The Marriage Proposal Trap
The Hall of Glory, where the banquet was being held, was enormous.
Three months since her assignment. From the Berk Ducal Residence to the inner castle, every place Chloe entered today was somewhere she had never set foot before. The splendor inside nearly made her eyes spin.
Music drifted from all around, as if orchestras were playing in several places at once, and the lightbulbs she had only ever heard about were decorating every corner.
All those sparkling things on the chandeliers... those are magic ornaments, right?
As if to prove Chloe’s thought correct, the hall was dazzlingly bright despite the sun having fully set.
To hang that many outrageously expensive magic ornaments everywhere. Everyone knew Ibanes was a wealthy kingdom, but this was truly a spectacular sight.
For no reason, Chloe lifted her sleeve and sniffed it.
I did scrub myself raw earlier.
The thing Brigadier General Berk, that clean freak, hated most was other people’s body odor and hair.
Afraid he might find fault with her, Chloe had scrubbed herself from head to toe in the Royal Guard washing room and washed her hair until her scalp practically squeaked. Even so, she couldn’t help feeling oddly cowed by all the lovely fragrances wafting from every direction.
Maybe I should’ve borrowed some perfume from that bastard Ezra.
It was Chloe’s first royal audience, too.
She had never imagined she would end up meeting the king while knowing absolutely nothing about what was going on.
“So Grand Duke Berk has arrived.”
While she had been standing there in a daze, it seemed they had reached the audience chamber.
The audience chamber was more subdued than the banquet hall, but it was a vast room that felt far more imposing. Servants were present, of course, and several great nobles stood in formation around the king.
Most of them were important figures whose faces even Chloe, a semi-noble, recognized.
And seated among them, the king gave a hearty laugh and raised one hand.
Curtis, who had just entered the audience chamber, placed a hand respectfully over his chest and bowed his head.
“Curtis Shan Berk greets Your Highness.”
Chloe hurriedly dropped to one knee as well.
It was the courtesy toward royalty Lieutenant Noel had crammed into her before they came. Grand Duke Berk was the king’s brother, so he could get away without doing it, but Chloe would be in serious trouble if she did not.
The moment the two of them finished their greetings, the king beckoned.
“Come and have a look at this.”
“...”
Curtis’s brow creased ever so slightly.
In the center of the king’s audience chamber stood a large table for some reason.
And spread across it was a portrait.
Even at a glance, it was the portrait of a beautiful woman.
The marriage candidate!
Chloe’s eyes, which had been unfocused a moment ago, suddenly gleamed with interest.
That was right. The person who had supposedly gotten leverage over her wretched superior was right there, inside that portrait.
Even from a distance, Chloe could tell she was quite a beautiful woman.
The king smiled broadly and said, “As you have no doubt heard, Grand Duke Berk, this is Isabelle, Duchess of Glintland, your future wife.”
What’s this? Is the king... kind of excited right now?
Chloe stole a glance at him.
Of course, anyone would be happy at first to hear their younger brother was getting married, but the king’s tone was a little different.
If she had to describe it, it was the tone of someone hatching a nasty scheme to make the other party suffer.
But it was not especially strange.
After all, it was famously known that the king bitterly hated his half-brother Curtis.
Chloe recalled Lieutenant Noel’s words again.
She felt she could roughly understand what the lieutenant had meant when he said Curtis was being forced into a meeting because someone had found his weakness.
Do people normally announce things like this out of nowhere in front of everyone?
Besides, “future wife”?
Chloe was a semi-noble herself, so she had at least a basic understanding of the marriage procedures among titled people.
The marriage procedures of titled nobles were extremely complicated.
In other words, documents went back and forth some thirty times while both sides confirmed each other’s interests. The process was long.
Especially if the person in question was a member of a ruling family like Grand Duke Berk.
Marriage to a foreign noble?
That was something Chloe, as his aide, should have known before the king said a single word.
And that was not all.
It would certainly have made the front page of every newspaper in Ibanes.
But she had never heard a word about Curtis Shan Berk getting married.
To be exact, she had only heard from Noel today that “it might happen.”
So unless there had been an agreement in advance, even the king could not carelessly refer to someone from Glintland as Curtis’s “future wife.”
Just then, Curtis opened his mouth.
“Why is she my future wife? This is the first I’ve heard of it.”
It was an answer that supported Chloe’s doubts.
But Chloe was flustered by something else entirely.
Is he seriously talking like that in front of the king?
At Curtis’s utterly disrespectful reply, the king’s forehead crumpled sharply.
“News of royal marriages traditionally reaches the person involved last.”
“My surname is Berk, not Ibanes. It would seem my marriage is not a royal marriage.”
Several nobles who had been standing beside the king and admiring the portrait narrowed their eyes and stepped back.
It was obvious they were trying to flee before they got hit by sparks flying between these two foul-tempered men.
