The Marriage Contract
It was obvious that his aversion was to the title “Your Highness, the Grand Duchess.” It was also precisely what Noel had intended.
Noel smiled with deliberate malice.
“Before, I called her Warrant Officer, but now that the marriage is settled, hasn’t she become far too precious a person for me to address so casually?”
“Noel. Are you taking out your frustration on me because I put you through hell last night?”
“Hardship like last night’s is nothing new.”
“Then?”
“I’m thinking of requesting a transfer because I’m too afraid to look Agathe in the face. What do you think?”
Only then did Curtis realize why Noel was being spiteful, and he gave a short laugh.
“If you transfer out, I’ll be sure to tell Agathe, ‘The proud Second Lieutenant Noel Montpis is the one who prevented my marriage to Miss Montpis.’”
“Don’t say such terrifying things, Your Highness.”
Noel’s only younger sister had been in unrequited love with Curtis for quite some time. Why else would she have gone so far as to apply to the Royal Guard?
But there were all sorts of problems with her behavior.
In Curtis’s original calculations, Agathe had actually risen to the position of candidate for Grand Duchess before Chloe. The reason Noel had stopped it was exactly that.
That child won’t do.
For the record, it was not out of some tender concern that his sister might become entangled with Curtis and suffer political wounds.
If anything, the one Noel felt tender toward was Curtis.
It might have been different if Curtis had harbored feelings for Agathe, but he had not.
Still, now that Curtis’s marriage had been announced to the entire neighborhood, who knew what that hysterical Agathe was doing at home by now?
Noel made a show of pressing a hand to his head in front of Curtis.
“To begin with…”
Just as Curtis was about to open his mouth—
Knock, knock.
Someone knocked on the drawing room door.
Both men closed their mouths as if by prior agreement and looked toward the door.
A servant who had walked all the way from the drawing room to the toilette room announced the visitor with a respectful bow.
“Lady Chloe Amboise is here.”
“Let her in.”
Curtis, the tension draining out of him at once, gestured with one hand.
Chloe, who peered in from the other side before entering, looked as if she had not slept a wink either.
While Noel dismissed the servant and shut the door, Curtis rolled up his sleeves and headed toward the drawing room.
Chloe, who had been standing awkwardly by the door, saluted by reflex.
“Loyalty. Chloe Ambo—”
“We’ll have to do something about that ridiculous greeting first, my Grand Duchess.”
At the mention of Grand Duchess, Chloe looked at Curtis as though someone had dumped muddy water over her head.
It was quite a satisfying expression.
Curtis stroked his chin with interest and observed her stunned face, then asked Noel, “Did I look like that earlier?”
Noel gave an artless shrug.
“They say married couples grow alike.”
Curtis snorted.
“That’s horrifying.”
Chloe belatedly came back to her senses, but it was already too late.
“Sit.”
Having said that, Curtis sprawled loosely onto the drawing room sofa.
“I was just about to call for you anyway. Good timing. How’s the annex?”
Chloe straightened sharply as she answered.
“Ah, Iris and Leah seem startled for now, but they’re resting.”
“Good. And their mouths?”
“I convinced them.”
Until yesterday she had not even had a lover, and now she had suddenly had to persuade her family she was getting married. It could not have been easy.
It was just as he had expected.
Curtis found himself freshly satisfied with the competence of the aide he had chosen as his wife.
“I trust you handled it well. So why are you here?”
“There is one thing I’d like to ask.”
Chloe hesitated, then spoke.
“Would it be possible to postpone the wedding a little?”
Even an aide as capable as she was apparently found it difficult to make her family accept a wedding next week.
He had expected as much.
Curtis refused at once.
“No. Is it because of the superstition?”
“…Yes. My younger sister is worried. She says shouldn’t I at least wait a full year?”
As though Chloe had also expected Curtis to refuse, she answered without much resistance.
Curtis made a show of digging at his ear.
“It’s been three months since you left the Navy, so she wants you to wait nine more?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t tell me you believe that superstition too, Warrant Officer.”
There was a superstition passed down only in the Ibanes Navy.
Unmarried women of the Navy would become unhappy if they married within a year of discharge.
At Curtis’s utterly contemptuous look, Chloe flared up.
“For something you call a superstition, even the royal family excluded every noble young lady serving in the Navy when selecting candidates for the crown princess last year, didn’t they?”
That was true.
One might wonder what sort of superstition that was, but it was old enough and legitimate enough to have weight.
Because it was tied to the founding myth of Ibanes.
Thanks to that superstition, every woman affiliated with the Ibanes Navy had been excluded from the candidates for Crown Prince Frederick’s bride, regardless of status.
That was exactly why the King had clutched the back of his neck upon seeing Chloe.
“And thanks to that, Warrant Officer, you’re sitting here being called by an absurd title by me.”
The absurd title, of course, referred to Grand Duchess.
At any rate, the founding myth of Ibanes was simple.
There once lived a man on the Prado Coast.
An evil landowner stole his lover from him, and the man threw himself into the sea to die.
