Hardly to Her Taste
He must have held her all through the night, right up until a little while ago.
The impulse came over him to bring Odelli back in from the corridor, draw her into his arms, and fall asleep beside her once more.
……This is why they say I've lost my mind.
He sat a long while without moving, his face caught in his hands. The warmth left upon his fingertips refused to cool.
Not long after the main gates of the Archducal Castle opened, an endless procession of carriages followed—first the envoys flying the imperial crest, then the representative houses of the central nobility, and at last the collateral nobles of the North.
The castle entrance, ordinarily desolate beyond words, now seethed with people as though a festival had broken out.
Odelli stood at the window and quietly took in the sight. Below, the footsteps of servants hurrying over preparations for the guests' wedding eve rang back and forth.
And then—
A single carriage eased to a halt upon the red carpet before the gates.
She's here.
A woman wrapped in a black fur cloak stepped down.
Castia Exepsion.
The former Archduke of House Exepsion. She carried the cold poise peculiar to the northern nobility, and a toughness tempered like steel. Once she had ridden at the head of the cavalry that scoured the borders; once she had been the true ruler of the archducal house. She preferred clothes cut for movement over splendid ornament, and when the need arose she was the first to draw her sword and lead the way onto the field. A single look, a single word, was enough for her to overwhelm everyone around her.
I never saw her in the last life.
By then she had already cut ties with Ludville.
……No. It would be truer to say she was betrayed.
From the moment Ludville was entered in the Exepsion register as an adopted son, he had not treated her as a fellow human being. Blood may bend inward, and one's own arm always does, but on that point even Odelli could not make excuses for him. It had been ingratitude of the sheerest kind.
To a man who had returned thousands of times, the former Archduke was nothing more than a means of obtaining the title. The Iron-Blooded Archduke Ludville, who moved for no purpose but to keep Odelli alive, had used his predecessor as a tool and cast her aside without a second thought. And he had imprisoned her…… so that after his own death every holding and title of House Exepsion might pass to Odelli.
From the Regressor Ludville's point of view, anyone who was not Odelli had been no more than an extra in a novel, or a line of meaningless type.
To Odelli, Ludville might have been a savior. Objectively, he had been a villain. Without blood, and without tears.
Allow me to apologize in his place…….
It had already been undone, made into something that never happened. Even so, Odelli felt she ought to beg pardon, if only in her heart.
Somewhere in the course of regressing again and again, he must have lost every feeling he had.
She was relieved that the life immediately before this one had now become a thing that had never been.
"Where is the girl?"
The voice came then, cold, riding the rough strike of military boots from beyond the corridor. Odelli startled out of her thoughts and drew herself upright.
"I shall show you in at once, Your Grace. The young lady is preparing her ceremonial dress."
Steward Theodore's reply followed, low and composed. Even so, because of whom he was addressing, a faint tension had seeped into that calm manner of his.
The thought that she had to make a good impression moved her body first. Odelli went to the mirror on reflex and studied her own face.
A face that might win her favor…… is it?
She could not tell. It had been a very long time since she had so much as faced a mirror. Seen like this, she was pale through and through, almost ghostly.
……I don't think this is going to win anyone over.
By the measure of those well along in years, it was a look that invited a click of the tongue: far too frail, far too wispy. Anxiety closed slowly around her whole body.
Nothing to be done. I can hardly remake my face.
She would simply be as she always was.
To Ludville, the former Archduke had always been a nuisance to be cleared away. The only reason he had entered her household as an adopted son was to obtain the archducal title.
Honestly, I don't even hope the two of them will be reconciled.
Why should this life be any different? This was a man who, under the pretext of searching for the Blue-Eyed Woman, had summoned people from every corner of the empire and held a banquet every single day.
But at the very least—
Let her not be imprisoned, in this life…….
Even after Odelli was gone, Ludville would have to go on living, and so long as he lived he would have to keep his ties with these people. She did not expect him to feel anything like familial affection for Castia. Not so far as that. Only that he might be a little…… just a little more human.
He could be cold-blooded. To cast aside human decency itself was too much. Sweep away everyone who irritated him, and there would be no one left at his side.
The memory was impossibly distant, but there had been a time when Ludville was more delicate, more tender, than anyone. A smile like brilliant sunlight. Eyes one could see straight through. In those unripe days the smallest word from her had lit his whole face, and a hand extended without thinking had been enough for him to give her his entire heart.
There had been such a time.
And so she hoped he might take an interest in someone other than her.
Odelli steadied her breath before the mirror, then opened the door with care. Two figures were approaching from the end of the corridor. The moment the woman walking ahead came into view, she stepped forward on reflex to offer her greeting.
And that one step invited disaster. The hem of her ceremonial skirt caught beneath her foot.
"……!"
Her footing wavered, and her body pitched forward all at once. She managed to catch the doorframe and right herself, but every eye was already upon her.
Castia regarded the frozen Odelli in silence, the way one might study something curious.
Odelli smoothed her skirt with a hand gone cold with sweat and spoke in a rush.
"It is an honor to meet you, Your Grace."
"Hmm……."
Castia returned the greeting in a rather peculiar fashion. She said nothing at all, and simply looked Odelli up and down. Then she clicked her tongue.
"……His taste. Really."
"I beg your pardon?"
Odelli's head came up in startlement.
"It's nothing."
No—she had heard that perfectly well. The woman had just looked at her face, clicked her tongue, and passed judgment on Ludville's taste, had she not?
All at once she remembered what Ludville had said to her not long ago.
"The former Archduke? A bothersome, irritating, unpleasant person. You needn't pay her any mind."
It did not seem, all things considered, that they were going to grow close.
"……I ought to have gone out to receive you. Please forgive the discourtesy."
For the moment Odelli kept to courtesy. Whatever else, as the woman who would become mistress of the house, it would be better to maintain a respectful bearing before an elder.
Castia looked through her with eyes as sharp as a hawk's, and asked,
"I had heard the third young lady of House Cardel was frail. Seeing you, I find you look exactly the part."
"Even so, you come of a house of heroes, so I expected you would at least surpass the gossip. Hmm……."
Which was to say, she fell short of even that. It had been a long time since anyone rebuked her so openly. The feeling was almost novel.