037 — Euphemia El Lorraine Ruerug
Warm sunlight poured over the street, and the crowds moved thick through it.
It felt a little unfamiliar. Not because of the number of people. Those who passed made way of their own accord, as if distance were something they owed her, or else walked well clear of her path. Anyone who saw her clothes, and the maids trailing behind, would take her for a noble daughter or a lord's wife, so the gap was only natural. Still, it was a sight she had never known in Ruerug, and Euphemia gripped her parasol tight and glanced about for no reason she could name.
"The way is……"
"To the left, my lady."
"Ah…… thank you."
Guided by the maids, she made for the ferry landing in the capital.
"Ah……"
And then, for a moment, the face of a building far too familiar. Before the shop carved with that beautiful name—Chanelia, the very place she had entered with Perzen back then—Euphemia's golden eyes blinked.
Why is this here……
The man who held her sleeping body in his arms like a princess, gently pressing his lips to her brow, was wearing a faint smile.
"It's a beautiful painting."
The maids offered the words quietly, almost to themselves.
They were right. The painting was exceedingly beautiful. She had been asleep at the time and had no clear memory of it, and yet—
He really was doing this to me……
Of course he could not have stayed like that for all three hours. Even so, he must have done something of the sort along the way, or the painter would never have set it into the canvas. Gazing through the glass at that moment—the situation she herself could not have known, rendered sharp and clear—Euphemia could not hide the restless stir in her chest.
"Ah, Papa……!"
A small girl who had come up beside her at some point looked from the painting to Euphemia and back again.
"A p-princess! It's a princess!"
She seized her father's trouser leg and tugged, crying out as if surprise had tipped over into delight.
"I-I'm terribly sorry!"
"It's all right."
The middle-aged man scooped the girl hastily into his arms and bowed and bowed his apology. Euphemia gave him a bitter smile and shook her head. In those utterly innocent eyes, did she look like a princess who had stepped out of a storybook?
"I'm not a princess, little one."
She smoothed the child's brown-glinting hair, then walked on. The cage was so splendid on the outside that, to other people, it seemed it looked like a beautiful castle.
If someone looked at me, would they say I want too much……
Food, clothing, and a roof resolved themselves, and the domain that had once been poor now turned over far more easily than before. Whenever a letter arrived with the state of Ruerug written in it, she found herself wondering what all her thrashing to feed the territory had even been for.
And yet, if she were asked whether she was happy even so, Euphemia did not think she could nod.
Happiness was the slow filling-in of what one lacked. That lack—so far as outward things went—Perzen had forced full to overflowing. What remained was probably only what lay within, and Euphemia knew that too. Almost no one lived with every such want fulfilled. That was why his way of breaking her felt so cruel to her, and so cunning. Once a material life had been placed in her hands, excessive beyond her station, it seemed to whisper that personal feeling—the inward part—was, of course, the thing one ought to sacrifice.
Click.
Her once-light steps grew a little heavy.
If the life she led now had been her own choosing, she would not even have been turning this over. No. That was wrong. It had been a choice, hadn't it.
The last image of Ciel Midford passed faintly through her mind—the man who had held a hand out to her—and Euphemia swept back the hair tickling at her ear. That choice, too, had not precisely been for herself, but for the people of Ruerug. Even so, she could not bring herself to resent them. If the same chance were offered a hundred times, she would have chosen the same.
"We've arrived."
"Ah……"
The capital's landing, reached before she noticed. At the maid's voice, which drew her up out of her thoughts, Euphemia pressed the fare into the boatman's hand, gathered her skirt with care, and stepped aboard the ferry.
The Tisbe River, glittering as it took the sun, was a pleasure to the eyes—as if jewels had been crushed fine and strewn across the water. The boatman began to row, slow and steady, and the bank came into view, where people sat playing music on instruments of their own. Euphemia took the sandwiches from the basket she had brought and ate them a little at a time.
I know. I know……
Someday she would resign herself. Someday she would submit. And whether she wished it or not, she would conceive that man's child and become the child's mother. So to thrash against it, and put that day off for as long as she could, was the best resistance left to her.
No life had yet taken hold in her. Euphemia laid a hand over her belly, thought a long while, and then lifted her face to the blue sky. It was a morning, far too clear and far too bright.
I opened my eyes slowly, looked out the window, and sat up.
After seeing Euphemia off I had bathed at once and slept deeply, and when I woke it was fifty minutes past two in the afternoon. A faint sweetness clung in my mouth, but the fatigue of a night spent awake, lecturing, seemed to have eased; a thin vigor moved through my body.
She isn't back yet.
I had told her, now and then, that she might go out and see the capital whenever she liked, so I had no grounds to hold her. The weariness stored in me had been heavier than I thought, and so I had let her go. I had not expected her to stay out even this long.
The bed frame creaked. To shake off the drowsy haze I rose, opened the window, and stepped out onto the balcony. For a little while I only took the wind as it came. Then, far off, I saw Euphemia pass the mansion's front gate and come in, and a thin, mirthless laugh touched my mouth.
Not proud. Hunched small. A gait like a young lamb walking, of her own feet, into the tiger's den to be eaten.
Click. Click.
Euphemia climbed the stairs, stopped before the bedroom, and opened the door with care. At the sight beyond it—Perzen, leaning his back against the window—she flinched for no reason.
"I… I'm back……"
She took off her hat as she said it. The greeting was awkward beyond words. Standing there blank as a scarecrow would not do either, so she went to the standing rack beside the desk and hung the hat with a stiff, uncertain care.
