Why Do You Look Like That?

Was being called beautiful really enough to set my face burning? The seemingly blunt man had a knack for saying the most mortifying things as though they were nothing at all. I barely managed to lift the corners of my mouth; given my way, I’d have fled straight into the mirror.

Like some young lady wearing a gown for the very first time, I carried on in front of the mirror like an utter fool.

I shook my head briskly. Surely he hadn’t seen all that much. The part where I’d spun round and round, giddy with excitement, I mean. I hadn’t even heard the door open, so there was no telling from what point he’d been watching.

Herman, who had been gazing at me all the while, drew a half-circle in the air with his long forefinger. I couldn’t make out what he meant, and I tilted my head.

“Turn around. Like you did just now.”

“…”

Embarrassment came rushing in like the tide. Whether he knew how I felt or not, he raised his eyebrows as if to say, well, what are you waiting for?

He saw. From the very start.

There was no help for it now that I’d been caught out entirely. I couldn’t fathom why he was asking this of me, but I followed his gentle gesture and turned around.

He watched from a step away, then strode over to me. Close enough now that I could feel his breath on the nape of my neck, he ran his long forefinger along my shoulder and came to rest at one of the ribbons.

“You’re surprisingly careless, sometimes. When you don’t look the least bit the type.”

With a firm tug, he cinched tight a ribbon that had come loose, teasing me all the while in a tone brimming with quiet mischief. Elli had tied that very ribbon with all her might only moments before; no amount of spinning in front of a mirror could have worked it loose on its own.

“I— I’ll do it myself.”

I hurriedly turned to stop him, but his reflexes were beyond anything I could hope to match.

“It’s fine. I’ve already done it.”

Somehow he had already tied the ribbon back to perfection, and he stood there wearing a thoroughly satisfied look.

Wait a moment. This is far too close.

His black lashes cast long shadows, and I gazed at them as if spellbound before letting my eyes drift slowly downward. Only then did his attire register with me.

The Empire of Balter’s snow-white naval uniform was flawless, not a blemish on it anywhere. Mere clothing, and yet it overwhelmed all on its own. The gold epaulettes set on his broad shoulders seemed to stand for some noble honor, and the gold bands ringing the sleeves proclaimed the full dignity of a supreme commander.

“What are you staring at?”

A low voice brushed my brow. Coming abruptly to my senses, I muttered without thinking.

“Ah, it’s just— the uniform suits you so well.”

The moment it was out I wished I hadn’t said it, but he seemed quite unmoved.

“A uniform’s a uniform, isn’t it.”

He dropped his gaze and looked himself over, as though he wore it so often that feeling anything special about it would be strange.

Then, a moment later, he fixed his eyes on me, utterly at ease. The line of my neck, my waist, my wrists, then my eyes again. A slow, insistent gaze came to rest on every part of me.

“The way I see it, you look perfect.”

Which was his way of telling me to stop looking in the mirror, I supposed.

“Shall we go, then?”

He held out his hand without warning. There was no wavering in the courteous gesture; it was, no doubt, also a vow to conduct himself in earnest from here on. I swallowed dryly for no reason and laid my hand on his, and I dipped a light curtsy, too, to say what an honor it was to be escorted.

“It would have been better had we prepared at leisure. I’m sorry — it seems I rushed you without meaning to.”

The triumphal ceremony began with the returning corps marching down the central boulevard of Baltaheim’s plaza, after which they would receive the citizens’ congratulations and proceed all the way to the imperial palace alongside the military band. But Herman insisted on escorting his wife first, before joining the march. He meant to deliver me to the imperial palace, the Regalium Palace, and only then fall in with the triumphal procession.

“Really, I’m perfectly able to find my own way to the palace on my—”

“I believe I told you that was absolutely out of the question.”

He cut me off flatly.

I’d insisted I could find my own way well enough, but the truth was I had no need to labor for it at all. I had only to sit quietly in the imperial carriage and it would deliver me there without fail. Even so, he made his firm position plain: under no circumstances could he send me off alone.

