Unexpected

The rain had come down all at once, in one great burst, and afterward the weather turned cool and fresh as could be. The coachman said the ground needed a little more time to firm up, so we were held at the inn another day or so.

When we set out again, the mood inside the carriage had shifted from before. Being shut up alone with Herman in that cramped space no longer felt so very uncomfortable.

“…”

Even so, I couldn’t keep my mind on the book I’d been reading, and soon had to close the cover. It wasn’t on Herman Ernst’s account. The nearer we drew to the capital, the more parched my mouth seemed to go.

I’d vowed boldly enough to reclaim my name, but whether the plan could actually succeed was anyone’s guess.

Thinking of it objectively — gathering evidence to prove I’m Marienne is far too difficult.

From what I’d caught in passing from Herman before we left for the capital, Gloria seemed bent on shutting me out of society altogether. So whatever claim I put forward, people could only think: There goes the mad Gloria Ernst, spouting her nonsense again.

Act clumsily, and I’ll only be repeating exactly what happened at the county manor.

I’d been robbed of myself once already, powerless to stop it, and once was enough. What I needed now was some other way to settle the matter.

At first I’d thought of taking the affair to the imperial tribunal, the Empire’s highest court, but that path had a good many problems. The justices’ rulings bent with public opinion, and they would surely cling to caution before accepting the word of a woman branded “mad.” Worse still, if some mischance saw my claim thrown out on those very doubts, I would have to live out the rest of my life as “Gloria Ernst.”

That, never.

The very thought was dreadful. Without meaning to, I gripped the book’s cover and drew a short, ragged breath. The odds of success were slim and the danger great should it fail; I could not stake my life on a method so full of holes.

Then the way that’s left…

Quietly stilling my pounding heart, I let my eyes fall gently shut.

…is to switch Gloria and me back again, the very thing they did to me.

Just as they had traded our two lives with an ease that beggared belief, if only I could make people know me not as “Gloria” but as “Marienne,” the whole tangle would come undone, clean and simple.

Thanks to Gloria, I suppose I ought to say.

A weak, joyless laugh slipped out from between my teeth.

Thanks to that girl dragging her own name and repute down into the abyss with her own two hands, the real Gloria, restored now to the name “Gloria,” would be able to do nothing at all. Just as with me now, whatever she said would be brushed aside as a madwoman’s raving.

The trouble is Cedric.

He was the one who had contrived this whole affair out of love for Gloria. Even if I somehow clawed my way back to my rightful place, the husband who had cast me off was not about to sit idle and merely watch. Was there no way to be rid of Cedric once and for all, and cut every last tie to him?

“Is something the matter?”

Herman lifted his eyes from his papers just then and spoke, flat and even. I widened my eyes, silently asking what he meant.

“Your color looks a touch off, is all.”
“Ah.”

Was I to guard even my own thoughts around Herman Ernst? It felt as though he’d seen straight through to the tangle in my mind, and for no reason at all I grew flustered.

“It’s from staring at the book so long — it’s made me carsick.”
“Then let us stop and rest a while.”
“No, no. There’s no need to go that far.”

At my firm answer Herman’s brow creased faintly. I hurried to lift the corners of my mouth and offered a reason.

“We’re already behind schedule as it is, and the carsickness isn’t so very bad. Thank you for worrying over me.”

Herman studied me a good long while, then at last inclined his head to say he understood, and turned his eyes back to his papers to run over the work. Reading print inside a jolting carriage was no ordinary feat, yet his face stayed perfectly composed.

“Herman — are you all right?”

I hesitated a little before I asked.

“You’ve done nothing but look at papers since this morning. I only wondered whether you might be feeling dizzy.”

At that, Herman gave a light laugh.

“You’ve been full of worry over me, ever since the other day.”

He seemed to mean the night a day or two back, when the rain had come down in torrents.

“Are you always so full of worry, as a rule?”

“…”

“Or is it that you’re giving me some special treatment?”

Herman scratched his cheek with one long finger and, unruffled, gave his eyebrows a little lift. At the sight of that shameless, sly face, my lips pressed shut of their own accord, and I hastily opened the book again and buried my face in the print.

In that very instant, Herman gently plucked the book from my hands.

“You said you were carsick. That’s enough of that.”

Then he chided me to keep my eyes fixed on something far off. I wasn’t truly carsick, but I had no choice except to gaze out at the passing scenery. That was well enough for the first few minutes; still, I could hardly spend hours on end staring idly out the window, and in the end, unable to bear the tedium, I turned to the stack of papers on the seat beside me.

“Um — there seems to be something a little off with this report.”

Studying the neatly ordered columns of figures, I murmured it as if drawn in against my will. Herman lifted his gaze from the paper in his hand and gave me his full attention.

“Off?”
“It looks as though someone deliberately cooked the books in this financial report.”

