Diamond Crown (3)

Katrina fell silent at Alicia’s words.

Alicia mistakenly thought the Marchioness of Belz was just a vain noblewoman interested only in scattering gold coins around.

Katrina wanted to ask who in the world could be this naive.

Alicia’s worried voice was filled with genuine concern.

-It’s not like that, My Lady.

Katrina wanted to spit out the truth, but she held her tongue for the moment.

“Master Katrina, could you explain the scented candle the Marchioness of Belz commissioned from you—the one people call the ‘Golden Candle’?”

Despite her innocent manner, Alicia asked exactly the question that was needed.

“My Lady. What I made on the Marchioness of Belz’s request is called the ‘Aedria Candle,’ but the world knows it as the ‘Golden Candle,’ so I will call it the Golden Candle as well. I am flustered and not sure where I should even begin.”

Katrina’s gaze wandered anxiously.

“What effect does Aedria have?”

Alicia asked in a gentle tone.

Katrina flinched as though Alicia had suddenly struck right at the heart of it.

“Aedria has a contraceptive effect.”

Her face, stiff with tension, managed to force the words out.

“Contraception…?”

Alicia put on a suitably surprised expression, even though she had expected that answer.

After watching Katrina’s face, knotted with worry and hesitation, for a while, Alicia lowered her voice.

“Why would the Marchioness of Belz need contraception?”

The Marchioness of Belz had lost her husband and now lived alone.

“My Lady.”

Seeing how genuinely aghast Alicia looked, Katrina hesitated.

It felt wretched to have to speak of something so sordid to such a spotless young lady.

“Katrina?”

Alicia tilted her head, unwittingly prodding Katrina’s sense of guilt even more.

Katrina steeled herself, let out a long breath, and began to speak.

“The Marchioness of Belz has numerous lovers. She is acting in place of the late Marquis on the condition that she does not remarry. If she were to remarry or bear an illegitimate child, the imperial family would strip her of her current authority. So the Marchioness chose not to remarry and instead to see many men, and she asked me for help to avoid the risk of an illegitimate child.”

Alicia furrowed her brows as if she had just heard something horrific.

“So she would not get pregnant… Countless lovers, you say. I can understand her having good friends now that she is on her own, but s-several men?”

Katrina composed her expression at Alicia’s innocent reaction.

“I am sorry to say it, but yes. The Marchioness of Belz has lovers in various circles and factions.”

Katrina gave a bitter little smile.

“How many are we talking about?”

Alicia deliberately acted as though she were merely nosy about the scandal.

She also half intended to compare the names with the Marchioness’s lovers she already knew of.

“I do not know the exact number. However, I do know who some of the important ones are. Starting with the chancellor, Marquis Manners…”

Katrina began to count them off on her fingers as she listed the people she knew.

“Who?!”

Alicia burst out in a shout.

She was not putting on an act and pretending to be surprised.

She shouted because she was genuinely taken aback.

“Marquis Manners is the lover the Marchioness of Belz hides the most carefully. And the Marchioness is not his only adulterous partner either, My Lady.”

Alicia felt a little dazed.

The words did not seem to reach her ears properly.

“I am sorry, I was just so shocked…”

“That is only natural.”

Katrina felt apologetic that she had to tell such a pure lady about the sordid affairs of the aristocratic social scene.

It was said that Alicia’s father, the late Marquess Rain, had also seen several women, but it was nothing compared to the imperial capital’s society.

In the high society of the imperial capital, Baden, nobles or ladies with only a single paramour were practically an endangered species.

Since most nobles married for political reasons, affairs were taken for granted.

Normally they lived modestly while unmarried, then began their love affairs once wed and plunged into adultery without shame.

So if someone had only one lover or paramour, it meant they truly had only a single romantic partner.

Those were the ones who simply wanted someone to love.

Others dated two or three people according to taste.

In the imperial capital, it was considered basic to have one partner for the bed, one for parties, and one for leisure.

It would have been difficult for Alicia, who was not yet married, to fully grasp the convoluted situation among the nobles of the capital.

But what shocked Alicia was not the capital nobles’ depravity.

She already knew enough about the love affairs that would erupt over the next nine years that a lady keeping three men was hardly surprising.

The Marchioness of Belz alone had at least eight legs in different camps, so to speak.

What stunned Alicia wholly was a single scandal.

The Marchioness of Belz and the chancellor, Marquis Manners.

Alicia urged Katrina to go on.

As she confirmed the Marchioness’s partners she already knew of, Alicia sank deep into thought.

Perhaps.

She might be able to use the Marchioness of Belz to bring down House Manners.

The Marchioness of Belz was already a criminal in the eyes of the imperial family.

In the end, the imperial house would deal with that criminal for her.

Alicia had thought of a way to destroy her enemy using someone the imperial family already deemed guilty.

“Thank you for speaking so honestly, Katrina.”

“Think nothing of it.”

“I truly am shocked, honestly. So the Marchioness of Belz not only loves spending gold coins, she really loves men as well.”

Alicia spoke with a slightly uncomfortable expression.

“I am only sorry that I had to say such things in front of you, My Lady.”

From the imperial family’s perspective, Katrina was at the root of the problem.

It might look as though she had merely supplied goods according to the Marchioness’s order, but she was not blameless.

Katrina must have anticipated that the Marchioness would use the Golden Candle on members of the imperial family.

The Marchioness of Belz spent gold like water.

She was a major client, so it had been hard to cut off business with her.

