Is It Wrong for a Woman to Seek Out Her Future Husband?
“Hasn’t Young Master Edward been acting a little strange lately?”
“Hush, child! Don’t go saying such things so carelessly.”
“But it isn’t gossip—I’m worried. He’s been skipping meals for days now…”
“He must have a great deal on his mind. After all, his betrothed is none other than… Lady Brontë.”
“Lady Brontë… eek…”
A few days after my engagement to Ania Brontë was arranged, I swung a wooden practice sword while the servants’ whispers carried clearly across the training yard.
Whoosh. Whoosh.
I used to wonder what the point of swordsmanship even was. Now that I was actually swinging a blade, my mind went blessedly blank.
So that was why the martial arts masters in the old stories always reached for a sword whenever their heads got too crowded. It made perfect sense.
Whoosh. Whoosh.
“If it’s Lady Brontë… the one who drives men to their deaths!”
“Watch your tongue!”
“Yes, ma’am…”
I did my best to ignore the servants’ completely unsubtle backbiting and kept swinging with grim determination.
Whatever Ania Brontë might be, I had no intention of caring.
I would become one with the sword—I the blade, the blade me…
And then the wooden sword slipped clean out of my hand, sliced through the air with a sharp whistle, and clattered noisily right at the servants’ feet.
“Good heavens!”
“Young Master, are you all right?”
Of course I wasn’t all right.
Not when the two of you wouldn’t stop whispering.
If you’re going to talk behind someone’s back, at least do it somewhere I can’t hear you.
But I was Edward Radner, eldest son of the Radner Count family.
I had to play the perfect noble.
I scooped the fallen practice sword up with a flourish and spoke with careful composure.
“My apologies. It seems my mind wandered for a moment.”
“It’s because you’ve been skipping meals.”
“She’s right, Young Master.”
“I’ll eat later, if the mood strikes me.”
The servants fretted over me far too much.
Then again, the original Edward had been such an upright young man that their concern was only natural.
I wiped the sweat from my brow, returned to my room, washed, and sat down at the table.
Then I picked up a book, determined to accumulate knowledge of this world.
“…History of the Empire, Chapter Five: The Great War and Unification…”
The words refused to enter my head.
Fragmented letters swirled around without ever assembling into actual information.
“…Having defeated the barbarians of the West, the Twelfth Emperor Julius…”
—No, I suppose I should start calling him Husband now.
Damn it.
Why was this happening?
Ever since meeting Ania Brontë, her face had refused to leave my mind.
The novel had described her as a beauty so renowned that no one in the Empire failed to know her name…
“I’m going mad…”
I had never imagined she would be beautiful to this degree.
I was beginning to understand, just a little, why those black-ox fools had fallen for her…
“No… no!”
I did not love her.
We might be engaged, but I had only seen her face once.
This had to be because I was possessing Edward Radner’s body.
It was Edward’s heart that had fallen for her at first sight—not mine.
“Ania Brontë is ugly. She is absolutely not a beauty. She is a villainess who wants me dead… O great Julius, protect me with your eternal light. Guide me with your sacred wisdom…”
“Y-Young Master!”
I was in the middle of fervently praying to Emperor Julius when the door burst open with a bang.
The one who opened it, dripping with cold sweat, was the maid Lorelnd.
“What is it?”
Under normal circumstances a servant was never supposed to open a noble’s door without permission, but I was no true noble to begin with, and I had no intention of following those tiresome formalities. So I simply asked what she needed.
Lorelnd’s face had gone deathly pale. She stammered out the words in a rush.
“…L-Lady Brontë!”
“Lady Brontë… what about her?”
What came out of Lorelnd’s mouth went far beyond urgency. It was a full-blown crisis.
“She’s here! She’s come to see Young Master Edward!”
“……Why?”
“Is it wrong for a woman to come looking for the man who will be her husband?”
In the Radner family’s indoor garden, where flowers of every color bloomed and butterflies fluttered, Ania Brontë sat at a garden table in all her radiant beauty and answered the unspoken question.
Yes—there was nothing wrong with a future wife seeking out her future husband.
For a noble daughter, it was even the proper aristocratic attitude.
The problem was that it was extremely inconvenient.
Especially right now, when my head was already completely full of Ania’s face.
“Even so, to arrive without a single word of notice…”
“Could you not take it to mean that I missed you so much I simply couldn’t wait to write?”
“Had you sent a letter first, I would have gone to you myself.”
“I didn’t wish to put my husband to such trouble.”
