A Narrow Bridge
That had been going a bit too far.
Such coloring might be common in the Orchid Archipelago far to the south, but in Ibanes it was rare. Naturally, rumors about the Grand Duchess of Berk’s mixed-blood youngest sibling had already spread here and there.
Still, no one said such things openly.
Not unless they were standing before the king, perhaps.
But this was the Eleonora Society. If the Marquise of Flandre was absent, then in practical terms, the Grand Duchess would be the one leading this gathering for at least the next several years.
As everyone’s eyes darted about, Laura, finally reading the room, hastily covered over her own words.
“I only meant it as an example. Put that way, I can see how it might sound as though I were speaking of Her Highness the Grand Duchess. At most, I was expressing pity for a friend who used to stubbornly eat at the navy cafeteria just to save money.”
“Whoever it may be, perhaps we should stop discussing people who aren’t present.”
At Theodora’s timely interjection, the others visibly relaxed, though only inwardly. Laura, perhaps embarrassed herself, covered her mouth and laughed.
“Shall we get back to work?”
The change in attitude was instantaneous.
Anyone watching might have wondered whether they truly needed to work this hard for a diplomatic banquet. Theodora sighed and resumed selecting the tableware.
Please, let this banquet end quickly.
At this point, every woman in the room was surely praying for the same thing.
The Eleonora Society, after all, might be a women’s military comrades’ association, but it was still composed of women who could afford to live in some comfort. Their personal circumstances varied wildly, as did the people they were entangled with.
“What do you plan to do about the initiation?”
Theodora snapped out of her thoughts. Laura de Gautier stood beside her, smiling with crescent eyes.
“…That isn’t for me to decide. It should be done when the Marquise of Flandre is present.”
At that, Laura’s smile deepened.
“Well, this is only my opinion, but… I have a feeling there may be an opportunity during the banquet.”
Theodora did not answer. Instead, she looked around the Hall of Radiance.
It was not only Laura de Gautier. More than one person here bore the king’s touch.
In any case, all she could do was perform the task before her.
Even so, Theodora herself had no doubt that, out of everyone present, she was currently the one in the most difficult position.
The reason Theodora was in trouble was simple.
It was none other than because she had been placed in charge of guarding Isabelle la Glintland during her stay in Ibanes.
By nature, diplomatic envoys were supposed to be guarded by the Royal Guard. But thanks to a grievous display of rudeness by Brigadier General Berk, the commander of that very Royal Guard, the duty had been passed to the army.
After several layers of reassignment, Isabelle la Glintland’s protection had fallen to several female army officers, including Theodora.
That was why she was stationed not in Celty, where Ibanes Army Headquarters was located, but in the royal castle.
Damn it.
There were only two days left until the banquet.
Apart from the Eleonora Society’s miscellaneous duties, Theodora also had to be faithful to her guard work.
Her usual work in the army involved training and inspecting soldiers. And now, out of nowhere, she was on close protection duty.
Keeping one’s attention fixed on a single important person was quite difficult for someone unused to it. To make matters worse, Isabelle proved astonishingly gifted at shaking off her guards.
“Oh, I’m so sorry. The royal castle garden was so lovely that I lost track of myself while walking.”
“I got confused while looking for the powder room!”
“Ah, I felt so guilty troubling the officers of the Ibanes Army over my personal errands.”
Her excuses were endless.
Theodora had no idea where Isabelle la Glintland kept slipping off to. She stayed on high alert, but whenever she came to her senses, Isabelle had invariably escaped her grasp.
The length of her absences varied as well. Sometimes an hour. Sometimes half a day.
It did not appear that she was leaving the royal castle, but such things were usually done in secret. If Isabelle had made up her mind to conceal it, then of course Theodora would have no way of knowing.
“Duchess of Glintland. If you evade your guards again, I will take it as an attempt at espionage.”
She had issued that warning, but the woman had only become even more artful in slipping away.
Thanks to that—or perhaps inevitably—Theodora was short on sleep.
The others assigned to guard Isabelle la Glintland had cautiously suggested that she rest, but she did not want to.
What Theodora had learned from that man in the 8th Regiment was this: Complacency means I have already decided to lose.
Yet the king, of all people, seemed to have devoted his entire being to complacency.
She had reported the matter to her superiors, but the answer she received was utter nonsense along the lines of, “A woman has come all the way to Ibanes only to have her marriage proposal refused. Would it not be unbecoming to fail to consider her wounded heart? It is only natural for a distressed lady to hide herself in the shade of a garden…” and so forth.
For the first time, Theodora found herself questioning her own gender.
When I’m upset, I drink.
Still, she could hardly say, “I believe Your Majesty has misunderstood women in some fundamental way. And perhaps you ought to study spies as well.”
In any case.
She had begun to wonder if, just for today, she should have accepted her colleagues’ kindness.
“Hahaha! Seeing the Duchess today gladdens my heart as well.”
Because yet again, the king—who had been frequenting Isabelle la Glintland’s room—had entered her chambers and was spouting nonsense under the guise of a meeting.
