A Lovely Impression
A kind and lovely face. Bright brown hair with a rosy tint.
Anyone who had seen Isabelle la Glintland even once would, without hesitation, call her a beauty with a gentle look.
But Isabelle la Glintland was absolutely no such person.
If she had been, she never could have clawed her way up this far in the first place.
“After I came all the way to Ibanes.”
She began gnawing at the tips of her prettily manicured nails.
Isabelle. The reason I made a lowborn wench rotting away in some fishing village into a duchess is because you must be the finest bridal gift of all.
Those were the words of the King of Glintland, who had summoned her up when she had lost her family, her beloved home, everything in a single moment and was rolling in the gutter.
Once you and Grand Duke Berk set up your bridal chamber in Soleria, your wish will be granted as well.
At those words, she had gladly nodded.
On the surface, she was a diplomatic envoy sent to reaffirm the bond between the two nations. In truth, however, it was a bridal journey born from the aligned interests of both countries.
If one had to name the person most desperate within it, Isabelle la Glintland would be the first named.
“That doesn’t mean I can give up.”
Of course, she had not assumed Grand Duke Berk would fall for her at once.
If he had been willing to come to Glintland, he would have given up the Grand Duke title long ago instead of becoming a soldier.
She had known before she set out that this road would not be easy.
That was precisely why the King of Glintland had sent Isabelle after careful consideration.
Beauty that any man would be tempted by. Graceful movements. A woman whose every word seemed dipped in sugar.
But no matter how lovable a woman was, she could not seduce a man she had never even met.
On the day of the diplomatic banquet, Grand Duke Berk did not attend the banquet after all.
There was no way he could have overturned the reception room like that and then smoothly attended the banquet.
To think he would slip away this quickly before she could even try anything.
Isabelle picked up a deep pink plum from the table in the guest room and rubbed it with her thumb.
It made a sharp, squeaking sound.
They said he was fastidious, at least when it came to women...
It was not as if he had never had a scandal.
Two years ago, Grand Duke Berk and a young noblewoman had been caught up in a rather plausible rumor.
However, word had quickly spread that the incident had occurred because the young lady had loved Grand Duke Berk so excessively that she had gone too far, and the Grand Duke had instead received sympathy.
And now, suddenly, a marriage partner.
He had clearly planted spies in advance and prepared for this.
They called him a war hero, but is he unexpectedly the calculating type?
Isabelle prided herself on knowing men well.
Among the countless men she had met, some were outstanding in martial prowess, while others were praised as wise.
Yet even they had always been exceptions only when it came to women.
No matter how thoroughly a man managed himself, once he met Isabelle, he became bewitched by her and lost all strength to resist.
That was why she had been confident.
She simply had not expected everything to go wrong in this fashion the moment she arrived in Ibanes.
Time was fair to everyone, and before Isabelle had even arrived, the Grand Duke had launched a battle of public opinion and overturned the political marriage entirely.
There was not even a crack for her to squeeze into.
She had seen the face of the “Grand Duchess candidate,” with eyes the pink of unripe plum flesh, in an illustration printed in the newspaper.
The Grand Duke’s aide, they said.
In terms of beauty, she could not even be compared to Isabelle.
If there had been time before the wedding, Isabelle would have found some way to meet Grand Duke Berk and seduce him.
If not that, she would at least have tested the possibility of negotiation.
But now that matters had come to this, Isabelle had nowhere to go.
Or perhaps...
Isabelle pressed the plum hard with the tip of her nail.
Bright red juice seeped out with a tiny spurt.
“...Should I get rid of her?”
Soleria Marcher Marquis.
It might be unnecessary to the Grand Duke, but to Isabelle, it was a status and a bridge she absolutely needed.
This was Ibanes.
A foreign country where Isabelle did not have even one common acquaintance.
She knew as well as anyone that if she acted rashly in a place like this, even what might have worked would fail.
But that did not mean she could sit around sucking her fingers.
I have no choice but to throw ashes over it, at least.
Isabelle squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them.
Then she rang the bell pull and summoned the maid who had come with her from Glintland.
“Bring me all the gifts we brought from Glintland.”
“All of them?”
The maid flinched.
