The Wedding Everyone Wanted to See
“If you put it that way, people will start whispering that you threw yourself at me and married me because you were loose with your favors.”
Ah.
So that was it. He was worried rumors would spread that the daughter of some humble family, having long adored Curtis the war hero, had deliberately joined the Army and used vulgar means to secure the position of Grand Duchess.
Chloe tilted her head lightly.
“…Aren’t they already saying that?”
“They are, but… there’s a difference between you going around saying it with your own mouth and people only gossiping behind your back. Do you want to ruin your marriage prospects?”
“I think those are already ruined.”
Chloe gave him a firm thumbs-up.
Curtis narrowed his eyes and asked back, “Was that an insult?”
“No. If I wanted to insult you, I have plenty of other excuses. Why bother with that one?”
“Such as?”
“The prayer I now have to go recite in the chapel on Your Grace’s behalf?”
Having said that, Chloe promptly added, “Then I’ll be off to pray,” and fled.
The corner of Curtis’s mouth twitched.
Whether he was laughing or simply dumbfounded, even he could not tell.
I suppose what I mean is, I hope my deeply defective uncle has finally found someone he loves so much that even he cannot do a thing about it.
Well, Frederick.
You, too, saw exactly how such a love ends.
Then you should know better than anyone that nothing of the sort could ever be possible for me.
Curtis rubbed at the corner of his mouth.
It did not take him long to return to his usual unruffled self.
Curtis Shan Berk, war hero, was marrying his aide today after knowing her for a mere three months.
And not just any aide, but the daughter of a family so modest that people went so far as to call it low-class.
Though he had even been banned from entering the Royal Palace, he had remained undaunted, forcing the wedding through at a royal temple within the week.
There were, to put it mildly, an enormous number of people who wanted to witness the current situation.
“Isn’t it the spectacle of the century? That arrogant, high-nosed Grand Duke Berk, marrying in such a rush.”
“Honestly. What could possibly be worth defying His Majesty the King for? Is she that beautiful?”
“Well, the truth is…”
“Oh my! How vulgar! But it may not be true, may it? My nephew in the Royal Guard says there’s no way.”
“We’ll know when we see whether the bride’s belly is swollen at the ceremony.”
…That was why.
By now, word of what the bride supposedly was had spread far and wide. Most people were dying of curiosity about Chloe’s face, or the current state of Chloe’s figure.
Naturally, Grand Duke Berk had sent wedding invitations only to a carefully selected few.
His excuse was that, since the marriage was being held in haste, the ceremony would be small.
Everyone was desperate to get hold of that invitation.
Several yellow newspapers even put up quiet bounties for an invitation to Grand Duke Berk’s wedding. They intended to sneak in an illustrator and print the bride’s likeness in the paper.
A lucky handful of nobodies did manage to obtain invitations.
But most of them were caught by the Royal Guard’s thorough inspection and driven out.
“Marquis of Bern? Since when did you grow a mustache?”
“Ahem. Three months ago. Now, if you’ll let me pass.”
“You bastard. The Marquis of Bern is my cousin, and he turned eighteen the day before yesterday. Get lost, now!”
More or less like that.
Since the Royal Guard was made up of the sons of noble families, there was no need to cross-check the peerage rolls.
Thanks to that, perhaps, the mood among the guests inside the hall was already quite a sight before the wedding had even begun.
Everyone felt secretly proud to have been included on the list personally selected by that Grand Duke Berk, yet they were unmistakably tense.
Here and there, people could be seen sitting in advance on the benches of a chapel normally open only to royalty, swelling with satisfaction for a moment, then gathering together like frightened mice to whisper in low voices.
“There are still quite a lot of people, aren’t there?”
“Goodness, when you’re Grand Duke Berk, there are bound to be more than one or two people you must invite.”
“Won’t this put us in His Majesty’s bad graces?”
“And if we didn’t come, wouldn’t we end up in Grand Duke Berk’s bad graces?”
“I heard the Marquise of Flandre only sent a representative.”
People kept glancing at one another, each curious to see who had been invited.
Most of the guests were exactly the sort one would expect, but there were also a few surprising faces.
“Oh my. Isn’t that… the Duchess of Glintland from all the rumors?”
“Good heavens, she actually came?”
In effect, this wedding was a concentrated display of diplomatic discourtesy toward Glintland.
The royal family would, as a matter of form, have sent the Duchess an invitation, but she had no reason to attend.
Yet Isabelle la Glintland had attended.
And in an extraordinarily beautiful state, at that.
In the midday temple, her brown hair shone pink beneath the sunlight, so alluring it was difficult to look away.
“How do you do? I am Isabelle la Glintland. What a blessed meeting.”
Moreover, she was being exceedingly sociable.
