The Grand Duchess Is in a Bad Mood
The Grand Duchess was in a foul mood.
"......Three to two."
She had just declared the final score with total confidence, and for a brief, shining moment she savored the taste of victory.
"......My lord, how exactly do you know the Saintess's name?"
It was Fredric's puzzled follow-up question that did it.
Ah.
Only then did I realize what I had done, blinded as I'd been by my own triumph.
From Fredric's perspective—the man who had tutored me all this time—his student had just displayed knowledge he had never once taught me.
If it had been something ordinary, like general imperial history, Fredric might have reacted the way any good teacher would: delighted that his pupil had gone off and studied on his own.
But this was no ordinary subject. This was the Saintess.
For anyone with no ties whatsoever to the Church, knowing about the Saintess at all would have been strange—knowing her name was outright abnormal.
And I, a man who had never so much as set foot near the Church, had just casually dropped it into conversation.
His surprise was more than understandable.
"My lord?"
My tutor pressed me, demanding to know just how I could possibly know such a thing.
"......I saw it in the newspaper a while back."
I fumbled out the first excuse I could grab.
"......You saw the Saintess's name in the newspaper."
Fredric clearly didn't believe a word of my flimsy explanation, but—
"......Yeah. I was skimming through it, and there was a pretty woman, so I looked closer. Turned out to be the Saintess."
"···."
It wasn't as though I could tell him the truth—that this world was actually the inside of a novel, and that I knew things because I was a transmigrator who had read it.
So even if it made me look shameless, I pushed my story through to the end.
After enduring a long, piercing stare that felt like it was boring holes straight through me—
"......Very well. If you say you saw it, my lord, then I suppose you saw it."
Once again, it was Fredric who raised the white flag first.
"So that means I won, right?"
"Yes. The Saintess's current name is indeed Estelle."
......Whew.
With victory now firmly secured, I finally let my shoulders drop and exhaled a sigh of relief.
"My lady."
"......What do you want."
Rebecca's voice answering my call was remarkably low, whether from the sting of losing the bet or something else entirely.
It was the voice of someone who might explode if you touched her the wrong way.
Anyone possessed of ordinary common sense would never have poked a princess in that state.
Unfortunately for me, I was drunk on the euphoria of victory—and therefore incapable of ordinary common sense.
"It would seem I've won this round as well."
"···."
And with that, I lit the fuse that had been burning down to nothing.
"......How lovely for you."
"......Pardon?"
Naturally, what came back was the icy voice of a thoroughly angered duchess, and that was the moment I realized something had gone very wrong.
The reaction I'd expected from Rebecca was nothing more than shouting at me in frustration, or maybe glaring daggers in my direction.
I had never anticipated her spitting words out in a voice that cold.
"You look delighted, memorizing the name of a pretty woman from the newspaper."
Faced with a reaction entirely unlike anything I'd predicted—
"···."
I panicked, and in that panic, I let slip my last chance to salvage the situation.
"......Do not follow me."
Scrape— SLAM!
Rebecca left those four words behind and walked straight out of the study.
"......This is bad."
"You're realizing this now, my lord?"
"···."
All that remained for me was my tutor's merciless scolding, delivered straight into my ear.
After fleeing the study, Rebecca wandered the count's estate with no particular destination in mind.
"Good day to you, Lady Valencia."
"Hello there, my lady!"
The servants of the Zernias Count Estate, recognizing her on sight, greeted her from time to time.
"···."
She offered only the faintest nod, her ceaseless footsteps never once slowing.
Where she was headed, even she could not have said.
This was, after all, her first visit to the Zernias Count Estate, and she had no real grasp of the layout of the place where she now stood.
The count's estate was smaller than her own home, the Valencia Ducal Mansion—but smaller than the ducal mansion did not mean small.
And so she simply walked, her feet carrying her she knew not where.
Only that morning, she had been in wonderful spirits.
She couldn't have explained why, even to herself, but the thought of visiting her fiancé's home for the very first time had left Rebecca positively giddy.
Her mood had held all through lunch as well.
Though the meal was nothing compared to what she was used to at home, it was remarkably fine for something prepared at short notice.
Besides, hadn't she finally been spared a glimpse of her insufferable fiancé's other face?
Right up until the moment lunch ended, she could say without a doubt that her mood had been at its absolute peak.