Theodora knew perfectly well that men, even when they had wives, were prone to looking elsewhere.
It was hardly a virtue, but there was also a culture among men where the more dissolute one was, the more one was subtly praised.
And what of a king whose queen had died several years ago?
It was a spectacle.
I should have just slept.
Whether Theodora thought so or not, Isabelle clasped her hands together and asked, “What happened with the matter I asked of you?”
Isabelle la Glintland’s bodice was cut blatantly low.
And the king, as though it were the most natural thing in the world, fixed his gaze there and giggled.
There was a limit to lechery. At this point, Theodora had to wonder whether the men of the Ibanes royal family suffered from some disease that made them obsessed with Glintland women.
Well, she supposed the Grand Duke ought to be excluded from that.
My eyes.
I should have come without my glasses.
Theodora thought it only to herself.
Unbothered, the king continued boasting with a slack, beaming face.
“The Marquise of Flandre will see to it.”
“Oh my, how grateful I am…”
If he was going to behave like that, he shouldn’t have tried pushing her onto his half-brother.
The combination of a powerful man and a woman who wanted to lean on that power was common enough. That did not make it a pleasant sight.
Of course, it was not Theodora’s place to say a word.
She stood with her hands clasped behind her back, fixing her gaze toward the window.
Then—
“You there.”
It was the king.
“Second Lieutenant Tornier, Your Majesty.”
“I see. You belong to the 8th Army Regiment, do you not? Do you know why you were summoned?”
She could not very well answer, Because the Grand Duke refused the woman over there without even meeting her.
Theodora replied curtly, “My apologies, Your Majesty. I merely carry out the duty assigned to me, however inadequate my abilities.”
“It is because Grand Duke Berk, who claims to fight for this nation, has revealed his true nature.”
For the record, from Theodora’s perspective, the king and the Grand Duke were much of a muchness.
Remarkably, though Theodora herself did not realize it, she held thoughts quite similar to Chloe’s.
At least in the sense that the future of Ibanes looked bleak.
And if she had to compare them, the king was just a little more awful than the Grand Duke.
At least the Grand Duke had gone out and risked his own body in battle.
Of course, saying so would be a quick path to execution.
“I hear you also belong to the Eleonora Society.”
He knows that?
Theodora’s eyebrow twitched.
In other words, the king had deliberately placed her at Isabelle la Glintland’s side.
The pitiful-looking beauty, Isabelle, fluttered her lashes and looked up at Theodora.
“Take good care of the Grand Duchess.”
There was something behind this.
It was not difficult to guess. Just look at Laura.
Theodora had felt revulsion at how openly she mocked the Grand Duchess, but the truth was that quite a few people bore resentment toward Her Highness.
And since Laura had been a naval classmate of hers, leaving aside the intensity of her remarks, she had several stories that could easily draw in a listener.
It was almost impressive that the king had managed to procure such a person.
The Grand Duchess would likely suffer something.
And the king seemed to intend to use Theodora in some moderate way at the center of that something.
But since he was not giving her any specifics, whatever he meant to do would likely happen somewhere beyond Theodora’s knowledge.
I absolutely hate being dragged into headache-inducing politics.
In more ways than one, Theodora felt sympathy for Curtis Shan Berk.
The Brigadier General Berk she had experienced indirectly in the 8th Regiment was, in truth, the sort of man who would have sprawled out like a lazy lion and slept all day if only the king did not provoke him.
He disliked troublesome affairs and excessive entanglement with others, and he exercised the authority granted by his position only as far as his duty required.
The problem was that his idea of “as far as duty required” was rather horrifying to everyone else.
By contrast, what about the king?
Setting everything else aside, if something happened to Theodora, he was absolutely not the sort of man who would provide proper compensation to the House of Tornier.
He had simply found a family nearby suitable for using and discarding, then attached her where convenient.
That was the kind of man he was.
In any case, all Theodora could do was tread as carefully as possible across a narrow bridge.
And yet her foolish little sister had come back after hearing the Grand Duke ask her to take care of the Grand Duchess.
“Sister! His Grace asked me to take good care of Her Highness the Grand Duchess! He even escorted me! Can you believe it? That Grand Duke!”
That was what an excited Sarah had said the moment she came home a few days ago.
Theodora, who had just returned from work and sprawled across the parlor sofa to begin enjoying her weekend, had doubted her own ears.
That Grand Duke?
“Oh my, it seems finding love has truly made him romantic!”
Viscountess Tornier had been delighted, but Theodora was dumbfounded.
Romantic, my foot.
If that Grand Duke had done such a thing, then there had to be some ulterior motive.
“How wonderful! Then did he accept our invitation as well?”
“Mm, he said that once the urgent matter at hand is resolved, the two of them should meet us together!”
“Oh my! Oh, how marvelous!”
Viscountess Tornier and Sarah clasped hands and rejoiced together.
It was absurd, but Theodora found it difficult to say anything to them.
Her mother, who could never quite hold her head high in society because of the royalist nobles, looked far too happy.
And so, behind the warmly chatting Isabelle and the king, Theodora quietly sighed only to herself.