Beautiful. Very.

At last.

Baltaheim, capital of the Empire of Balter, was caught up in festivity from one end to the other. Flowers and the flags of every nation decked the streets, and the commercial district was so thronged there was scarcely room to set down a foot. Preparations for the coming triumphal ceremony were plainly in full swing.

A postman pedalled past on his bicycle; students in private-school uniforms chattered as they walked. A gentleman who kept to his fedora even in summer glanced at his wristwatch, while a lady beneath a white parasol studied a boutique’s window with an elegant eye. Carriages great and small aside, more passers-by than I could count swept down the street with every second.

I never realized the Assembly Hall was such a lovely building.

The Balter Assembly Hall, set beside Nicholas Cathedral, caught my eye and held it a moment. In all the years I’d lived in the capital I’d never once noticed it, and yet now, arriving after so long a journey, it struck me fresh.

“There are so many people out.”
“Well, the social season’s nearly upon us.”

That was when it happened. Someone peered into our carriage and cried out, “It’s His Excellency, Herman Ernst!” The shout turned every head at once, and before long they were taking up his name, one voice after another.

“That can’t be quite the only reason, now can it, Your Excellency Herman Ernst.”

When I spoke his name low, for no real reason at all, Herman hurried to drop his eyes to his papers and muttered.

“It’s all mere formality.”

He made a show of being unbothered, but he couldn’t hide the way his ears had gone red. For all the impression he gave otherwise, he took to embarrassment more easily than one might expect. A soft snort of laughter escaped me before I knew it, at the sight of him looking so wholly unlike himself.

You really have lost your mind, Marienne.

I hurried to smooth the smile away and get hold of myself. For that one instant I’d found Herman endearing, and the thought was so unseemly it half drove me out of my mind.

Have I gone and grown fond of him, from being stuck at his side like this?

It seemed I’d let myself grow far too close to him, and to no good purpose. From here on, at the very least, I would have to keep some distance between us.

Gathering my thoughts, I turned my gaze to the window. At the sight of a bustling Baltaheim I hadn’t laid eyes on in so long, I called back a fact I’d let myself forget for a while.

That’s right. This is no place for me.

Returning to the capital meant I’d come one step closer to the place that had always been mine.

For our stay we were to lodge at the Baltaheim Hotel, run by the imperial household; the great Ernst mansion had been left a ruin, never rebuilt after the fire.

The hotel was full of things to enjoy and things to see. A gallery where one could admire the works of celebrated artists; a banquet hall that gave chamber-music recitals each evening; even an outdoor garden where, once the social season arrived, a ball was held every single day. None of this, of course, was granted to just anyone. Only those with the Emperor’s leave could stay there, and among the lesser nobility a single night beneath its roof was counted the pride of a lifetime.

“Ah…!”

Not that I had any leisure to spare a thought for such things. Merely laying the plans to win back what had been taken from me left me short of hours in the day.

And even so, could the hotel be working some kind of magic on me?

“A little gentler, please…!”

As my maid drew the corset tight, a question thick with self-reproach welled up in me.

What on earth have I even done, that it’s already the day of the ceremony?

For all the grand plan I’d laid out to reclaim my place, the only thing I’d actually managed since reaching the capital was to go out and find myself something to wear to the ceremony.

“His Grace has such a difference between the breadth of his shoulders and his waist — why, ready-made would never have fit him at all.”

All at once I remembered the dressmaker’s madam fawning over Herman. Standing there listening at their side had been mortifying enough, and still, what she’d said was no lie.

“Oh, there’s no one who could carry off this dress as you do — as though it had been cut for a duchess. It suits your eyes as if the two were made to match.”

The trouble was that the madam’s flattery had swung my way as well. When she praised me for making even a ready-made dress look bespoke, I could scarcely bring myself to face Herman for shame.

We bought jewelry for the ball too, naturally. After that, I even sent polite refusals to the invitations that came asking for us. Not one of them, of course, had been addressed to the name ‘Gloria Ernst.’ They were all couples’ functions that had really wanted ‘Herman Ernst’ there, and nothing more.

Yes. That’s the whole of it.

