Dear, Darling, Sweetheart

His temper up, Herman shoved the pile of documents aside. There was little left to look at anyway; no report had been kept since the aide walked out on House Ernst.

Right. Losing my temper won’t solve anything.

He rubbed the bridge of his brow, tipped his head back, and turned over the words his father had drilled into him since his earliest years.

“Herman, blaming your circumstances and resenting other people will never solve a thing. Don’t waste your strength on what comes to nothing — think instead of how the problem might be solved.”

The late Duke Ernst had been an intensely rational man, one who offered a solution long before he offered comfort or sympathy. Each time he did, Mother would scold Father for driving the boy too hard.

But those words had always been his greatest help when it counted: through the fire that took both his parents, through the subordinate’s blunder that sent his warship to the bottom, through the despair of them all stranded together on that deserted island. Each time, he had held to his center, never letting the dark feeling devour him and cloud his judgment. For that, he had only his father to thank.

And so…

To lay all of this at his wife’s door was surely not the right thing to do. She must have had hardships of her own; perhaps the only way she’d found to bear those long years had been extravagance. And above all, hadn’t the whole ordeal left her mind unsound?

She kept my name and title intact, at least. Is that enough to call us even?

Whether she simply couldn’t bring herself to give up the rank of Duchess, or coveted what little of the Ernst fortune still remained, he couldn’t say. But even so.

A crisp knock, tap-tap, sounded through the study just as Herman was in the thick of mastering himself.

“Master, it’s Hoillun.”
“Come in.”
“You said you wished to inspect the castle with an eye to repairs, so I’ve finished the preparations.”

Hoillun delivered his report in an old man’s voice. His face had aged all at once these last few years, as if to bear witness to how bitter the ordeal had been.

“Hoillun.”
“Yes, Master.”
“Thank you.”
“Not at all. I’ve only done what fell to me to do.”
“I don’t mean only that. I mean you guarded Ernst in my stead.”
“Young mas— No, Master. That too was simply what fell to me to do. For I always believed that one day you would surely come home.”

For all the plainness with which he said it, the rims of Hoillun’s eyes went red in an instant. Ever since the ducal manor in the capital had burned, this castle had been the one place left where the young master might still remember the late lord and lady. Even after Herman’s own funeral was held, the faithful old butler had kept it as a sacred charge.

“It shows, your age. You’ve grown quick to tears.”

Awkward now, Herman scolded him over nothing and rose from his seat. Yet even as he said it, he drew a handkerchief from his breast pocket and held it out. He watched the old man take it without a word of protest and dab at the corners of his eyes, and something in his own face broke into a crumbling smile.

“Let’s be off. There’s a great deal to see to before dinner.”

“I’ll send for a craftsman within a few days. We’d do best to repair the third floor first, where you and my lady have your rooms, and then work through the remaining floors and the outbuildings in turn.”

Hoillun trailed at his back, carrying on the explanation at an unhurried pace. It was a mercy that the timid old butler could not see his master’s face, for Herman’s expression was turning more savage by the second. His eyes darkened by the moment, a muscle standing taut at his jaw, telltale signs of just how deep his rage ran.

“Did we fight the Continental War here in this castle, then?”

Only moments ago he had resolved to master his anger and resentment toward his wife; yet before the tour was even done, all that effort had come to nothing. Crows flew in and out through windows with their corners knocked clean off. The floors were pitted with hollows here and there, as though the ground itself had caved in.

And then.

“…”

Herman’s steps came to a halt in the central hall, where the portrait of the late couple hung. It was the one thing in the whole castle still cared for, and so in far better condition than anything else. And yet.

“Before I marched off to war, I’m quite certain I ordered a frame to hold that painting.”

For all that, the portrait sat in the same old redwood frame it had worn for years. Worse, the very edges of the canvas had worn thin, the cloth slowly rotting away.

“Ah, that is…”

Hoillun could not bring himself to say that the jewel-studded gilt frame had been sold off to clear the lady’s gambling debts. Set against sights like these, it became easy to understand why Tess bore the lady such ill will.

“That woman, I swear…”

Reading the whole story from Hoillun’s silence, Herman set a hand at his waist and knit his brow. The look on his face was so terrible that any man of his fleet who had fought at his side would have gone weak at the knees to see it.

“Master!”

It was then that hurrying footsteps came pattering from far off.

“Mas— hff— Master.”

Tess, who had combed every corner of the castle hunting for the two of them, caught her ragged breath, her cheeks flushed pink.

“Take your time. Time’s the one thing I’ve no shortage of these days.”

