TMWDS Chapter 8

Leroy didn't want to agree with that, but he couldn't quite deny it either.

He'd expected nothing but wariness and mockery from their first meeting, but instead she hadn't shown them a single moment's disrespect.

Even so, Leroy kept up his air of suspicion.

"Is being polite on the surface the same as being kind?"

"No, come on, she was completely warm to us. From the rumors I figured she'd be a real piece of work."

"Well, I don't know about the rest, but that's not the kind of attitude you'd expect a woman to show her own husband."

"What, acting like you're already married or something?"

Leroy ignored Yonas's jab without much effort.

If the two of them ever ended up close in any real sense, it could only be as lovers—and there'd been not a hint of that kind of current between them just now.

Had the woman not been his future wife, Leroy might have guessed she had some interest in transferring to House Hance's service.

But that was an absurd assumption to make. Even he couldn't offer her greater honor than the man who was set to become ruler of the Empire.

Leroy murmured, almost without meaning to:

"That was definitely a bruise..."

He hadn't mentioned it out loud, out of a sense that it would've been rude, but her face had clearly, unmistakably, been bruised.

Bad enough that makeup hadn't fully covered it, which meant he could roughly guess how it must have looked underneath.

Could her master possibly be so violent that not even the promise of such extraordinary success made it worth enduring?

Or was all of this some kind of scheme, meant to lower his guard?

"Sir?"

"Never mind. Let's go."

Leroy walked past his subordinate's puzzled expression and strode forward.

Whatever the truth turned out to be, he'd only know for certain once he faced it directly.

Suppressing her disappointment, Ionna returned to headquarters and was promptly buried right back in paperwork alongside Saschia.

It seemed the extra pair of hands had let Saschia catch her breath enough to take a deep interest in whatever had passed between Ionna and Rihardt.

There was nothing particular worth hiding, so Ionna obligingly relayed the earlier conversation.

At which point Saschia struck her own forehead audibly with her palm and demanded:

"Why on earth would you say your future spouse was to your liking, right there, of all places?"

Not understanding what the fuss was about, Ionna answered honestly.

"Because he is to my liking?"

"Do you actually want this marriage?"

"Of course I do."

Her husband, upon meeting him again, hadn't seemed to feel remotely the same way, though.

Ionna quietly recalled the face Leroy had worn as he politely declined her company.

He was, of course, a good deal younger now, seemed to have no intention of spending much time with her, and had been just precisely as courteous as necessary—no more.

And yet he hadn't been able to hide the way his gaze had lingered, just slightly too long, on her cheek before pulling away. That he'd said nothing about it at all, ever the gentleman, felt very much like him.

Discovering that the man she remembered was still, in some real sense, there, gave Ionna a deep sense of relief.

Two people who had once hovered between life and death, trapped beneath a collapsed building, had faced one another again, safely, under open sunlight. Whether the man standing here still disliked her or not, she found herself thinking that this alone was the only thing that truly mattered.

But at Ionna's utterly confident answer, Saschia only made a face like something didn't add up. And her next question was stranger still.

"...What about the Crown Prince, then?"

"His Highness?"

"You said he looked pretty unhappy when you told him that. Didn't that strike you as anything?"

"He's just naturally a spiteful sort."

Ionna answered flatly, flipping through the winter training proposal.

Faced with her subordinate's unruffled composure, Saschia finally let out a groan of exasperation.

Like most people working within this palace, Saschia had always privately harbored a surely-not suspicion about the relationship between Ionna and the Crown Prince.

And yet, apparently, the Crown Prince had been displeased to hear that Ionna found her future spouse to her liking.

Even though the Crown Prince himself was the one who'd arranged this marriage in the first place.

To Saschia, Rihardt's behavior could only be read as jealousy, or something close to a test.

"Ionna. What I'm trying to say is, the Crown Prince—"

"No."

Just as Saschia, unable to bear the frustration, tried to choose her words carefully to make herself understood, Ionna cut her off, cleanly.

Saschia's expression flickered with confusion as she studied Ionna's face. She wasn't entirely sure whether Ionna had actually grasped what she'd been trying to say.