I picked up the thin sheet. Herman didn’t stop me, though I’d taken the report without his leave.

“Here. You see — they’ve carried every cost incurred this month over into the next before tallying it up.”

I explained, pointing out several of the expense entries with my finger. By deferring the costs on purpose, the report inflated that month’s profitability, cunningly doctored to make the finances look rock-solid and sound.

“This is against the law…”

A year ago, it had come to light that the Comptroller-General of the Treasury had deliberately withheld portions of the financial reports he submitted to the Emperor. In the name of state secrecy, he had reclassed part of the military spending as “special outlays,” making the Empire’s finances appear sturdier than they truly were. He was stripped of his office for it, and the papers ran follow-up pieces on the affair day after day. For a good while afterward, the upper nobility went carefully back over the household accounts they’d left entirely in their accountants’ hands, watchful for whether the same manipulation might be lurking in their own.

“So that’s why the projected returns came out so absurdly high. No wonder the costs struck me as abnormally low.”

Herman ground his teeth and thrust another financial report at me.

“Has the same trick been worked here as well?”

That one was last month’s document. I looked the report over slowly, then explained in earnest, as far as my knowledge would carry me.

“Why, of all the—”

Whether from anger or something else, Herman swept his forelock back with a rough hand. The man who’d filed such a sham of a report, he added, would have to be dismissed at once.

“But — Gloria.”

I lifted my head and met Herman’s eyes.

“Yes, Herman?”

“…”

“What is it?”

For some reason, having called my name, he gave no answer. When I tilted my head to ask why he’d gone quiet, Herman, who had been gazing deep at me all the while, gave a light laugh.

“Nothing. It’s just… unexpected.”

Then, out of nowhere, he said something with no bearing on anything at all.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you press a point with a face so brimming with confidence — it’s a little curious to me, that’s all.”

Those eyes boring into me were hard to bear. More to the point, I had the feeling I’d made some sort of slip.

“W-well, that’s because managing a house’s finances falls to the lady of the house.”

I made my awkward excuse and turned my gaze past the window. I made a show of the carsickness taking a turn for the worse, but Herman already wore the look of a man who believed not a word of it.

In the Drake county manor of Baltaheim, the imperial capital, a reading circle of noble ladies was in full swing. The month’s selection, a merchant’s castaway account of a voyage round the Eastern Continent, had gone unfinished by every last lady in attendance.

“Countess Drake, whatever are we to do. From what my husband tells me, the Duchess Ernst is on her way up to the capital this very moment.”

So said the Baroness Turnel, society’s very font of gossip. Her husband ran a sizable press house and was forever tipping her off, ahead of time, to the weightier stories bound for the dailies.

“…Ria is coming to the capital, you say.”

The pitiable face of “Countess Marienne Drake” drained slowly to white, and the ladies gathered at the circle watched her, every one of them letting slip a sigh of pity. What a shock it had been, the mad twin scheming after her husband and her place. This was the Marienne Drake who had always worn a soft smile whenever she spoke of her twin, and now she trembled like a frightened woodpecker at the mere name “Gloria.”

“Oh, poor Madam Drake. Don’t let it grieve you so.”

The meddlesome Countess Hound wrapped an arm around the shoulders of Gloria, who was passing herself off as Marienne, and pressed her deepest comfort upon her.

“The Duchess Ernst could never torment you again. After a disgrace like that, how could she possibly dare?”
“Just so. Don’t fret yourself over it. And should she ever trouble you again, then on the honor of steadfast noblewomen, we shall set it right for you.”

The ladies seated in their ring each added a word of their own.

“It’s rather forward of me to say, but war hero’s wife or no, this is honestly going too far, I think.”
“Quite. She claims her aim is to attend her husband’s triumphal ceremony — but with what face does she mean to show herself in the capital at all?”

About then, the Baroness Turnel carefully brought out a certain tale she’d had from her husband.

“As I hear it, the marriage brokers are lying awake through the night, waiting on Duke Ernst to appear at the ceremony.”
“My — whatever for?”
“Why, they say an enormous broker’s commission has been posted. For whoever arranges a new match for Duke Ernst.”

A brief hush drifted through the ladies.

“Do you mean the duke and duchess are preparing to divorce?”

someone asked, cautiously.

“Well — when you think on it, staying married to Gloria Ernst would be the stranger thing by far.”

another answered, as though it were only obvious.

Just as their hushed yet chattering talk was settling toward the Ernsts are certain to divorce before long, a frail, trembling sound came from somewhere.

“I am always grateful for the concern you ladies show me, truly, but…”

Gloria dabbed at the tears brimming in her blue eyes and choked out a pitiful sob. At this turn no one had foreseen, every gaze in the room fixed upon her.

“It is all my own fault — so I do beg you, please, let it rest.”