* * *
“How is that servant girl doing?”
“Oh goodness, Your Highness. You should call her ‘my fiancée’.”
Madame Lucy pointed out with widened eyes. Adrian stared at Madame Lucy with a disgruntled face.
In the end, it was Adrian who took a step back.
“Alright. How about ‘my fiancée’?”
“That’s very good! My oh my, where did someone find such a cute and lovely person to bring here? Oh ho ho.”
“Cute and lovely?”
Adrian grimaced at the Madam’s description, thinking it quite unfitting.
“She is very gentle and follows me well. Her beauty may be less than that of Sir Essen, but that makes it all the more fun to dress her up! She becomes more charming the more you dress her up!”
“In what way?”
Madame Lucy, seemingly oblivious to Adrian’s question, continued heaping praise.
“From morning to evening, she studies hard in many fields, including, etiquette, poetry, song, dance, musical instrument, history, and philosophy. It really isn’t easy studying that hard without raising a single fuss at all!”
Just like Ternie, Madame Lucy was speaking favorably of the new Atienne.
“Diano.”
“Yes, Your Highness.”
“What do you think of Atienne?”
“I do not know, but from how she is on good terms with the people in court, it would appear she is alright. How about we watch her for a little longer?”
“Watch her for a bit longer…….”
Overall, the evaluations surrounding her weren’t too bad.
“Can I leave things as they are?”
Adrian was frankly anxious.
Would he be able to pass the upcoming ball with much incident? If anything goes wrong, it means he was marrying a crazy woman.
He absolutely wanted to avoid that kind of thing. Better to see this country ruined.
“And no news about Essen yet?”
“Yes, Your Highness.”
By this point, the failure to find Essen couldn’t be due to the incompetence of his subordinates – but more down to Essen’s adeptness in hiding.
Adrian recalled a heated conversation with Essen in the bedroom a few days ago.
“How long do we have to continue doing this?!”
Essen, who was quite blunt (though not as much as Adrian) and twice as sensitive as his lover, threw down his wig in anger – as he was wont to do.
Essen, a man who was pretending to be his female fiancée, under the alias ‘Atienne’, was originally Adrian’s guardian knight.
Essen’s behavior had become so regular that Adrian brushed Essen’s protests aside nonchalantly.
“How long? Until I become emperor.”
“If I kill you, can I stop now?”
“Is that treason I hear?”
“I didn’t become your knight for this!”
Essen protested, but Adrian would not accept his words.
“I know. Even so, you are my knight.”
“Ever seen a knight wearing a dress?”
“Consider it an honor since you are the first.”
“And you’re doing this because you want to die by my sword?”
“You would die before you get to kill me.”
Knowing he couldn’t provide any rebuttal, Essen only frowned instead of replying.
In fact, Essen was so perfectly beautiful he couldn’t be thought of as a knight.
Shining silver hair as if soaked in moonlight, and skin as white as snow.
Ice blue eyes.
It seemed more appropriate to call him a work of art than a human being.
With a face so beautiful it was doubtful that it even breathed, Essen pursed his lips, and then let out a shout.
“I’m not doing this!”
Essen threw away the bolero he was wearing and stormed out of the bedroom.
Ternie, Diano, just about everyone would get worried about Essen, but Adrian would shrug it off, seeing how this would happen every other day.
Sigh, I should have disciplined him that time.
“Who would have guessed he would run away.”
With mounting fury, Adrian recalled the time he was forced to make Essen his bride-to-be.
On top of that, he thought of the Empress, the root cause of all this chaos.
And ‘that woman’ too.
“If only it wasn’t for that woman.”
Adrian gnashed his teeth.
People would say that Adrian hates women, but that wasn’t necessarily true.
He hated all human beings, male or female.
How severe must this hatred have been, for him to hate conversing with anyone who wasn’t a childhood friend?
Others would try to pass it off as shyness, but anyone who knew Adrian well knew that was not the case.
The empress had always been displeased with Adrian, who had little interest in women.
It was a kind of anthropophobia caused by having ‘that woman’ attached to him since his childhood – and yet, without any due consideration, the Empress would suddenly give Adrian a strict order.
Bring a young woman to marry within the week or be forced to marry ‘that woman’!
There were many varied reasons for Adrian’s dislike of that ‘that woman’, but there was a defining incident.
The incident where Adrian’s horse was left to die.
Even now, Adrian would have nightmares of that day.
Because he would only play with the horse and not her, the 7-year-old hid Adrian’s horse and because she refused to say where it was, the horse died of starvation.
In fact, ‘the woman’ had forgotten the fact that she had hidden it in the first place. What she said after being asked was truly abominable.
“Oh wait, it died?”
This was the deciding event that made Adrian hate not just ‘that woman’, but all humans in general.
He couldn’t bear to marry ‘that woman’. In a panic, Adrian searched for a suitable young lady by hosting balls for a whole week, but it was in vain.
While Adrian hated ‘that woman’, he didn’t particularly like the other ladies either.
As the fateful week passed, and faced with the prospect of having to marry that woman, Adrian decided to have Essen dressed up as a woman and marry him in disguise.
Of course, there had been no consent from Essen’s side.
“Tell them to catch him. At all costs.”