Understandably so, since everything Isabelle had brought from Glintland was an extravagant luxury.
More precisely, they were items she had brought assuming they would become her bridal goods.
“All of them.”
Soon, the guest room was packed full.
Isabelle walked among them with her arms crossed, then selected one vase.
It was a beautiful green vase.
“Tell the court attendant chief’s office at the Royal Palace of Ibanes that I would like this sent to the Berk Ducal Residence as a wedding gift. Be sure to tell them it is a vase carved from a single piece of beryl, suitable for the Grand Duke’s bridal chamber.”
She had no intention of withdrawing like this.
Isabelle’s eyes gleamed as she lifted the vase and examined it from every angle.
“And will you gather every newspaper that reported on the Grand Duke’s marriage and the Amboise family?”
“Yes.”
The maid received the box containing the vase from Isabelle’s hands and bowed her head.
She was just about to rise.
Then the maid saw something bewildering.
At Isabelle’s feet, the very woman who had handed her the vase, sat another box containing an object similar to the vase in her hands.
...Or am I mistaken?
But Isabelle’s question struck the dawdling maid.
“What are you doing?”
It was, in effect, an order to leave.
The maid flinched, tore her gaze away, and answered.
“N-nothing.”
The maid hunched her shoulders and withdrew with the box in her arms.
Leaving that piercing stare behind her, the moment she hurried out the door, a sigh escaped her on its own.
Isabelle la Glintland.
There were endless rumors about the woman whom the King of Glintland had brought in, adopted, and granted a title.
That she had been a woman of the streets. That she was the last descendant of a ruined family...
But to a lowly laundry maid, she was simply an extremely high and frightening person.
Listen, I’m telling you, that woman isn’t really a noble. Does it make any sense for the likes of you to go along on a duchess’s bridal journey?
The laundry room coworkers who envied the maid’s sudden rise had babbled things like that.
Apparently, even the King of Glintland’s insistence that she was from a collateral branch made no sense.
Well, it did not matter.
Isabelle Glintland was a mistress with a chilling side, as she had shown just now, but she was not a difficult woman to serve.
So the maid dismissed what she had seen as nothing important and looked down at the box in her arms.
“It’s so pretty.”
The maid smiled brightly at the vase.
At first, she had been frightened to be selected for this bridal journey, but now she liked it.
Even if the marriage proposal seemed to have fallen through and her masters all looked ready to die, was this not a chance for someone like her to see countless things she would never get to glimpse in her life?
On top of that, the maid who had been made to accompany a duchess all the way to a foreign country had even received several nice dresses.
They had been issued by the royal castle of Glintland.
The terrifying court attendant chief of the royal castle had told her that once she returned from the bridal journey, she could sell those clothes if she wished.
And the pay was handsome, too.
She had seen a foreign Royal Palace and even touched an expensive vase.
It could not have been more delightful.
Creak. The closed door slowly opened again.
But the excited maid did not know.
She did not know that Isabelle Glintland’s cold gaze was still trailing after her.
Meanwhile, as for the Amboise family.
Things proceeded more or less as Chloe had expected.
People showed tremendous interest in the Amboise family, whose existence they had not even known of until then.
Every newspaper was filled with questions about where the Amboise family was, what sort of family members lived there, and so on.
The papers reported that both parents of the Amboise family were scholars, that they had not entered the capital of Ivanneres for several years, that Chloe Amboise had three younger siblings and was practically the head of the household, and that Eric Amboise, the one immediately below her, attended the boarding Military Academy.
Among them, the young lady who drew the most attention was the third child of the Amboise family, Leah Amboise.
Because she attended a women’s college in the capital, she happened to be the one living closest to her older sister.
And so every newspaper was desperate to interview Leah Amboise.
But she was nowhere to be found.
More precisely, every reporter who visited the Amboise family’s small house on Le Martin Street came up empty-handed.
No one was there.
Even articles like that appeared.
Of course, they had not truly gone missing.
Amid that very whirlwind of a storm, at this very hour.
Chloe Amboise’s younger sister, Leah Amboise, was...
“...She really did get herself into trouble, didn’t she...”
...murmuring blankly in the middle of the Berk Ducal Residence.