Katrina had pretended ignorance to dodge her own guilt, but with so many candles being ordered so regularly, she could easily have guessed.

“The Marchioness of Belz used the Golden Candle to interfere with imperial conceptions.”

Alicia said it with solemn gravity.

“…”

Katrina knew it was time to acknowledge her guilt.

“Was it the chancellor, Marquis Manners, who ordered this?”

Alicia’s voice was more earnest and guileless than ever.

There was a restrained severity to her demeanor.

“I cannot say for certain…”

Katrina let her words trail off.

“Someone as simple and straightforward as the Marchioness of Belz could not possibly have devised such a dreadful scheme against the imperial family, could she? It sounds awful to say, but she is not particularly clever. Her only real merit is that she is good-natured. Was she perhaps blackmailed by the chancellor because of their affair?”

Alicia pitied the Marchioness of Belz, viciously used by the chancellor because of the sin of her adultery.

“Th-that… may be the case.”

Katrina understood that Alicia wanted to defend someone who might soon become family to the imperial house.

This situation might even turn into an opportunity for her.

As Alicia spoke, a realization suddenly struck her, and doubt began to rise.

“Even if the Marchioness of Belz has committed the sin of adultery, things have turned out horribly for her.”

“Indeed they have…”

Marquis Manners had made his own daughter into an imperial consort.

For a chancellor’s daughter, it would have looked far better to petition openly and enter the palace as a consort.

Yet the chancellor’s daughter, Lady Maude, had entered the palace already bearing a child.

She had waited until she was almost due to announce her pregnancy and ask to be recognized as a consort.

Could all of that really have been a coincidence?

The chancellor’s family, House Manners, had long served close beside the imperial line.

The current chancellor, Marquis Manners, had attended the previous emperor as well.

Even if he did not know every detail, he might have known at least a little of the secrets surrounding imperial heirs.

On top of that, Marquis Manners was having an illicit relationship with the Marchioness of Belz.

Could he truly have been unaware of what was happening within the palace?

Because of the royal dots, the emperor feared having children.

The Marchioness of Belz had disguised contraceptive candles as Golden Candles and gifted them, making it harder for the imperial family to conceive.

The chancellor was a shrewd man.

At the very least, he must have suspected something.

The strikingly small number of heirs in the current imperial line had to be due to some interference.

Perhaps, just as Alicia had said, the Marchioness of Belz had been unwittingly used by Marquis Manners.

“Master Katrina.”

“Yes, My Lady.”

Alicia put aside her innocent demeanor.

“I will now give you your orders.”

In the darkness, Katrina held her breath as she listened to Alicia speak.

She began to suspect that she had been completely wrong to think this lady before her was naive.

In words, Alicia claimed that the Marchioness of Belz had been used by the chancellor, Marquis Manners.

But the instructions she now gave Katrina carried a very clear intent.

She ordered Katrina to have the Marchioness of Belz point to Marquis Manners before the emperor as the one behind the Golden Candles.

It was a truly terrifying command.

Those words would be enough to overturn the empire’s future.

Yet the voice that issued that frightening order was as warm and gentle as ever.

Alicia did not think of herself as particularly righteous.

She did not live especially for the sake of justice.

All she wanted was for good, innocent people to live without being tormented.

Alicia bore no personal grudge against the Marchioness of Belz.

The Marchioness had once picked a quarrel with her in an unpleasant way, but it was something she could easily have brushed off.

However, the Marchioness had plunged countless people into the agony of being unable to conceive, with no idea why, through those Golden Candles.

Her sins were many.

She needed to be accused, punished, and have the twisted truth set straight.

Yet because Alicia did not put justice above all else, she postponed the Marchioness’s punishment.

Trusting that the Marchioness would be punished in the end, she decided, for now, to use her according to her own needs.

A hand clad in lace gloves held a quill and moved with fluid grace.

The quill glided elegantly, scattering a rough scratching sound.

Scritch, scritch.

Amid that rough sound and graceful motion, the scandal that would link the imperial house and high society was neatly written down.

After returning to Baden, Alicia stayed at the grand ducal residence.

It was because she worried about Reichardt.

When Alicia said she ought to stay close because she was worried about him, Reichardt had looked as though he wanted to say something.

Her worry was sincere.

The situation had changed.

Reichardt had not made a sacrificial “substitute” who would take his pain in his place through a marriage vow.

She wanted to be by his side because she loved him, but she was also afraid that his pain might strike at any time and something might happen to him.

Now that merely being near Alicia made the pain disappear, Reichardt refused marriage all the more firmly.

But she could not stay glued to him at all times.

Both Reichardt and Alicia had their own duties to attend to.

Late at night.

On her way back from the study to her room, Alicia found the atmosphere strangely quiet.

She only realized the reason when she saw the bench in front of her room.

“Rei?”

Reichardt was sitting there on the bench in front of her room, all alone.

He wore the same expression he had had when she told him she would be staying at the grand ducal residence, as though he had something he wanted to say.

“Alicia.”

Recognizing her, Reichardt answered with a smile.

Alicia smiled back at him, then her expression shifted, and she strode forward and leapt straight into his arms.

Reichardt moved in an instant and caught her soft body as she flung herself around him.

“Rei, did you happen to be in pain while I was gone?”

She found it a little strange, but a hug was never a bad thing.

“No, I’m fine.”

Reichardt, faintly smiling as he held Alicia in return, answered with a somewhat subdued expression.

It was the look of a man whose conscience was pricking at him.