She smiled softly as she spoke, and the entire garden seemed to brighten another degree. I forced the corners of my mouth back down.
I had felt it keenly over the past few days, but Ania Brontë was, without question, a beauty.
A beauty far beyond what I could safely handle.
I clamped down on the smile that kept trying to rise and asked as casually as I could manage.
“So… what is the real reason you went to the trouble of coming all the way to the Radner estate? I doubt you came merely to look at my face.”
I pinched the inside of my thigh hard as I asked. Ania tilted her head to one side.
“That is the reason. Is it not enough?”
As she spoke she leaned her upper body forward just enough to reveal the soft valley of her chest.
Fortunately I had sensed it coming and jerked my gaze upward in time.
It appeared often enough in the novel—
the fox-like way she used her bosom to entice men.
Had I not known, my instincts would have dragged my eyes straight down.
And that would have been game over.
No man on earth could win against a chest that beautiful.
I forced a cold expression onto my face and rose from my seat.
“Well then, now that we’ve seen each other, you should return. I was in the middle of reading.”
I had to cut this short here.
Of course I couldn’t afford to truly offend Ania Brontë, but remaining face-to-face any longer was simply beyond me.
The moment I turned away, however, a soft sniffle reached my ears.
“…That’s too cruel, Husband. I only… wanted to be with you. Are your books more important than me?”
When I looked back, tears welled in her large, deer-like eyes.
Crying usually made anyone look unattractive—so how could she still be this beautiful?
My heart wavered under the sheer destructive power of it, but I held firm.
“We’ll have all the time in the world to look at each other after we’re married.”
“You… don’t love me.”
“That isn’t what I meant—”
“If that is truly how you feel, then let us break the engagement. It would only pain me to force a marriage upon a husband who does not love me.”
Oh, damn it… checkmate.
If I gave in, my thighs would be a mass of bruises. If I refused, the Radner family would be ruined.
Homeless on the streets, or thighs turned black and blue.
“I’m sorry. I spoke too harshly. The books can wait—let us stay together.”
The latter option won by a landslide.
The moment I sat back down, Ania’s expression brightened like a day full of sunshine.
Of course that, too, was an act.
She knew exactly which points made a man’s heart tremble.
In that particular field she could easily claim the title of best in the Empire.
“Hehe…”
With an innocent little smile, Ania Brontë wiped the tears from the corners of her eyes.
“Then… shall we take a walk together?”
“A walk?”
“Come.”
Ania took my hand and led me out of the indoor garden.
Holding hands so naturally… if she thought that would shake me, she was mistaken.
It wasn’t merely shaking—my heart was thrashing wildly.
Fortunately she didn’t seem to notice.
A body trained to the extreme could even control its own heartbeat.
I lowered my pulse as much as possible and walked slowly through the garden at her side.
Thanks to William Radner’s brief foray into the rare-tree business, the Radner gardens ranked among the most beautiful in the Empire.
At least now there was something else to look at besides Ania Brontë. Or so I thought—
Just then a breeze rose, scattering cherry-blossom petals into the sky. Through the pink leaves falling like snow I could see Ania Brontë’s back.
Yet even this exquisite garden could not come within a fraction of her beauty. How lamentable.
Why does a demon live inside a woman this beautiful?
Society would be buzzing with rumors about our marriage.
Some would no doubt call Edward “the luckiest man in the Empire for winning its greatest beauty.”
Looking only at the two of us walking hand-in-hand through the garden right now, they might even be right.
But behind the scene there was only a man desperate to survive and a thoroughly wicked villainess… Once you knew that, the whole picture became rather ridiculous.
“Husband.”
“What is it?”
Lost in thought, I was caught off guard when Ania suddenly turned to face me.
Her deep blue eyes looked straight into mine.
“Stay still.”
Ania Brontë’s face… drew closer and closer.
Her delicate lips, so soft they looked as if they might shatter at a touch, rounded gently; her eyes slowly closed.
Was she about to kiss me…?
No…
My mind knew I had to dodge this kiss.
Yes!
But my heart paralyzed my reason.
I simply could not avoid those lips.
“Huu…”
Whether I should call it fortunate or regrettable, Ania’s lips never quite met mine.
“A cherry-blossom petal was stuck to your shoulder.”
All that happened was that the pink petal resting on my shoulder mixed with her soft breath and drifted away into the air.
“I… could have brushed it off myself.”
I shook my shoulder with deliberate nonchalance.
“Hehe… Would you really have?”
Ania smiled—like a devil, or perhaps like an angel.