Kaela was what one might call an “easy” woman. She was so easy for Peon that it was also easy to ignore her.
She never hid what she was thinking from him, and in fact, she couldn’t hide it. Sometimes she was worryingly honest. How ridiculous is it to have to worry about honesty?
In the land Peon ruled, the honest should have been the freest, but he was a cowardly, foolish, and incompetent ruler, so it wasn’t so. That’s why Kaela, who was honest, was the first to suffocate and die.
“Come on.”
Kaela, unable to hide her emotions, would take his hand with great joy whenever he reached out. For Peon, this was a given.
If he offered his hand, she would take it. It was as certain as the Emperor being insane, Peon being a dirty mongrel, the sun setting in the west, and Lusenford’s winter being exceptionally long.
However, Kaela – the Kaela who was now naturally walking towards the Grand Duchess’s bedroom where she had never slept, the Kaela who was still the Princess of Ostein because her father hadn’t been murdered – didn’t immediately take his outstretched hand.
She clearly hesitated. Kaela de Chasser should take his hand without any hesitation, immediately, but she hesitated.
“Your Highness?”
Somewhere, fear was grinning. Although he called her the precious Princess of Ostein, knowing full well that he had always held the emotional upper hand, he had built up his arrogance layer by layer.
Now, no matter how hard he looked, there was no guarantee that she would always immediately take his outstretched hand and unconditionally obey his words.
So what should he do?
Instead of seeing an answer, he had the extremely irrational but certain thought that he might lose his mind right here due to the endless, vague anxiety.
“Ah, I was mistaken.”
And what extinguished all those thoughts was Kaela’s voice. She murmured softly as she placed her hand on his. Peon hurriedly grasped her hand, forcibly suppressing the trembling of his own hand. She had clearly hesitated.
It shouldn’t be possible, but she had clearly hesitated.
“Now that I’ve recovered this much, I should go to that room, and you should use your bedroom, Your Highness.”
Kaela, unconsciously showing her familiarity with the layout of Lusenford Castle, changed the subject.
She had forgotten and only just realized again that where she was staying was Peon’s bedroom. She didn’t know why he had put her in his bedroom, but it was about time to properly return to her place according to protocol.
If she appeared to perfectly fulfill her role as Grand Duchess without flaw, even when she died, all blame could go to Lusenford rather than Ostein. Kaela was carefully laying the groundwork.
Not dying is good, of course. Who would want to die? But as someone who had already experienced it, she chose to increase the certainty of her death rather than look for a possibility to quietly escape from Lusenford.
“I’ll return today.”
“No.”
Peon, who had been walking towards his bedroom while firmly holding her hand, firmly stopped her words.
“Don’t do that. You haven’t fully recovered yet.”
“But…”
“A patient shouldn’t hastily change their place. What if you catch a new illness?”
“I just need to be careful with food.”
“Not just food, but you also need to be careful of the cold weather and changed climate. You need to eat better.”
The image of Kaela’s corpse, nothing but skin and bones with eyes wide open, is still visible when he closes his eyes. Even if all the truths he believed in were overturned and Peon’s world completely collapsed, Kaela needed to eat well and be healthy for life.
“Besides, as I said earlier, it’s absolutely unacceptable for you to stay in a room arbitrarily decorated by a criminal.”
Was that against protocol? Kaela, always thinking in the practical Lusenford way, gave the correct answer.
“It doesn’t matter. I’m fine with it. Using castle funds to change it again would be wasteful.”
If there was money for that, it should be invested in the military instead. The Grand Duchess couldn’t waste even a penny.
Though in reality, she had no money to spend as the head maid and butler tightly controlled all finances. They begrudged every coin spent on the Grand Duchess who hadn’t brought any money with her. From that time, Lusenford had already lacked proper order and discipline.
“Your Highness.”
However, Peon, turning to look at her as they entered the bedroom, was serious.
“That’s not a waste.”
Ah, is that so? In this case, it’s not wasteful because it’s erasing traces of a criminal? So in Lusenford, for the Grand Duchess to use funds, she needs to build up this much justification.
Kaela, newly realizing and accepting this, felt a familiar tiredness. It was remarkable that even someone of the Grand Duchess’s stature had to risk her life to renovate the shabby castle decorations. Lusenford was truly an extraordinary place.
At the same time, how foolish she had been to dare suggest that the castle needed expansion.
“Even if Your Highness wanted to gild the walls with gold, that wouldn’t be a waste.”
Peon seated her in a comfortable chair by the fireplace. Instead of sitting beside her, he knelt down in front of her. Suddenly, Kaela found herself looking down at his large frame.
Peon, who had been counting sins and duties to be done in the folds of Kaela’s velvet dress, or on the carpet, or in the depths of hell below, finally raised his head.
“Even to someone like me with no eye for these things, the Grand Duchess’s bedroom was embarrassingly unsuitable for your use.”
Yes. That’s where it all went wrong. The authority of the long-absent Grand Duchess had been effectively diminished from the moment she entered a bedroom arbitrarily decorated by someone like the head maid. It’s right to tear everything out as Kaela wishes.
“My eye for these things is even worse than yours, Your Highness.”
Her small voice and hunched shoulders showed no confidence at all. She seemed like someone who had decided not to do anything.
It was nonsense for the Princess of Ostein, surrounded by all manner of rare and expensive items, to lack an eye for these things. Was it because she had received too great a shock at the first banquet, or had she always been this way? Either way, it was Peon’s fault.
“Then let’s start by choosing curtains together, as two people with little eye for these things. We need to completely change not just your room, but this room too.”
He patted the back of Kaela’s hand, which was resting quietly on her knee. The overlapped hands slowly curled inward.
****
The Grand Duchess couldn’t properly touch the castle finances due to the Grand Duke’s appropriate indifference and the stern looks from the butler, head maid, and nobles.
Nevertheless, the foolish Grand Duchess dared to argue that Lusenford Castle’s poor facilities needed improvement and expansion.
Usually, if one lacks ability, one shouldn’t even speak up.
How arrogant for an outsider to disparage the great Lusenford as inadequate and scheme to spend money. Moreover, to meddle with the castle’s design, where secrecy was crucial? It was enough to make the proud Lusenford nobles rise up.
Yes. Kaela lowered her head, recalling the incident that had rapidly hastened her death. However, looking down, she saw an array of fabric samples cut into small pieces and catalogs claiming to show the “latest” curtain designs.
‘How did it come to this?’
Kaela had clearly said she had no eye for these things, yet somehow the Grand Duke had given orders, and even the butler knew that the curtains in both the Grand Duchess’s and Grand Duke’s bedrooms were to be changed.
“Honestly, those horrific, gaudy pink velvet curtains are too much. Pink! Deep pink, no less!”
Denise shook her head disapprovingly. For Kaela, pink was a color that automatically reminded her of Beatrice’s eyes.
Peon also had rare violet eyes, so the two matched well, while she only had ordinary blue eyes. Had the head maid deliberately hung deep pink velvet curtains to remind her of her place?
The curtain was unnecessarily heavy with too many tassels, and above all, its dark green color combined with the golden, almost yellowish walls created a bizarrely perfect atmosphere.