— If you would permit it, my lady, I shall show you to the room where you will be staying.
But the instant lunch was over, her mood had begun its slow, steady decline.
Albert had mentioned that he had a scheduled lesson to attend, and had been about to leave her alone in the sitting room.
In truth, her fiancé had done nothing wrong at all.
Had she simply sent word ahead by letter that she would be visiting—as he'd suggested—he would never have needed to leave for his lesson in the first place.
— ......No. I don't want to.
And yet she had thrown a tantrum like a five-year-old, refusing to sit alone in the sitting room.
Even as she did it, she knew in her head that the stubbornness was wrong. She knew perfectly well that the fault of not sending word in advance was hers.
And still, she had sulked like a child.
Even now, wandering the halls of the count's estate, she couldn't say exactly why she'd acted that way.
Only that she hated the idea of her fiancé leaving her behind to go do something else.
Only that the words I have a lesson to attend had sounded, somehow, like my lesson matters more than you.
That had stung.
That was all it was.
Perhaps her stubbornness had been too much to bear.
— ......Then why don't you simply join the lesson with me, my lady?
Albert had proposed that she sit in on his lesson with him.
Under any normal circumstances, it was an offer she would have refused outright.
She was the next Duke of Valencia, someone who studied plenty as it was—there was no reason on earth for her to come all the way to her fiancé's home just to study.
— I'll join.
— ......Pardon?
— I said I'll listen in. The lesson.
But something had possessed her.
She had accepted her fiancé's proposal, and—
— So, to confirm: Lady Valencia will be joining today's lesson as well?
— ......It just worked out that way.
Before she knew it, she was seated beside her fiancé's desk, listening to him and the man who appeared to be his tutor converse.
— It makes no difference to me, of course... though I do worry that Lady Valencia may find it dull.
— You hear that? It might be more boring than you'd expect.
Boredom was not something she enjoyed.
It was true that she spent more hours on her studies than most young lords and ladies her age—but she was still human. She found studying tedious sometimes, dull at others. She was a person, same as anyone.
— I don't care if it's boring.
— ...
And yet she had said it didn't matter.
Because something about it had felt like Albert was simply using boredom as an excuse to shuffle her out of the room.
That feeling had stung her pride, and so she had dug her heels in out of pure spite.
And that was how the lesson at her fiancé's estate had begun.
The subject, as it happened, was the Church.
She had already covered everything the Church-related curriculum had to offer through her private tutors, so—as Albert had warned her beforehand—she was thoroughly bored.
But her fiancé sat through the lesson wearing a look of focus he had never once shown her in all the time she'd known him.
It left her feeling restless and strange.
She had never, not once, seen her fiancé genuinely concentrate on anything before.
This unfamiliar side of him was nothing but disorienting.
And that was why.
— ......All of the Empire's major ceremonies are hosted by the Church, with it at the center, so—
— ...
— Am I wrong?
The reason she, who had been listening in silence, had stolen Albert's answer right out from under him—
was that this unfamiliar version of Albert, the one who wouldn't spare her so much as a glance and focused only on the lesson, had annoyed her.
Looking back, it was a petty, childish thought that even a five-year-old would have been ashamed of.
But at that moment, she could claim to have been more childish than anyone alive.
— ......Weren't you the one who said you'd only listen?
Albert's voice, naturally, sounded none too pleased at having his answer snatched away.
And though she knew it made no sense, she had felt good.
Because her fiancé—the man who had ignored her all lesson—had finally turned his attention toward her.
— Oh? Is it irritating you, having to answer questions I might actually know?
So she provoked him further.
Because his attention pleased her. Because watching Albert, who had paid her no mind, suddenly fixate on her—she liked that.
And so she needled his temper, deliberately.
And thus began yet another bet, this one staked on a Wish Ticket.
The contest had see-sawed to a dead-even two to two, but she had found herself enjoying it far more than she'd expected.
It was genuinely pleasant, watching her fiancé display a breadth of knowledge that far exceeded what she'd given him credit for. And there was the thought, too, that this might be the first time she ever actually beat him.
Her plummeting mood had, bit by bit, begun to climb back up.
— ......Correct. Estelle.
Right up until the moment she heard Albert's voice answer the final question—the name of the Saintess—with perfect, unshakable confidence.