“Understood, Your Highness.”
It was when Diano stood up to relay Adrian’s orders.
Knock-knock.
Along with a knock, a servant’s voice was heard.
“Your Highness, Albert from Grace Palace has arrived.”
Grace Palace was the Empress’ palace.
“Tell them I can’t.”
“Your Highness, he is aware that you are inside.”
Albert’s voice could be heard from outside the door. Adrian bit his lip. There was nothing going his way today.
“Her Majesty the Empress has given an order. Lady Gabriele has arrived, so you must attend tea time with her.”
“…….”
Diano desperately stopped Adrian, who was clenching the grip of his sword.
* * *
“Hello, sis?”
Ternie greeted me in the small hall where I had arrived for dance lessons.
“Have you studied a lot?”
“Yeah, somewhat…….”
“Well, if you don’t want to die somewhat, you’ll have to work hard.”
How the hell do you “die somewhat”? I couldn’t tell if it was a threat or an expression of concern.
I stopped talking to Ternie and looked around. It was, of course, to check if the Crown Prince was around or not.
Seeing me like that, Ternie gave a purposeful smile.
“I am sorry to say that His Highness the Crown Prince couldn’t come.”
Well, I’m not sorry at all.
She looked at Ternie with a rotten expression.
“Instead of him, I’m here!”
That was a bit disappointing.
I just wish both of them would be gone from my life…….
Giving Ternie a rotten look I started to step back, to which he gave a puzzled expression and started approaching me.
“Why are you avoiding me? Little sister. Won’t you come here?”
Head-shake. I shook my head from side to side.
Ternie stared at me with a face full of incomprehension.
“Am I dirty to you?”
Nod-nod.
After I nodded my head repeatedly, Ternie made a face resembling a despairing actress and sulked in the corner.
Then he whined sadly, as if he was carrying all the misfortunes of the world.
“Sob-sob. My only little sibling in the world……. Sob-sob…. sob-sob-sob….”
Let’s not mind him. I looked at my watch nervously, ignoring Ternie as best I could.
It’s already been 15 minutes! There were still a lot of pages left to look at, so I couldn’t be killing any more time.
When I urged Madame Lucy, who had been giggling without much thought, to do something, she dragged Ternie and stood him up.
“Sob-sob. Bad Atie…….”
Ternie glared at me and continued whining.
“Now, let’s begin. Oh ho ho ho!”
Madame Lucy’s cheerful laugh was accompanied by the melody of a waltz that filled the room. I joined hands with Ternie, and we started dancing.
“You said I was dirty, and yet you’re holding my hand now.”
Ternie continued to grumble on with a disapproving expression. Wasn’t he being too spiteful over a little joke?
“My hand’s dirty, why are you still holding it?”
“…….”
It was getting annoying to listen to his constant snarky remarks. It sure was hard being this guy’s little sister.
I heard Ternie’s grumbling in one ear and let it out in the other.
In the past, I had practiced dancing to prepare as a debutante.
If I hadn’t fallen from grace, I would have made my debut into higher society. I wasn’t bitter about it though.
Anyway, thanks to what I learned in the past, I was managing to dance along with Ternie relatively well.
Mid-waltz, Ternie looked at me with a surprised expression.
“Oh. Seems you’ve got some skill?”
My chances of survival have increased by 1 percent!
I was smiling in joy, full of self-satisfaction, when a high-octave voice rang out and shattered my mirth to pieces.
“Ohhhh! You are following more than I thought you would. Oh ho ho!”
One could tell who it was just by hearing that laugh. Madame Lucie gave her trademark ho-ho laugh and approached us.
“Where did you learn to dance?”
“Ah. I did it for a while before my household went bankrupt…….”
“Oh no…….”
When the story of the ruined family came out, Madame Lucy looked at me with pity.
I really couldn’t care less though.
I had been quite satisfied with being a servant girl, so the current situation was actually more disastrous.
Ternie, who had been listening to my story in silence, suddenly intervened.
“It’s okay, little sister. Our family will never fail! You are not alone!”
I would, in fact, rather be alone.
In any case, I was here only because I had bothered to learn how to dance beforehand – otherwise I would have been a goner already.
I didn’t have much time left for reading, so it was fortunate that I wouldn’t have to practice dancing as much.
“Then, should we end the dancing here?”
“Excuse me……?”
It was clear that these people couldn’t be bothered right now. Imagine ending after just one waltz.
Hey me, will I be able to survive this?
I was seriously worried about the future again, but no one else cared.
The only person I could trust was me. I wasn’t dying before the week was over, was I?
“I have to go make a report now.”
Ternie exited the room, light in step.
He was finally gone. Persistent brat.
“Phew.”
I heaved a sigh of relief and congratulated myself for holding on till the end.
Exhausted, I was about to stretch out on the floor, when Ternie’s face poked out from outside the door.
“Whatcha doing, little sis! You gotta come with me.”
“What……?”
Can’t you just leave me alone?
Ternie dragged me, wearing a face of defeat, and headed somewhere else.
Knowing resistance was futile, I followed him, powerless.
“So why were you saying I was dirty? I washed my hands thoroughly!”
And so my mental fortitude continued to be tested.
