decent?"

"Ah, Sir Nick. I saw the commander looking for you earlier."

Right on cue, a fellow knight approaching turned pale and reversed course at once.

Even so, unfazed by the fates of the challengers who'd come before, a fresh wave of piranhas kept surging in.

"Dame Ionna! I heard you had a matchmaking meeting!"

"I always figured you'd never marry in your life—what on earth's going on?"

"If you leave, what's poor Sir Rainer supposed to do…"

"Are you really getting married?"

"You can't even go home half the time as it is! The commander said people like us shouldn't even be getting married!"

As more and more people crowded around, it grew hard to make out what anyone was even saying.

She tried to keep her mouth shut and focus on eating, but she couldn't ignore the gathering stares entirely.

"They say he's incredibly handsome—is that true?"

"Yeah, he's a looker."

Ionna cut things short with that, downing the last of her stew before rising from her seat.

A knight's duties didn't end at patrols and guard work alone. Rolling around the training grounds on their commander's orders usually meant not clocking out until well into the night.

How entertaining could a superior's love life possibly be, in the middle of everyone sweating through the same drills together?

Ionna made her escape from the cheering hyenas, fleeing the cafeteria as quickly as she could.

Not that it did much good, of course. There was no running from the next person she met.

"How did the matchmaking go?"

That was the question waiting for her the moment she stepped into Rihardt's chambers.

Rihardt sat leisurely sipping tea, a newspaper spread out on the table before him.

「The Ice Knight Who Stole Countless Maidens' Hearts—Has She Now Bewitched a Young Duke?!」

Judging by the childish choice of words, this could only be some cheap gossip rag popular among commoners.

There was no way any subordinate of an Imperial Crown Prince would voluntarily bring him such a thing on their own—this had to be a prop he'd prepared purely to tease her with.

"Ah, of course. My Ice Knight must have ensnared the Duke's heart in an instant."

There was an undisguised delight in Rihardt's voice.

Ionna answered, deflating the mood entirely.

"He seemed to dislike me, from what I could tell."

At that, a faint, satisfied smile touched the corners of Rihardt's mouth.

Throwing her into a marriage meant to be an ordeal, and then teasing her with it besides—a rather poor taste, on more than one count.

Ionna asked abruptly.

"May I ask you something?"

"Go ahead."

"Why did Your Highness choose me as Duke Leroy's match?"

Now that she'd let go of the question of why Rihardt had abandoned her, only one question remained.

Why, of all people, had he married her off to the Duke?

If Rihardt had meant to join hands with the Duke, he shouldn't have proposed such an insulting match in the first place.

Conversely, if his intention had been to bring Leroy to his knees through an outright rivalry, then she should have received far more specific orders.

But Rihardt had never once ordered her to dig up dirt on the ducal house, or to assassinate anyone connected to it.

Not that he'd given her nothing to do—but he'd never asked her to smuggle out anything so sensitive that it might land her in serious trouble.

What could he have hoped to gain, placing an unusually obedient hound in such a delicate position?

"My knight isn't the type to ask questions like this—or so I thought."

Rihardt turned the subject aside, indifferent.

Non sequitur or not, what he said was true. Ionna had never once, before her death, asked him a "why" of any kind.

So he wouldn't grow suspicious, Ionna offered a quiet apology.

"If it displeased you, I apologize."

Rihardt was silent for a moment before speaking.

"Ionna, you're marrying only by my command. Whomever I'd paired you with, you'd have followed the order. Isn't that so?"

That had certainly been true once—but now, whomever Rihardt commanded her to marry, Ionna would look toward only one person.

"There's no need for pointless brooding over it, since it isn't a proper marriage to begin with anyway. If you cross me over something so trivial,"

Rihardt turned a page of the newspaper and finished, gently.

"you'll only make me unhappy…"

Ionna didn't answer. She'd never once lied to him before, and worried some sign of it might show through now.

Fortunately, he seemed to take her lowered head as a gesture of submission, and quickly lost interest in her.

His amusement apparently spent, he tossed the newspaper onto the table and rose.

"Lady Florence should be arriving shortly."

"Then I'll go hide. See that you stall her properly."

Rihardt said, and disappeared straight into his bedroom.

Ionna stood quietly beside the table while the maids cleared away the dishes.

She couldn't very well leave her post simply because her charge's mood had soured because of her.

Once she'd finished tidying the plates away, Louisa whispered as she wheeled the tray out.

"If you'd simply said you didn't want to marry, he'd have been far less annoyed."

There was no chance of that.

Wondering after the meaning of an order couldn't possibly be a greater sin than outright disobedience.

'Though it does seem clear enough he's put out, given he told me to stall Lady Florence.'

Lady Florence Lanzhoff, the Marquess's daughter—Rihardt's fiancée.

The one peculiar thing about her was that she hated Ionna with a positively feverish intensity.

Whenever Rihardt wanted to avoid the fiancée he had no interest in, it was Ionna, of all people, who had to be the one to deliver the refusal in his place.

Speak of the devil, and she'll appear.

Before long, an attendant announced Lady Florence's arrival.

Ionna swallowed a sigh and stepped outside.

The instant Florence recognized that it was Ionna who'd come out to greet her, her expression twisted.

"Why is it you who's come out?"

"His Highness is still abed. If you'll wait a moment in the drawing room, I'll bring you in the moment he wakes."

"I still remember being trapped in that drawing room for half a day, taken in by exactly that kind of promise last time."

To set the record straight, no one had trapped her; it had been Rihardt, not Ionna, who'd ignored his fiancée's visit.

Even so, Florence had a habit of speaking as though every last bit of it had been Ionna's fault.

"My apologies."

"Go tell His Highness the Crown Prince that I've come."

"I'm afraid I can't do that. I'm sorry."

"Are you ignoring me?"

"I ask for your understanding."

Florence shifted her fan into her left hand.

The next move was easy enough to predict, but Ionna didn't bother stopping it. It wasn't so much a reasoned decision as a reflex.

Smack. A sharp sting landed on Ionna's cheek soon after.

'There really are too many right-handed people in this world.'

The blow itself wasn't especially forceful, but landing on the same spot Nils had already struck made it smart rather more than expected.

Still, showing any sign of pain was exactly what the other woman wanted.

Ionna, her expression still unchanged, hands still clasped behind her back, said,

"I'll show you to the drawing room."

Smack.

Another slap landed. This one, she hadn't quite expected.

Smack.

Neither had this one.

Wasn't a single slap the polite thing to do, when venting one's frustrations?

Florence went on striking Ionna's cheek until her own hand had gone red.

It was Florence who tired out first, but that didn't mean Ionna had come through unscathed.

In the end, her cheek had puffed up like a loaf of bread all over again.

'I really was a punching bag, wasn't I.'

Ionna found herself struck by the observation all over again.

She wasn't so low-born that she deserved to be treated like this.

But Florence knew this perfectly well.

She knew that Ionna wasn't the sort to blow this up by reporting it to Rihardt—that the master's hound would never dare bite the woman who was to become her mistress.

But there was one thing Florence didn't know.

Ionna had not lived as the Crown Prince's hound for several days now.

She knew, now, that she was a person too.