And truly, that was all. I’d done next to nothing, and yet the time had gone flying by like a loosed arrow. In the end the day of the ceremony had arrived without my having carried out a single one of the plans I’d made for the capital. From somewhere deep in my chest, a fretful impatience came creeping up.

“My lady, I’ll pull it in once more. Breathe in for me.”
“Wait — ngh!”

I gripped the bedpost hard so the force of the lacing wouldn’t drag me off my feet, and I set my mind to just what it was that had reduced every last one of my plans to nothing.

“Bear with it just a little longer. I’ll have your hair done in no time. The master’s finished dressing already, they tell me, and he’s waiting on you.”

It was in the maid’s hurried words that I finally grasped who the real culprit was.

This is all the fault of that man — Herman Ernst.

It might look as though I were pinning the blame on some innocent party, but it was the plain truth.

Ever since we’d come to the capital, I’d been watching for a chance to slip away to a private detective and put the matter quietly in his hands.

But in all those days, the chance never once came. Part of it was the sheer distance between the imperial hotel and the detective’s office…

But the biggest reason of all is that Herman won’t so much as think of leaving my side for a moment.

Surveillance or protection, I couldn’t have said which. These past few days Herman had been present at my every engagement, and from the moment I opened my eyes to the moment I shut them, the only face before me was his.

Even when I so much as try to raise the idea of taking a separate room…

“Separate rooms? And just what further gossip would you have us set trickling through society?”

His fierce objection saw the idea founder every single time.

The real trouble was that my aversion to sharing a bed with him was steadily fading. Unbelievable as it was, day by day I was growing a little more accustomed to a life lived at his side.

“My lady, it’s all done.”

While I sat lost in thought, the maid had deftly finished with my hair. Then she settled a pale sky-blue bonnet, trimmed with a white ribbon, over it. The word that Herman was waiting seemed to have quickened her hands.

“You look… truly… so very beautiful…”

She drew the long gloves onto my hands, keeping up such a stream of praise that my face went hot.

“The master’s sure to fall for you all over again today.”

I smiled awkwardly and pretended not to have heard. There was no chance of his ever falling for me, not ‘all over again,’ and not so much as once.

“Well, whatever the case — thank you for your trouble, Elli. I really am pleased with it, thanks to you.”

Elli, the maid I’d newly taken on, had a sure hand at every last task, as befit an experienced servant who’d come with a letter of recommendation from some count’s household.

“It makes me glad to hear it pleases you. I’ll go and fetch the master to you at once, then.”

Brisk as ever, Elli was out of the room before I could so much as answer. For some reason she seemed brimming with eagerness to show Herman how I looked.

I stepped slowly up to the mirror and looked myself over.

“…It really is strange.”

Not since my unmarried days had I worn a dress so lavish, so daring in its cut. The sky-blue gown bared the line of my shoulders and flared full and generous from the waist down. Fine lace worked it all over, so that nowhere did it look the least bit like something off a rack.

I tried to imagine how Cedric might have reacted to see me dressed like this.

He’d have said it showed far too much, that I ought to drape a shawl about my shoulders. Smiling all the while, so gently that I couldn’t have refused him if I tried.

Cedric Drake had always spoken to me with a tenderness that was almost too much. Which was precisely why it had never once crossed my mind that it was, in truth, a way of keeping me in hand. Even then, I had been reading my husband’s every mood in everything I did. Fretting over what Cedric might dislike, I’d chosen clothes that covered me up and hadn’t spared so much as a glance for a bold jewel or a daring gown.

And these were the very things I used to love.

It was just the sort of dress I’d once worn gladly, before I married. Looking at the stranger in the mirror, I swallowed down a flash of regret.

“Not too much at all — really, it’s quite nice.”

I turned a slow circle before the mirror and muttered it, as though taking my revenge on the Cedric of my memory. Perhaps it was that I’d put on something I liked for the first time in an age, but a flutter of excitement kept hiccuping up out of me.

“It’s more than just ‘quite nice.’”

It happened just then. At a voice from somewhere I spun hurriedly around.

“Beautiful. Very.”

Herman Ernst had opened the door without so much as a knock and stepped in unannounced, his face that of a man who’d stumbled quite by chance on something lovely; the compliment he’d offered was more tender than any he’d given me before.