Chloe dearly wished she could retreat with them.
But she could not.
Because she was Curtis Shan Berk’s aide.
Besides, if she stepped back now, her superior would surely spend three months and ten days berating her with something along the lines of, “Is it proper conduct for an aide to withdraw from her position?”
And so Chloe suppressed the urge to cry, stood behind Curtis, and silently endured the verbal sparring between the king and her superior.
If she failed to control her expression now, it was over.
I am a pebble. I am a pebble that can hear nothing.
Meanwhile, if one stripped away the cumbersome formal language, the conversation between the two men went something like this.
Look at this marriage proposal. Isn’t it awesome? Look at this portrait. Incredible, right?
If it’s that incredible, you marry her.
I’m already married. Anyway, she’ll be at the banquet today, so meet her and marry her.
Out of nowhere? Because you decided so? I don’t want to.
If I tell you to do it, you do it, you bastard. Don’t pretend you didn’t know a marriage proposal was coming.
I didn’t know.
I know you don’t have a woman anyway. Just do it.
What do you know? And who suddenly springs this on someone? Does being king make you everything?
Yes, it does. What of it?
The series of exchanges was conducted in an exceedingly dignified, elegant, and solemn manner, but in substance, it was no different from a childish squabble.
For Chloe, who was meeting the king for the first time, it was both bewildering and sigh-inducing.
This was what she had to listen to at her first royal audience...?
Was the future of the Kingdom of Ibanes going to be all right?
But because Chloe was spacing out while worrying about Ibanes’s future, she did not realize it.
Never mind Ibanes’s future. Her own immediate future had just been ruined.
Regardless, the verbal battle continued.
“Forgive me, Your Highness. Your unworthy younger brother has something to say.”
“Speak, then.”
To the king, whose voice was thick with anger, Curtis Shan Berk said with a fierce glare, “I already have a woman I’ve promised to marry.”
“Do you expect me to believe that?”
The king snorted.
“Have you forgotten that the crown prince recently entered into an engagement? Every noblewoman of marriageable age in all Ibanes went through the royal family’s review of marital ties. If Grand Duke Berk had a marriage partner, I would have known first.”
“We met away from the eyes of others.”
“Grand Duke.”
As if telling him to stop there, the king waved some document.
To Chloe, it looked oddly familiar.
That was...
“Here is the Royal Guard duty log. Grand Duke, you have been admirably diligent in devoting yourself to the kingdom.”
Good grief.
Chloe nearly laughed.
Meanwhile, the king glared at Grand Duke Berk.
“You left work at midnight and reported in before dawn every day of the week, did you not?”
In short, it meant: I know everything, so don’t lie.
And it was, in fact, true.
Chloe nodded only inwardly.
Because she too had been forced to accompany that man when he left work and when he reported in.
It was a truly merciless schedule.
Chloe’s name was probably packed into that duty log as well.
And Chloe was not the only one forced into overtime like that.
Needless to say, there was more than one Royal Guard member praying, Please, let that man date a woman or something, so we can get less overtime!
For reference, Chloe had prayed the most desperately among them all, but after being abandoned by God every dawn, she was now an atheist.
“Earlier, before the formal audience, I met with the Duke of Glintland. When I carefully broached the subject of Grand Duke Berk’s marriage, Glintland seemed pleased as well.”
That, however, was somewhat surprising.
Chloe’s eyes widened.
She did not know the details, but Glintland was a weaker nation than Ibanes.
It was not a place that could bring an especially large dowry, meaning there was no reason for this side to bring up a marriage proposal first.
Besides, from the looks of it, Glintland had apparently visited with the marriage proposal as its original purpose.
Well, if the king hated Grand Duke Berk so very, very much that he wanted to send him away at any cost, then it was certainly possible.
Chloe herself understood that feeling all too well.
Especially since it was Glintland, of all countries.
But no matter how much he hates him, would he really just... send away his own country’s war hero like this?
As if answering Chloe’s question, the king continued.
“Ibanes is currently in an armistice with the Three Kingdoms. How long has it been since we have enjoyed peace like this? Therefore, I have judged that it would be best to celebrate Grand Duke Berk’s happy occasion while we still have such leisure.”
Even Chloe, a lowly former navy officer, could tell that was spectacular bullshit.
Who was it that had brought about the armistice with those Three Kingdoms?
Obviously, it was Grand Duke Berk, standing beside her.
She nearly lost her senses all over again.
The future of Ibanes... really did not seem fine at all, did it?
At that point, Chloe glanced sideways at her superior.
At first glance, he appeared expressionless, but after working as his aide for three months, Chloe knew with certainty.
This man is seriously pissed right now, isn’t he...?
But far from showing that he was furious, her superior continued the conversation with an air of complete composure, as though he had some trump card hidden up his sleeve.