TMWDS Chapter 30

A rude question.

She tensed inwardly, half-suspecting he was about to point out the sorry state of her wardrobe again. Then he opened with an unsettling preamble.

“I pretended not to notice before, and thought that was the right call at the time. But lately I've started to wonder whether it really was.”

“…….”

“Are things, perhaps, not good between you and your family?”

Ionna flinched and instinctively covered her cheek.

She'd been resting alone in her room, and had entirely forgotten she wasn't wearing any makeup.

This wasn't the first time she'd shown him a bruised cheek—which was precisely the problem.

The mark Nils had left should have long since faded by now, so it made sense that he'd find it strange.

“Does your family often raise their voices at you? Or use violence, even?”

At Leroy's back-to-back questions, Ionna answered quickly.

“No.”

“I've heard the eldest son of House Modrov is jealous of his adopted sister, and lays hands on her from time to time. Is that rumor false too, then?”

The man's expression, pressing her on the point, had gone visibly cold.

There was no doubt he was, right now, feeling angry on Ionna's behalf for what had happened to her.

'I knew he was that kind of man, but...'

Not knowing how to explain the situation, Ionna kept her silence.

Revealing that it had actually been Florence's doing, not Nils's, wasn't going to make anything better.

Letting him know she'd been treated as everyone's punching bag, and not only by family, would only make her look more pathetic—nothing would improve.

Leroy, watching Ionna lost in thought, finally spoke, tossing the words out flatly after a moment.

“You've said you've never once lied to your liege—and yet you can't seem to manage being honest with me even once.”

He seemed to know exactly how to provoke her into giving him an answer.

Unable to simply let the remark pass, Ionna's mouth finally opened.

“I was only trying to work out how best to explain it. It was an incident that happened during my shift—friction with a colleague. It wasn't Nils.”

“Friction with whom?”

“...Lady Florence.”

A woman promised in marriage to the Crown Prince himself, no less.

Without needing any further explanation, Leroy's expression immediately shifted to one of understanding.

He gave a small, dry laugh and muttered, barely audible:

“...There's no end to what she'll do, is there.”

His expression cleared, and he turned to Marsha.

“Do you have any ointment good for bruising?”

“Ah, actually, right here.”

Marsha, who'd been standing a short distance away, hurried over the moment she was called.

Given how frequently her mistress got hurt, Marsha always carried ointment on hand. Not that it saw much use, since her mistress found the whole business of applying medicine too tedious to bother with.

Taking the small tin from Marsha, Leroy sat Ionna down in a nearby chair.

Only then, realizing what he was about to do, did Ionna belatedly try to stop him.

“You could just ask Marsha to—”

“Oh my, I forgot. All. About. The. Laundry.”

Marsha, cutting Ionna off with a sudden raise of her voice, left the room faster than anyone had ever seen her move.

Ionna stared, dumbfounded, at the space Marsha had just vacated.

Marsha had no reason to be worrying about laundry that wasn't even her responsibility.

House Modrov wasn't so poorly run that a maid attending to a family member would also be handed the washing.

Ionna was still frozen, unsure what to do with the situation, when a sticky sensation suddenly touched her skin.

In the meantime, the man had scooped some ointment from the tin and was now rubbing it into her cheek with his fingertip.

Ionna reflexively curled her hand into a fist where it rested on the chair.

Every time his firm knuckles brushed her skin, it felt strange, somehow. There was no contact beyond what was necessary, and yet that made the narrow point of contact feel all the more acute.

Strange. This, again.

Ionna, who'd been staring only at the floor to avoid him, finally lifted her eyes.

“...You didn't need to trouble yourself with something this tedious.”

“Agreed. But you don't strike me as someone who takes proper care of herself.”

He was pointing out the fact that she'd now handed her cheek over to someone else's blows twice.

Fragmentary as the situation was, that fact alone told him a great deal about the kind of person she was.

And in truth, Ionna hadn't even been tending to her own injuries—simply waiting for them to heal on their own.

Having lost her rebuttal, Ionna quietly accepted Leroy's treatment.

Come to think of it, it was really nothing more than the brush of a knuckle—hardly worth this much fuss.

Hadn't the two of them already kissed once before, in the past? Even if he'd only been granting her final dying wish.

That’s right—he’d always been like this. He never refused when she sincerely asked him for something. That was the reason he’d accepted her proposal the last time.

She had begged her way into this marriage.

"Ah, Your Grace. You've finally shown us your precious face. Come, this way. Our chef has been putting his heart into this dinner for days now—you have every reason to look forward to it."

On some day, from a past that no longer existed, Leroy had visited the Modrov household, just as he was now.

Unable to refuse the Count's repeated urging, he'd finally accepted the dinner invitation.

The atmosphere hadn't been so bad, right up until they'd all gathered to eat.

The trouble surfaced once conversation began after the meal.

Yvonne, dragging everyone into the music room to play the Duke a piece on the piano, botched her performance again and again, uncharacteristically.

Apparently aware herself that the sound was unbearable, Yvonne rose from the bench, blaming it on drink. She then asked Ionna to help her to the bathroom.

This was, of course, an act—the instant they reached the bathroom, Yvonne shoved Ionna away as if she were something filthy.

"You. You know how far above your station this opportunity is, don't you?"

Yvonne crossed her arms as she went on.

"If you have any conscience left, you'll go straight to the Duke and tell him. That you're just—too, too, too—beneath his standards to marry. Ask him how he'd feel about marrying your younger sister instead—someone prettier, and younger than you."

This wasn't a matter Ionna had any power to resolve.

At the time, Rihardt's orders had been indistinguishable from law to Ionna. Switching brides on her own authority, without his permission, was simply not something that could happen.

When Ionna explained this, Yvonne's face twisted, as if she'd expected nothing less.

She issued her warning in a clear, deliberate voice.

"If you won't tell him, I'll tell him everything myself."

"Tell him what?"

"What do you think—that you're a filthy bastard!"

Ionna's expression hardened, and only then did Yvonne's mouth curl up, satisfied.

Yvonne jabbed a finger against Ionna's chest as she spoke.

"Do you really think His Grace should share a bed with some girl of unknown birth like you? Who knows what kind of woman your mother was—oh, wait, no. A whore, obviously. That's how she managed to have you without a shred of shame. Probably thought it was her one good chance to squeeze some money out of somebody."

"...Calm down, Yvonne. I already told you, this isn't something I can control."

"Cut the pathetic excuses! Why can't the bride be switched? Why is it fine for someone like you and not for me? None of this makes any sense!"

Unable to contain her rage any longer, Yvonne finally began screaming.

"Don't think I don't know why you say it can't be me! You've never had any plan other than seducing some man with that pretty face of yours to climb your way up, have you? Filthy, shameless girl. How are you any different from your mother? If you're not a whore, then what are you?"

Not knowing how to calm Yvonne down, Ionna glanced toward the door.

Should she go find Count Modrov first and ask him to intervene—would he actually take her side...?

She was caught up in some vague version of that thought when it happened.