When one thought about it, had this country’s king not been the one to first bring up the courtship?
There was no reason Isabelle la Glintland could not come here.
It was not even her fault!
Those who decided there was no cause to criticize her were swiftly captivated by the beauty and began competing to greet her.
The greatest number among them were young noblemen of marriageable age.
The beauty with the gentle impression smiled softly and exchanged greetings with the nobles of Ibanes one by one.
One hot-blooded and thoughtless young man even offered a greeting that was diplomatically rather precarious.
“Duchess, how do you find Ibanes? I worried that this unfortunate affair might have given you a poor impression of the country itself.”
But Isabelle deflected the remark with light, practiced ease.
“Not at all. I am ashamed to say it, but I like to think that, thanks to me, two lovers who might have been parted will now spend their lives together. When I heard news of their marriage, I was the first to send a green beryl vase as a gift. It may be immodest to say so, but it would not be an exaggeration to call it a national treasure of Glintland.”
“A lady as beautiful as you must have a beautiful heart as well.”
“Surely not. The two people joined today must be the most beautiful of all.”
The seasoned ladies stood a step away and exchanged secret whispers.
“That woman appeared out of nowhere, didn’t she? I heard she was originally from a collateral branch of Glintland.”
“In truth, isn’t that splendid duchy of hers just a temporary title meant to marry her to Grand Duke Berk? Still, she is no ordinary operator.”
“What does it matter if she’s no ordinary operator? The fact remains that she’s been made to look ridiculous.”
“But look at her beauty. I understand why they rushed her straight to Ibanes. Isn’t she pretty?”
On that point alone, everyone agreed.
“Standing beside the Grand Duke, she would have made quite a picture.”
“Well… yes.”
At around that point, people fixed their gazes on a certain place.
It was the seating reserved for the bride’s family.
“The Amboise family… hasn’t arrived yet?”
“No, they’re here. Over there.”
“Where? Those are only children!”
After that, a naked sneer settled over the crowd.
“I hear her parents didn’t attend at all.”
“Good heavens. Isn’t something wrong? It’s their daughter’s wedding!”
“Well, you see…”
Everyone pretended to whisper, but in truth, they meant to be heard.
By the greatest cause of this rushed wedding: the vulgar family of Chloe Amboise.
“Parents who raised their daughter like that—would they even know how to attend to major family occasions properly?”
Naturally, the fundamental cause was that Grand Duke Berk had defied the king.
But just as Chloe had expected, people blamed the Amboise family for the reason the war-hero Grand Duke was marrying in such haste.
And they prattled on however they pleased.
“They really do say whatever they want…”
A young man who had been sitting ramrod-straight in the temple pews for some time ground his teeth and muttered.
Eric Amboise.
Chloe’s younger brother, the one just below her, and the second child, soon to be commissioned from the Military Academy.
He had blue-black hair and rare pink eyes.
He looked so much like Chloe that anyone could tell at a glance they were siblings.
“Please hold it in, Eric.”
Leah, sitting beside him, anxiously clasped his hand.
Eric rubbed at his throbbing temple and whispered softly.
“I will. If I don’t hold it in here, what would that be except smearing mud on my sister’s face?”
“Wow. You actually said something right… The academy really did turn you into a human being.”
“Do you want to die?”
The first place Eric heard about his sister’s marriage was at school.
“Ahem, Cadet Amboise. Your sister’s name is… Chloe Amboise, correct?”
“Pardon? Yes, it is.”
A professor who had always looked down on Eric suddenly offered him a handshake.
“Congratulations. I look forward to your good offices in the future.”
What the hell is he talking about?
Immediately afterward, while Eric was still bewildered, another academy friend handed him a newspaper and asked, “Is this for real?”
Even after reading through several newspapers, his confusion did not subside.
Horrified, Eric insisted that “something must be wrong” and tried to file for absence immediately, but the Royal Military Academy was not such an easy place.
Absence due to the marriage of an immediate family member required submitting the wedding invitation one month in advance, or so they said.
“I understand the importance of the matter, but regulations are regulations.”
Maxime, Eric’s classmate and year representative, who had pushed up his glasses as he said that, ought to be grateful to Grand Duke Berk for the rest of his life.
Had it not been for the Grand Duke’s request for cooperation, which arrived just in time, Eric would surely have punched self-important Maxime in the nose right there and sat him down on the floor.
“This is the first time I’m grateful to that bastard Maxime…”
“Why?”
“Because that bastard massively strengthened my patience the entire time we were at the academy. If not for him, I would’ve caused trouble ages ago.”
“Thank you, Mr. Maxime.”
“I didn’t mean you should actually thank him.”
Eric was scolding Leah in a low voice when he stopped and asked, “Did you see Chloe’s face?”