Only This Once
“…….”
Odelli felt something strange stir at the way Ludville was acting.
“……You've come again.”
She said it without opening her eyes.
“…….”
“I've finished the medicine, and the physician has already been and gone. You changed the cloth yourself only a moment ago, Your Grace.”
Ludville faltered. A heartbeat later he drew his hand back, as if nothing at all were the matter.
“……Your breathing seemed uneven.”
“I hardly think that warrants coming and going five times.”
“…….”
Once again he offered no explanation, and a peculiar silence settled between them.
He lifted the kettle from the table and poured a cup of warm herb tea, setting it down close to her hand.
“We agreed that the follow-up treatment would be mine to oversee, did we not?”
So that clause was in force from this time on. Odelli thought of the article that had, in a single stroke, turned their marriage contract into a written surrender of her body.
Article 11. The lady is forbidden from performing purification more than twice in a single day. Should she violate this provision, authority over the corresponding follow-up treatment and care shall belong entirely to the Archduke.
He had spoken of watching the whole of her condition, of protecting her, of stepping in whenever it proved necessary.
“You're tending me more plainly than I expected,” she murmured.
Was it not only a matter of looking her over from the side and seeing to her now and then?
If it is only this much…….
Even if she pushed her purification too far later on, he might let a certain amount pass. She had no intention of ruining her body on purpose, but there were bound to be times when she had no choice.
Ludville answered as if he had read that calculation.
“What I am overlooking is this once alone.”
“…….”
“Should you collapse and take to your bed again for the same reason…….”
For a moment something fierce seemed to flicker, faint and unsettled, through those violet eyes. He let the rest fall away, as though swallowing whatever he had meant to say.
He had not raised his voice even once, and yet it menaced her more than any threat.
All at once Odelli recalled one turn among the regressions that had repeated without end.
In those days Ludville had been emperor, and after he set Odelli upon the empress's throne…….
He had locked her away.
The empress's palace wanted for nothing. Gold-thread curtains, downy bedding, extravagant jewels and beautiful flowers, sweet desserts. Physicians came and went morning and evening, and every day the musicians in the garden played of love.
But the door was locked, and knights stood beyond the windows. The only ground she could cross on her own feet was the room, the bath, and the balcony. Purification was forbidden. A formation that suppressed mana had been laid across the whole of the palace.
“I have provided you with everything you require.”
“Because you must never again be exposed to danger.”
“……I love you, Odelli. My empress.”
“If this is not love, then what else could it possibly be?”
The words came back to her—mad things, whispered as his mouth touched her knee. A life held utterly under his control, all beneath the pretext of keeping her safe. In those days Odelli had been no different from a bird in a cage.
Back then…… that was how it was.
It had been when Ludville's mind was somewhat—greatly—unwell. He might write of management in a contract, but the Ludville of now, stripped of every memory and ignorant even of the idea of regression, would not go to such extremes.
So he could not have meant it that way.
……Probably.
“Then rest at your ease.”
He turned quietly away. The door closed, and stillness settled over the room once more.
Left alone, Odelli turned it over in her mind. She would not live those days again. She would never a second time allow it to come to that.
A few days later Odelli had only just recovered her strength. Yet the moment she opened her eyes, a great many things had already changed.
For one, she was no longer permitted to return to the shabby annex.
“Your residence is to be changed, my lady.”
Theodore, the steward, delivered the Archduke's message with impeccable courtesy.
“Henceforth, the place where you will reside is the private bedchamber used for generations by the Archduke's lady—the room adjoining His Grace's own.”
Still not fully awake, Odelli blinked through a daze. For a moment she wondered if it was a dream, but it seemed, unfortunately, to be real.
“……Steward, isn't the room I'm in right now that very place?”
“It is. Where you are at present is where you will be staying.”
Odelli could hardly believe it. All she remembered was receiving the physician's diagnosis in the Archduke's bedchamber and closing her eyes as if she were fainting. Yet when she opened them, the bed had already been changed.
The scale of it could not be compared with the modest, worn guest room she had known. The ceiling was dressed in gilt molding and vivid painted murals, and a chandelier carved from crystal hung at the center. The bed was a four-poster beneath a canopy. Its pure-white cloth let the light through in a hush as it draped beside her pillow, and a silk coverlet stitched in gold thread lay over her.
The windows were great curved panes running from floor to ceiling, layered with pearl-pale lace and, over that, violet velvet drapes. When the maids drew them back, the Exepsion Garden opened beyond the glass: white birches, a quiet fountain, and a maze of hedges heaped with snow, all spread beneath the stone balcony.
This was certainly no mere guest room. Anyone looking at it would have called it the master's chamber.
“You moved me while I was asleep?”
To be told only after the room had already been changed.
“It was a measure taken with your health in mind, my lady,” Theodore said, as courteous and correct as ever. “The annex, by the way it is built, lets in a terrible draft.”
“Even so, without a single word…….”
“Had you woken beneath a cold wall of stone, I should have carried that heartbreaking sight in my chest for the rest of my life.”
The humor in it was quiet, and Odelli could feel the sincerity underneath. It was not duty alone. In fretting over her health and looking after her, he had clearly grown fond of her.
“In a season like this, when the sun is so late to rise, the chill that seeps between the walls gets into your very bones.”
Leona—the maid; Odelli could not have said how long she had been there—came closer with a bright grin. Her face was the picture of a wish fulfilled, light all the way through.
“A northern wind in the dead of winter gnaws at a person more relentlessly than any monster, you know.”
Odelli let out a small sigh.
I only fainted for a little while…….
And already her quarters had been changed. Leona, bright-eyed since morning, went on.
“My lady—no, I have to call you madam now, don't I? Haa, I'm so excited!”
It was true enough that she was meant to become the Archduchess, and it was not precisely wrong…….
It's a contract marriage. Isn't this becoming far too official?
She had the distinct sense of being drawn in.
Then Theodore spoke, as if the thought had only just returned to him.
“Of course, once the two of you have held a proper wedding, a room has also been prepared for you to share.”
“…….”
Hm.
Odelli decided that a clause requiring separate rooms would have to be added. Without fail.