“As if there’s any husband who’d send his wife off on her own, without so much as an escort.”

He answered like a soldier reciting a rote-learned line, and only then could I get a rough sense of what sort of man he was. He seemed a man so brimming with a sense of duty that he might have been molded out of the stuff, the sort who would push himself past all reason to carry out whatever he deemed his obligation.

“Even so, it must be a bother for you. It’s not too late — please, hurry and join the ranks.”

I gently declined his sense of duty.

“You ought to rally your fleet-men, too, before the triumphal march begins.”

Which was to say, I dearly wished he would be a little less devoted. My expression came close to open dismay, but I wiped every trace of discomfort clean from my face.

Only if Herman gives me a moment’s distance can I so much as attempt the plan I’ve laid.

Spouting words utterly at odds with my true feelings, I forced a bright smile.

“Not in the least.”

“Sorry?”

“I said it’s not the least bit a bother.”

What came back was an earnest truth that sounded like a joke. If escorting his wife were a bother, he said, he’d never have married in the first place.

…Herman really was a husband who tried his best.

I wanted to argue at the back of the man leading me on by the hand, that the world held countless husbands who found precisely such things a bother. But the stubborn man escorted me all the way to the palace at last, and only then joined the procession.

An attendant led me to the antechamber assigned to House Ernst. The chamber allotted to the family came with a balcony, from which one could see the central district steeped in festival cheer. It was surely a special courtesy from the imperial household, granted under the honor of my being a member of House Ernst.

“Haah.”

But even with the view thrown wide open before me, a stifling weight pressed in, and I could do nothing but heave one sigh after another. For all the struggle it had taken to come up to the capital, not a single thing had changed.

How can it be that not one thing goes the way I mean it to?

Now that I’d arrived at the palace, with so many watching eyes about, slipping outside looked impossible. Worse still, should my covert movements toward the plan happen to catch Gloria’s eye, I might well be saddled with some absurd false charge on the spot and driven out of the capital all over again. For just now I was nothing at all, merely ‘Gloria the madwoman.’

No. Don’t go wandering the endless corridor of regret. I have to find a way out, whatever it takes.

Murmuring a maxim of the Empire of Balter, I steadied myself against the anxiety threatening to swallow me. I had no wish to be besieged by weakness all over again.

In that moment, a carriage that had just crossed the central road and pulled up caught my eye. A carriage bearing a crest worn achingly familiar to me.

It’s House Drake.

A dove with wings spread, flanked on either side by olive branches. It stood for House Drake, which had built its wealth on a foundation of trust and peace. From the carriage halted before the palace, Cedric Drake stepped crisply into view.

“So he’s here.”

At the sight of the sleek smile hung on his lips, my teeth ground of their own accord. He held out his hand toward the carriage with a show of tenderness, and when I pictured the woman who would take that hand and step down, my brow furrowed on its own.

“That’s…”

But contrary to what I’d expected, the one who took his hand and stepped down was the Dowager Countess Drake. Helena Drake, wearing the softest of expressions, linked her arm through Cedric’s, and following after, Gloria stepped down from the carriage on the hand of an imperial attendant.

“Hah.”

A bitter laugh spilled out of me, for it was a scene that had often played out back when I was the Countess Drake, too.

As a rule, one gentleman was to escort one lady. There were exceptional cases, of course, when a single gentleman might escort two, provided he had both a widowed mother and a wife to attend.

Exactly the situation House Drake now found itself in.

“Why…”

I took in the sight of Gloria trailing behind her mother-in-law and her husband, her face gone stiff. Watching that preposterous scene, an incredulous laugh kept escaping my lips.

“Why do you look like that, Gloria?”

If she’d fought tooth and nail to seize someone else’s place, she ought at least to have the decency to feign a little happiness. Watching Gloria doggedly carry out the very things that until so recently had been mine, everything I’d once held so dear came to feel utterly worthless.

Even after the members of House Drake had gone inside the palace, I had to stand there a very long while yet, picturing all the while the Gloria of a moment before, the one who had glared at Cedric with a face as though she’d been chewing sand.