But however oblivious Ionna could be in matters like this, she wasn't a complete fool.

Ionna met Saschia's eyes and said, firmly:

"It isn't, Commander. Never."

Being suspected of something with Rihardt was hardly a new experience.

This entire marriage had, after all, grown out of exactly that kind of misunderstanding, so Saschia's assumption wasn't without grounds.

She and Rihardt had spent years constantly in each other's company, both of them too young, besides, for chastity to come naturally—and above all, he'd never kept any other woman close to him but her.

And yet, despite all of that, the answer to the question had already been settled, firmly, a long time ago.

'There's no chance of that. None at all.'

Ionna remembered, with perfect clarity, the last order she'd ever received.

'Word from His Majesty: Knight Ionna and the 1st Division are to remain here and hold the retreat line.'

People hidden among the crowd had turned, without warning, into a mob and surged forward.

A shield was needed to hold the armed enemy back and force the retreat-path open, and in that desperate moment, what Rihardt chose was his own safe escape. Not Ionna's life.

No man leaves a woman he loves to die on a killing field.

If Rihardt had held even the smallest measure of romantic affection for her, she wouldn't have been left alone in those ruins.

"Actually, there's something I wanted to mention."

Ionna changed the subject, as if trying to clear the air.

Still unable to fully let go of her earlier confusion, Saschia asked, wary.

"What is it?"

"This winter training proposal—I think it needs to be rewritten from the start."

Ionna said, lifting the document she'd been reviewing.

There were occasional typos scattered through it, which was one problem, but far more importantly, the report contained an error she couldn't simply overlook.

"According to this, it has me listed as a training instructor. I'm afraid that's going to be difficult. I'll be resigning soon."

"What?"

"The reason is relocation, due to marriage."

"...What?"

She thought she'd explained it clearly enough, but Saschia was acting as though her hearing had gone.

By any ordinary standard, resigning was simply the natural course of things—Ionna couldn't understand why Saschia was reacting as if she'd just heard something astonishing.

'Then again, last time I kept reporting for duty at the palace every single day starting right after the wedding. The Duke went straight back to his territory.'

Even that abnormal marriage hadn't struck anyone around her as anything worth remarking on.

So it wasn't especially strange that the reverse—treating the normal course of things as somehow abnormal—should catch people off guard.

With that thought settled, Ionna explained again, patiently, and calmly.

"Once things are sorted out, I'll be heading down south with my husband. Which means I won't be able to keep coming into work, so—"

"Wh—what? You're quitting? Going where, with who? Where! No!"

It didn't seem, in the end, that a proper conversation was going to happen after all.

Handling both her workload and Saschia's barrage of questions at once had proven to be a task of considerable difficulty.

By the time Ionna made it home, she was completely worn out.

She'd been reporting for work her whole life, and yet she had no idea why today, of all days, had felt this particularly exhausting.

The most unfortunate part was that her tiring day still wasn't quite over.

"Let's talk for a moment."

Hayden was the one who abruptly blocked Ionna's path as she stepped through the main entrance.

Never once having been greeted by her father before, Ionna gave him a briefly startled look.

Ionna moved to step lightly past him and said,

"I have nothing to say to you."

Hayden looked visibly flustered, apparently not expecting her to brush him off this openly.

He scurried after her, jabbering away.

"I hear you've been going around without a single servant, ever since you threw out the maids assigned to you. Is this really how a young lady of a Count's household ought to behave?"

Ionna wasn't the sort of foolish noble who couldn't manage without someone beneath her.

If she needed something, she could simply call over whichever servant happened to be passing, and she'd already been taking most of her meals outside the house anyway.

In fact, the days she'd spent living alone hadn't inconvenienced her in the least—if anything, it was less trouble than when Hayden's handpicked maid had been hovering around her.

Ionna kept climbing the stairs in silence, hands tucked into her pockets.

Hayden's breath grew increasingly ragged as he struggled to keep pace with her.

"Isn't it because you've got no maid to dress you that you're running around looking like something out of a joke! I thought you'd have the sense to see to yourself properly—instead you go out to the palace looking like that and stir up needless talk!"

Hayden finally lost his patience and raised his voice.