But on the way, he happened to find a young dragon on the verge of death and saved its life.
With the young dragon’s help, the man killed the wicked landowner and took back his lover.
The people once ruled by the landowner asked the man, “Please rule over us.”
The man founded a nation there and became the king of Ibanes.
The young dragon, who had formed a deep friendship with the man, fell into a long sleep in order to become an adult.
Right there on the Prado Coast.
Before it fell asleep, the young dragon made one request of the king.
Dragons asleep before reaching adulthood were fragile, so it asked him to create a Navy to protect it on the Prado Coast.
The king gladly created the Navy and stationed it on the Prado Coast.
Up to that point, it was an ordinary founding legend of the sort any country might have.
The superstitious part came after that.
The dragon asked the king to fill the Navy with beautiful young women fit to become its bride once it reached adulthood… a somewhat anachronistic request.
It was a story from three hundred years ago, so there were factors to take into account, but regardless, Chloe thought it was an awful myth every time she heard it.
In any case, that was why the Ibanes Navy had been composed of seventy percent women from the moment it was first established three centuries ago until the present day.
For reference, one also had to sign a clause upon enlistment stating that one would become engaged to the dragon.
Some people regarded it as little more than a formality, but that was not the case.
Because of the clause they signed when enlisting, unmarried women of the Navy had to be discharged before they could marry.
However, a superstition had been added to it: if they married before a full year had passed since their discharge, they would be cursed by the dragon, enraged by its fiancée’s betrayal.
Furthermore, because of that, the Prado Coast, where the dragon was said to sleep, was regarded by Ibanes and the surrounding nations as inviolable sacred territory.
“It’s all a lie.”
Curtis snorted.
Chloe frowned.
“How can you be so sure?”
“What proportion of the Navy’s members are women?”
It was something any citizen of the Kingdom of Ibanes more or less knew.
Chloe, who had served in the Navy, had even less reason not to know.
Why ask a question everyone already knew?
Most of the time, it was to draw out the answer one wanted.
Chloe answered shortly.
“Seventy percent.”
“And among senior officers?”
“…Ah.”
Chloe narrowed her eyes.
With that single word, she understood what Curtis meant.
She isn’t surprised.
Curtis found that a little amusing as well.
Women made up as much as seventy percent of the Ibanes Navy’s total personnel.
But among the Navy’s senior officers, female officers were extremely rare.
Naturally.
Even now, marriage was treated as one of the most important values for women.
Women in the Navy naturally retired before marriage.
“I did wonder whether the honorable Navy leadership would really stoop to such a petty and childish method.”
“Ah?”
Curtis lifted a finger and pointed behind him.
In the direction of the Royal Palace.
Chloe sighed through her nose as well.
Only last night, she had witnessed the King behaving with appalling childishness.
“If you served in the Navy, you already know the real reason everyone keeps away from the Prado Coast is simply the currents.”
“…The currents are tremendously fast, yes.”
Chloe sighed and agreed.
That was true.
The Prado Coast was a route one had to pass through in order to invade Ibanes by sea, but the currents were fast and the waters shallow. Approach carelessly, and one would pay dearly.
“Other countries simply don’t approach because they stand to lose more than they gain by violating the Prado Coast.”
“Exactly. Admitting that would wound their pride, so they pretend to respect it by calling it sacred ground.”
It was something Chloe herself had constantly questioned while serving in the Navy.
In truth, the Navy stationed on the Prado Coast rarely ever sent ships out to the open sea.
That was also why it was called a gathering of useless riffraff.
Thanks to the fast currents, they had never once fought a battle since their founding.
Naturally, military discipline had grown lax.
Even if one, like Chloe, began to question it while serving, the atmosphere made it difficult to say so openly.
But now Curtis directly affirmed all those doubts of hers.
“So tell me, as an officer from that useless Navy, where seventy percent are women but every higher-up is an old man. Do you really think misfortune will come from marrying right after discharge?”
“May I speak honestly?”
“Go ahead.”
“I honestly don’t think anything could be more unfortunate than being called Grand Duchess right now.”
It was a mutinous remark that would have made anyone else blanch.
But Curtis had already acknowledged her as his superior before dawn.
For proof, one need only look at the Sacred Flame shining on Chloe Amboise’s finger as she sat there.
Curtis bared his teeth in a grin.
“Since you like it so much, I’ll call you my consort instead of Warrant Officer from now on.”
“I beg your pardon?”
Noel, who had just returned from Curtis’s toilette room with his jacket, smiled brightly.
“I’m delighted to see the two of you, soon to be husband and wife, getting along so well.”
Both of them looked as if they had bitten into something foul.
Curtis was the first to recover.
“Good. Did you write down everything I instructed?”
“Yes, well, more or less…”
Chloe held out the papers she had been carrying since before she entered.
Second Lieutenant Noel took the papers and passed them over.
Curtis picked up the glasses lying on the table, put them on, and read aloud as if for all to hear.
“Marriage Contract.”