The Fate That Was Nearly Swapped

Just how much did I drink last night?

Cedric turned the previous evening over in his mind again and again, and however he came at it, it did not seem he had drunk any more than usual.

And yet I can’t for the life of me think why I should have been so far gone I couldn’t hold myself upright.

He remembered being helped into the family’s private retiring room by some servant whose name he did not know; after that, there was nothing at all.

That aside…

Why in the world were he and Marienne lying in one bed? If anyone caught them like this, it would be a disaster.

If by some rotten luck Gloria were to catch me, my life would be as good as forfeit from that day on.

And yet, at so desperate a juncture as this, Cedric was not in the least put out. Quite the opposite. He was pleased, thoroughly and boundlessly pleased. If anything he felt superior, and triumphant besides.

“You can hardly go on living as Gloria at Herman Ernst’s side forever, can you.”

At the time, Marienne had gone all prim and pretended otherwise. Now here she was, unable to forget her own husband, come back to him after all. His heart did not merely soften at the sight; it seemed to melt clean away into a puddle.

Of course. That is just like you.

Marienne had always prized propriety and her standing in society above all else. However furious such a woman might have been at his betrayal, she would never have chosen Herman Ernst, her own twin’s husband.

Yes. It was an absurd worry from the very start.

Every time he had seen Marienne standing beside Herman, at the triumphal banquet, at the ball, Cedric had been on edge. On edge hardly covered it. His stomach had turned over and over until he thought his eyes would roll back in his head.

Gloria made eyes at that bastard and flirted with him too, on the excuse of driving a wedge between him and Marienne, but…

Cedric stretched out a careful hand and swept the hair back from Marienne’s face where she slept. Watching her lie there dead to the world at his side, he felt it confirmed. For her there had only ever been him.

Still — however much I might regret it now, there’s no putting Marienne back where she belongs.

If Herman Ernst ever caught on to what they had done, it would be a catastrophe. And even supposing he deceived the bastard perfectly and put every last thing back as it had been, he did not think he could bear to stand by and watch Gloria at Herman’s side.

It was best when both women were mine to keep.

Marienne and Gloria.

Perhaps because they were twins, one of them alone had never felt complete to him. Marienne granted him the settled calm of a life; Gloria breathed the vitality into it. Peace and pleasure mattered so equally to Cedric that he could not have ranked one above the other.

When you think about it, they were all mine to begin with. Right up until Herman Ernst, that bastard, came back.

Never had the past seemed so dear to him. In that instant Cedric made up his mind to go back to those days, to the time when Marienne and Gloria had both been there in his own manor.

“Mari, wake up now.”

Now that he knew Marienne wanted to be at his side, they had to work out how the two of them were to meet from here on without Gloria finding out. And while he bought himself time that way, he could give a little more thought to which of them he would seat in his wife’s place.

All things considered — the house, the business — Marienne does suit the wife’s seat better.

It was a calculation that amounted to nothing, but the engine of Cedric’s wishful thinking had no intention of stopping.

He wanted to talk to Marienne before anyone came bursting in on them. She showed not the slightest sign of waking, though, and at last, out of patience, Cedric shook her by the shoulder.

“Mmh…”

Marienne let out a sluggish, aching groan and forced her eyes open. Long lashes blinked slowly, and a pair of blue eyes settled on Cedric.

“Get up now, Mari. There’s no time. This is no moment to be taking our ease. Of course, I understand your true feelings well enough now, so you needn’t trouble yourself over that.”
“…Hm?”
“But there are far too many watching eyes in this manor. For today let us part here, and I shall send word to you later, separately—”
“What are you on about at this ungodly hour of the morning? God, you’re irritating.”

A shrill, snappish voice drove straight into Cedric’s ear.

“M-Mari?”

Cedric’s mouth opened and closed in bewilderment. Gloria hauled herself upright in a tousled heap, her face full of irritation.

“Mari. Mari, my foot.”

Publicly, Gloria had always insisted Cedric call her ‘Marienne,’ and in front of others he did, but never when it was just the two of them alone. And yet just now, somehow, he seemed to be laboring under the delusion that she was the ‘real Marienne.’

“You— you aren’t Marienne? No — you are not Marienne, are you?”

The question could not hide his consternation, and Gloria drew from it a very powerful certainty.

“Did you eat something rotten yesterday? Or have you finally gone soft in the head? Just who in the world do you think you’re calling Marienne!”
“…Pardon?”

Gloria kicked back the covers and sprang up from the bed, seething. The dress that had been hanging precariously on her slipped and dropped to the floor, and only then did she understand why Cedric had fallen under so preposterous a misapprehension.

“Hah.”

