Leah Amboise
Leah Amboise.
The pretty girl with the short, blue-black hair that made her look so much like Chloe could no longer tell whether this was a dream or reality.
Only the evening before last, she had eaten dinner with her youngest sister in their little house on Le Martin Street, as she always did, then gone peacefully to bed.
“Chloe’s working late again today! Iris, isn’t that great? You can have the cookies I bought earlier for Chloe’s share!”
“I like cookies! But I miss Chloe.”
The memory of being moved by her far-too-sweet baby sister Iris was still vivid.
Then, at dawn.
The one who had shaken Leah roughly awake from a dead sleep was her eldest sister, who had just returned from the Royal Palace.
“Get up. We have to leave, now.”
“Mmmngh. What? Chloe, do you know what time it is…”
“Wake up!”
Her eldest sister was always working late, to the point that the days she came home were fewer than the days she did not. When she returned before dawn, she was the sort of person who took off her shoes outside the front door so she would not wake Leah and Iris.
And that Chloe had suddenly beaten her awake, then told her they had to leave the house at once?
Naturally, Leah was frightened.
“Finally?”
“…What do you mean, finally? No, there’s no time to explain. Just carry Iris and come out.”
“Iris too?! So Mom and Dad finally did it, didn’t they?!”
Only then did Chloe understand what Leah meant by finally, and she stared at her second sister in disbelief.
But considering they were sisters with parents who rarely contacted them and had never once sent news that could properly be called good, perhaps it was only natural for Leah to say such a thing.
“I knew the day would come when we’d have to flee in the middle of the night!”
Unbothered, Leah pulled out the small emergency bag she had packed in advance under the bed and slung it over her shoulder.
Chloe pressed a hand to her throbbing forehead, then flicked Leah on the head.
Thwack.
“Ow!”
“Good job packing a bag. Just bring that.”
With that, Chloe lifted the ten-year-old youngest, Iris, who was whining sleepily, into her arms and hurried out of the house.
Leah, too, threw a coat roughly over her pajamas and followed.
And the moment she stepped out through the gate, she nearly screamed at the sight of the enormous black carriage standing in front of their house.
“Chloe, what on earth did you do…?”
“It happened…”
The carriage had, of course, been sent by Curtis.
That dawn, the moment he put the engagement ring on Chloe’s finger, the order Curtis gave her was none other than to flee in the middle of the night.
“Once the sun rises tomorrow morning, your family will be the first to find themselves in trouble. Bring them to the Berk Ducal Residence immediately.”
The seal of the Berk Grand Ducal House, which would ordinarily have been engraved on the carriage, was nowhere to be seen.
It had been removed so it would not catch anyone’s eye.
It was a very timely measure.
Because shortly after the carriage set off, before the sun had even risen, the two sisters clearly saw reporters running toward Le Martin Street through the carriage window.
“It has to be here! Sir Chloe Amboise lives on Le Martin Street!”
“Let’s see, 138 Le Martin Street?”
If Chloe had been even a little slower in drawing the carriage curtain shut, she would undoubtedly have met the reporters’ eyes.
“Chloe, seriously, what happened?”
“I can’t explain right now. You’ll understand once we arrive.”
Leah had known for some time that Chloe had been commissioned into the Royal Guard.
Had some huge problem arisen?
Leah looked at her sister’s troubled face and forced down her anxiety.
At last, they arrived at a vast mansion that shone white even in the darkness.
Leah, carrying Iris now, stepped down from the carriage and immediately let her mouth fall open.
The place where she stood was the Berk Ducal Residence, considered one of the finest sights even in the capital city of Ivanneres.
As if the capital’s exorbitant housing prices were nothing at all, the great white mansion stood proudly near the Royal Palace, embracing a small lake.
The Late King had loved Queen Mildred so dearly that he had built and bestowed the place anew when the Third Prince, now Grand Duke Berk, was still young.
Since it could be seen clearly from nearly anywhere in the capital, no one who lived there could fail to know it.
To think she had entered the very mansion she had glanced at on her way to school, wondering, What sort of person lives there? and gazing up at it in awe.
However, unlike what she had always imagined—Surely it must be a happy, comfortable place—the atmosphere of the ducal residence was rather odd.
“You must be Miss Amboise. I will show you this way.”