"Ah……"
She meant to turn. Perzen was already behind her. He caught her by the waist and pressed his body in, close and indecent.
"I… I sweated a lot……"
She knew far too well that she could not get away by strength. So she cast about, in her own way, for something that might stir a bodily disgust in him.
"I can tell by looking."
He did not seem to care. He swept a hand over the nape of her neck, gently lifted the fine hairs plastered there, and buried his face against her. His lips touched her skin.
"Nn……!"
The mouth at the back of her neck traced her pale skin and moved, little by little, along the line of her throat. The breath that came hot against her now and then tickled so badly that Euphemia trembled without meaning to. Then the hand that had lingered at her waist slipped lower, gathered her skirt up in fistfuls, and bared the white of her thighs.
"Ah……"
She threw both hands out in a rush to stop him.
"Hhk……!"
The instant she caught his hands, teeth closed on the nape of her neck, and Euphemia sucked in an empty breath. She knew perfectly well he did not mean to hurt her. Even so, her whole body stiffened of its own accord.
"Wh-why are you doing this……"
She lowered her hands and tried to speak, her voice shaking. Perzen said nothing. He only bit the other side of her nape, and then, as if herding her, took her into a corner of the wall and shut off every way out with the solid breadth of his body and his height.
"Euphemia. You aren't asking because you don't know. From today, you're in your fertile days, aren't you. I've been keeping count, so don't imagine you can lie to me."
"I-I wasn't particularly trying to lie……"
"Then you shouldn't have taken that slippery stance, as if you meant to let it pass."
"……"
"Am I wrong?"
At the low murmur Euphemia turned her head aside. At the time it had only been a guess drawn from her own reactions, and she had thought he would not be calculating anything of the sort. She had meant to use that, and ask him to bed on a safe day first. If she had, the man before her would surely have poured a cold fury over her, rough and unrestrained. That he had seemed busy with the Imperial Academy—staying out through the night, and the like—so the chance had never come, worked, now that it had come to this, as a piece of unexpected luck.
"On ordinary days I don't covet your body. But if you will not cooperate in the making of an heir, I will take you whenever I please. Do you want to be not a broodmare, but a vessel for semen? If that is the treatment you want, I will oblige you with all my heart."
"No, I—"
A child could be conceived outside the fertile days as well. It was only a matter of probability. To turn the matter inside out would make the whole struggle meaningless, and Euphemia shook her head, strengthless.
"That is not how you hold yourself when you are being scolded."
He came closer, bent his head, and whispered it. Euphemia bit down hard on her lip, reached out a trembling hand, caught her own skirt, and drew it up—very slowly—to about her waist. The white underthings she wore came into view, and the smooth of her belly with them. Perzen, as if satisfied with the unsightly display, curled the corner of his mouth and pressed, press after press, over the place where her womb lay.
"Hhk……!"
Her body wanted, by reflex, to fold forward. Euphemia trembled in both legs and stubbornly kept her waist straight.
—A p-princess! A princess!
And for some reason, in that moment, a short memory rose quietly. She thought of the girl who had called her a princess, and swallowed a self-mocking smile.
Look at this, little one……
I'm not a princess.
What princess in the world would lift her own hem, show her underthings, and offer up her lower belly to be toyed with?
"Aah—!"
Unable to endure the hand pressing her belly as if drawing a slow circle, Euphemia bent forward.
"It… it hurts……"
Her whole abdomen was stifled, womb and bladder alike under the pressure, and she let out a ragged breath, her face crumpling toward tears.
"Nnh!"
Then his index finger jabbed at her navel. He pressed gently around it and bit her earlobe, and—
"Ahng……"
Against her will, Euphemia let out a heated moan. She could not believe it. Color flooded her face in an instant, and she clutched at her blameless skirt as if it were to blame. It had hurt. It had definitely hurt. What, then, had that sensation been, the one that ran the length of her spine a moment ago?
"Euphemia……"
Before she could even be flustered, he called her name, soft and coaxing.
"Today, of all days, your scent is unusually strong."
At that single whispered line, a thin edge of tears finally entered her voice. The sun had been fierce, and she had sweated a great deal; with her skirt hiked up, she could not even imagine what her own scent must be.
"You rotten… bastard……"
Did he really have to go this far? She hated him for refusing her even the minimum of respect. But the man himself, far from finding it sour, seemed only to drink it in. Her natural scent had grown thicker still—the smell of a female desperately enticing a male—and he took his hand from her lower belly and led her roughly onto the bed.
"W-wait……"
Between the skirt ridden up, his hand caught her white underthings and began to draw them down. Euphemia bent her upper body and blocked him. Tousled hair. Rumpled sheets. He had probably been asleep until she returned. To sleep soundly at this hour meant no small fatigue was stored in him, and if she could only make him finish first, he might not take her after all. Virility, after all, went with stamina.
"I-I'll… do it with my mouth."
"……"
Perzen looked at her with a face faintly surprised. Euphemia misread the look, and in a voice thick with shame she said, quietly, as if she had been wronged:
"Y-you're the one… who taught me, aren't you……"
"Ha……"
He laughed. She would not realize it herself. Yes—precisely because she did not realize, the words might have sounded to him like something admirably sweet. Something lovable. And so Perzen looked quietly down at Euphemia, who had lain herself between his legs and was still catching, with awkward hands, at the waist of his trousers.