A bitter little laugh leaked out between her teeth. Cedric, the puzzled look still stuck to his face, muttered blankly.

“…Gloria?”
“That’s right. It’s me. What, disappointed I’m not Mari?”
“H-how could I be? That aside — how is it you’re wearing Marienne’s dress…”

Flustered, Cedric scrambled out of the bed and hurried round to her side, begging her pardon as though he might drop to his knees at any moment.

“Ria, it isn’t at all what you’re thinking. I fell asleep all of a sudden myself last night — I’ve no idea what any of this is.”

Cedric, who had no notion of what was going on, wrung his hands. Gloria kept the sharpness in her eyes, but she turned his words calmly over.

“…You fell asleep all of a sudden?”
“Yes. When I opened my eyes there was a woman beside me wearing Marienne’s dress, so I was trying to send her quietly out before anyone else saw.”
“Precisely. Why in the world am I wearing Marienne’s dress?”
“In any case, I am truly innocent. There was no way for me not to mistake you for Marienne—”
“All right, all right, I’ve heard enough — shut that mouth of yours.”

Gloria groped through her hazy memory, going back over the night before.

What was the last thing I remember?

In a flash the sight of Marienne walking into the Drakes’ retiring room rose up before her, and in the same instant a chill went down her spine and froze there.

Don’t tell me she swapped clothes with me while I was asleep?

Gloria honed her unease into a sharp glare and poured it out over Cedric.

“Did you drink a great deal last night?”
“No, hardly any. One glass while I smoked a cigar, and that was the whole of it.”
“And yet you opened your eyes and found yourself lying here?”

Cedric nodded that he had. The two of them stared hard at one another, and only then did it dawn on them that something had gone very wrong.

“Marienne. That girl really has gone mad, hasn’t she?”

Gloria flew into a fit, her eyes flashing with fury. Over Cedric’s face too there spread a grave dismay, and with it a disappointment he could not have accounted for. Catching that look on him in the middle of all this, the look of a man who regretted it, Gloria felt her stomach turn over.

“Is this any time to be standing about like that? You need to get out there this instant and find out how things stand!”

“…”

“Cedric Drake!”

She shouted at Cedric, who stood there vacant even at so pressing a moment.

“Hah, all right, all right — just rein in that temper of yours, would you. My head’s in enough of a muddle as it is; must you screech at me like that?”
“You’re in no position to raise your voice at me, I think? The way you were under the delusion I was Marienne just now — going on about whether or not you’d send word to me later — I remember every bit of it.”

Cedric had a great deal he wanted to say, but every word of it would only have scraped at Gloria’s temper, so he clamped his mouth shut.

“…I’ll go out and see how matters stand. You call a maid or someone and get out of that dress this instant.”

He answered back rather than give ground, but he could not quite scrub away the fluster of a man with no idea what was happening. Gloria watched his back as he bolted from the room in so sorry a fashion, and could not help letting out a hollow laugh.

Only then, in a room gone perfectly quiet, did she sink into deep thought.

Don’t tell me she meant to swap clothes and pass herself off as me?

But she soon steadied herself. The plan had plainly failed, and failed completely.

If Marienne’s plan had succeeded, the manor could hardly be this quiet.

It came as a relief. Of course, Marienne’s was not the only plan that had failed; Gloria’s own had come to nothing as well.

Herman Ernst. Why is there not so much as a chink in that man?

A secret glance, a subtle touch, a honeyed voice, a radiant smile. Every method that had made every man in the empire fall for her she had poured out upon Herman Ernst, and he had only thrown up a wall like an iron fortress and met her with indifference.

It was hardly a grand plan, but I did hope to open at least some small crack between Herman and Marienne…

Herman’s indifferent gaze had flung her plan headlong into the pit. And what she could bear still less was where that indifferent gaze always ended: on Marienne.

“Aaaargh!”

Unable to contain her irritation, Gloria tore at her hair.

This won’t do. I need a surer way to be rid of Marienne for good.

She must have been far too complacent until now. Nothing else could explain a sense of danger this keen.

What sort of nerve does it take to put on my clothes in my own manor and try to pass yourself off as me!

Leave Marienne as she was and something terrible was going to happen. And in that instant one excellent method flashed through Gloria’s mind.

Yes — why did I never think of it?

Gloria thought of her own very great weakness. And that weakness would make the most perfect poison for the Marienne who was playing the part of ‘Gloria Ernst.’

Of course, it’s a method that carries a fair risk for me as well…

Still, it would split Herman and Marienne apart for certain, and bury the woman completely in this conservative society of theirs.

I won’t say I’m sorry, Mari. I never wanted to go this far either.

In the end, all of this was of Marienne’s own making.