Herman gave a self-mocking laugh, though the joke seemed lost on Tess.

“My lady says she’d like to take dinner with you tomorrow. For the master’s sake, after all he’s suffered, she means to lay on a proper formal dinner.”
“A proper formal dinner?”

Herman echoed the words back and clenched his fist.

Is this woman tending a rose garden inside her head?

There was the cost of repairing the castle, the wages to take on servants, the remaining debts to settle. Never mind a formal dinner; the expenses he had to meet this very instant already piled into a mountain. And she could blithely propose they sit down to a formal spread?

“Go and tell that woman straight. Even if she wanted to eat herself into the grave, there’s no money for it.”

With that, Herman turned his back, as though he hadn’t a moment more to spare for Gloria Ernst. But a couple of steps on, what Tess said next, hurrying after him, brought him up short.

“But, Master. My lady seemed to regret that she never welcomed your return as she ought to have. That’s why she said she wished to treat you to a fine formal dinner. She even handed over her own private money for it.”

Tess drew a pouch of gold coins from the inner pocket of her skirt and held it up.

“If only for the sake of my lady’s good faith.”

She was all aflutter, buoyed by the thought of setting good food before the master for the first time in an age.

“And besides, the two of you, man and wife, could do with a little cozy time to talk, could you not?”

Looking closer, he saw the pouch stamped with the crest of House Seymour. That she meant to spend the little nest egg her family had sent from home on him was touching enough. And yet he was already thoroughly disappointed in his wife. The impulse did her credit, though it would have sat better had it come before she staged her suicide scene. Herman drew a slow, steadying breath.

“I’ll see to it properly with Hoillun.”

When Herman gave no real answer, Tess pressed, urging him on.

“Well, Master?”
“…”
“Don’t go being stubborn over nothing, now.”
“All right, all right, stop badgering me.”

In the end Herman gave his grudging consent and bustled off once more about his business.

The meal passed as hushed as a scene from an etiquette manual, without so much as the clink of a dish against a plate.

“Um, Your Excellency.”

How long had the silence brimming in the dining hall dragged on? Seated across the long table from Herman, I was the one to break it first.

“I saw the article about you in the Imperial Times a little while ago, Your Excellency.”

Breaking the ice with an awkward companion had never been hard for me.

“They say you survived two years on a deserted island and came home without losing a single man.”

Acknowledge the other party’s accomplishments, and their house’s, and offer warm praise; nothing narrowed the distance between two people faster. Now and then, to smooth my husband’s business dealings, I’d had to strike up a rapport with an associate’s wife, and this was the very art I put to work each time.

“…”

But the method seemed to have no purchase on Herman Ernst. His face, walled off tight as an iron fortress, showed no inclination to soften.

“It can’t have been easy. The nation’s hero really is cut from a different cloth, I thought. To abandon not one of your fleet, even in such dire straits… Reading the article, I was deeply moved myself.”

Herman stopped mid-motion, his knife stalling over his meat. Taking it to mean he meant to give the conversation his attention, I pressed on.

“It comes a little late, in all the confusion, but I offer my heartfelt congratulations on your return, Your Excellency.”

That was the moment. Herman set his silverware down with a sharp clack. He had been eating with every noble courtesy until now, so it could only mean my words had somehow soured his mood.

I stared at his fork and knife, turning over what slip of the tongue I could possibly have made.

What’s got into him? Turn it over as I might, I said nothing that ought to give offense.

I was still flustered by the sudden halt to the meal when he spoke.

“Don’t ordinary families say they missed you? Not ‘I offer my heartfelt congratulations on your return.’”
“…”
“And another thing.”

Herman shut his eyes and opened them again, as though pressing his displeasure back down.

“Where’s the woman who told me to keep firmly in mind that she’s no soldier under my command?”

He was dredging up something I’d said the last time we quarreled. Unable to make out what he was driving at, I quietly set down my own silverware.

“Your Excellency, have I perhaps done something amiss—”
“Enough with the ‘Your Excellency.’”

Herman said it, out of sorts.

“Somehow, thanks to you, it doesn’t feel as though the war’s over at all. The castle’s a wreck at every turn, as though it took a bombardment, and then I’ve to hear ‘Your Excellency’ even under my own roof.”
“Then… what would you have me do?”
“Start with what you call me.”

Herman went on, unruffled.

“Dear, darling, sweetheart. That’s what people usually call each other.”

I watched him arch an eyebrow as if it were nothing at all, and felt the heat rush up into my face.

Did I just hear him right?