The one who came to meet them in the deathly silent residence was Second Lieutenant Noel, looking somewhat exhausted.
There was not a single servant of the sort one would expect to find in such a magnificent mansion.
Second Lieutenant Noel swiftly took Iris from Leah’s arms and guided the Amboise sisters.
The place they arrived at was an annex of the residence, without a single trace of human presence.
It had been cleaned spotless, but there was no one here either.
“It is much too early, so please rest for now.”
Second Lieutenant Noel spoke politely, then closed the annex door.
Bang.
What in the world was going on?
Leah Amboise.
She was intelligent enough to always compete for first or second place in the law department at the Capital Girls’ School.
Standing in that quiet annex, Leah immediately deduced what had happened from her sister’s behavior and remarks over the past three months since she had changed workplaces.
“Chloe finally killed Grand Duke Berk…”
Chloe, who had been slumped over in relief at finally reaching the ducal residence, lifted her head in horror.
“…What?”
But Leah ignored her again.
“We were suddenly loaded into a suspicious carriage at dawn, and the place we arrived at was a corner of Grand Duke Berk’s residence…”
“…”
“I knew it from the moment you started cursing Grand Duke Berk every single day. Chloe, you finally couldn’t stand it anymore, and now we’ve been brought here to be executed in secret, haven’t we…?”
What expression had Chloe made at that?
In any case, left speechless for various reasons, Chloe did not bother explaining one way or another. Instead, she shoved several freshly published newspapers from that morning into Leah’s hands.
Leah braced herself for news of the death of Ibanes’s war hero and unfolded the paper.
And only then did Chloe whisper to her sister in an exceedingly wretched tone.
“Your sister’s getting married.”
Leah Amboise promptly fainted backward.
When Leah woke from her faint, there was a teacup filled with warm ginger tea placed before her.
After downing the tea in one go, Leah spoke calmly.
“Chloe, let me ask you one thing.”
“Sure. Go ahead.”
“Didn’t you call Grand Duke Berk a bastard asshole a few days ago?”
Chloe hurriedly covered the ears of ten-year-old Iris, who was still asleep with her head on Chloe’s lap, and answered.
“I work myself to the bone paying your expensive tuition, and that’s the sort of language you learn at school, Leah?”
Leah snorted.
“Chloe. Do you know what I learned after paying that expensive tuition?”
“What?”
“People who want to dodge a question attack the person who asked it.”
“…That’s a fine saying. Makes all the tuition I earned by working myself half to death feel worthwhile.”
Chloe answered, slyly rolling her eyes aside.
But she could not evade Leah’s sharp attack.
“Stop changing the subject and tell me properly. Marriage? And to Grand Duke Berk, of all people?”
The law department truly did seem to have been the perfect choice for Leah.
There was no helping it.
Chloe took a deep breath, then opened her mouth.
“I love His Grace.”
“…Chloe. I think I need to go to the hospital. I’m hearing things.”
Her brazen answer was met with a reply that all but asked what nonsense she was spouting.
But Chloe stood firm.
Because Curtis Shan Berk had ordered her to keep the secret absolutely.
Apparently, it could not leak outside under any circumstances.
He had even nailed down that she could never tell her family.
So Chloe offered a plausible excuse.
“Dating someone as important as His Grace is a state secret, so I couldn’t tell you.”
Leah narrowed her eyes into sharp triangles.
“Tell me straight. You think I don’t know you?”
Chloe’s second sister was truly terrifying at times like this.
Chloe glanced at Leah, gauging her reaction, but it seemed Leah did not believe a word she said.
“It’d make more sense if you said Grand Duke Berk paid you to marry him.”
Damn it.
She had suspected it might come to this.
No matter what, hiding something from Leah, with whom she ate dinner face-to-face every day, had been impossible.
Leah, whose quick wits had been unmatched since childhood, seemed to have grasped the circumstances almost immediately.
Well, she’s been right beside me for over ten years watching me act like a miser since I was little. Of course she’d think that…
In the end, Chloe gave up on trying to bluff her way through and awkwardly explained the situation.
“Damn it, His Grace told me not to tell even you. Fine. Yes. I’m basically being sold off.”
But Chloe’s expectations missed the mark completely.
After hearing her words, Leah now looked at her as if she were pathetic.
“Chloe… Do you think I’m stupid? Who would pay money to buy you and marry you…?”
“…”