The Grand Duchess Admits Defeat
······The answer is, Estelle.
Her fiancé's voice, naming the Saintess, was more certain than it had ever been.
As if this were someone he had known for a long time. As if this were someone he had long carried in his heart.
Not a trace of hesitation in it.
It might have been her overactive imagination. Or perhaps outright paranoia.
What possible occasion would Albert have had to meet the Saintess? Her fiancé had nothing whatsoever to do with the Church—and neither, for that matter, did she.
She was clearly the one at fault here, reading needless meaning into her fiancé's words.
And yet the uneasy feeling refused to wash away—because today's Albert was, from her standpoint, a rather unfamiliar man.
Because from the moment she'd found him, he had kept his attention fixed on the lesson rather than on her.
These reasons piled one atop another, and despite her every effort not to think about it, they pushed her toward darker thoughts.
Then came the conversation between her fiancé and the tutor, carried clearly to her ears.
“······So you saw the Saintess's name in the newspaper, my lord?”
“Mm. I was skimming through it, and there was a pretty woman, so I took a closer look—turned out it was the Saintess.”
A pretty woman.
Her fiancé was calling a woman he had never once laid eyes on pretty.
Not only did he remember the name of a woman he had never crossed paths with—he was going so far as to say her face was beautiful.
That rubbed her mood the entirely wrong way.
The reason, again, eluded her.
She wasn't jealous, after all. What possible reason could she have to feel sour over her fiancé calling someone else pretty?
The two of them were not in love. They weren't even fond of each other, not in that way.
There should have been absolutely no reason for her to feel bad.
And yet her mood was sprinting full tilt toward the worst it had been all day.
By her own logic, it shouldn't have mattered at all. And yet somehow, her spirits kept sinking deeper and deeper into the mire.
“My lady?”
“······What do you want.”
Albert's voice rang vividly in her ears once more.
This time, his voice had been searching for her. Not some other woman like the Saintess.
Even though that fact pleased her a little, her mood remained foul all the same, and so she answered in a curt voice.
“It appears I've won our little wager again.”
“···.”
Her fiancé, apparently devoid of even a single shred of tact, seemed entirely oblivious to her state of mind.
He did, after all, have the audacity to say such a thing straight to her face.
“······I suppose you have.”
“······Pardon?”
She spat the words at her fiancé in a voice colder than any she had used on him before.
Because she couldn't stand Albert—Albert, who couldn't even read his own fiancée's mood.
“You look so delighted, memorizing the name of some pretty woman from the newspaper.”
“···.”
Albert wore the expression of a man completely blindsided, as though he could never in a thousand years have imagined her reacting like this.
And though she still couldn't say why, that flustered look on her fiancé's face made her mood even worse.
“······Don't follow me.”
And with those parting words, she walked out of the study.
Truthfully, she hadn't needed to go this far. Yes, her feelings were hurt—but what had stung was Albert's obliviousness, not the matter itself.
All she'd had to do was tell her fiancé as much and make him apologize.
But she couldn't bring herself to.
Albert's words kept circling in her head—how he'd called the Saintess pretty. The fact that he'd lavished a compliment he never spared for her on a woman he'd never once seen—that fact kept circling and circling.
Out of the study, she simply began to walk, with no destination in mind.
And after wandering like that for a good while—
“······The terrace?”
Before she knew it, she had arrived at the terrace overlooking the Count's garden.
She hadn't come to the Zernias estate with any desire to see its gardens. But now that the terrace was right in front of her, the thought of strolling through them occurred to her all at once.
Creeeak—
As if in a trance, she pushed open the terrace door.
What greeted her were immaculately tended plants.
Roses, tulips, and a whole procession of flowers besides, along with the ornamental trees famous in noble circles—and even young crops, still growing, whose identities she couldn't begin to guess.
A riot of greenery and bloom rose up to welcome the visitor to their garden.
After one full lap of the grounds, her verdict was: humble, but lovely.
Set against the garden at her own estate, the Zernias garden was absolutely tiny.
It had its share of flowers, trees, and plants, sure—but the difference in variety and number was considerable.
A garden this small honestly felt guilty being compared to the one at the Valencia Ducal Estate.
And yet, the condition of the plants here actually put Valencia's to shame.
Everything was arranged neatly by species, as if the gardener had poured his whole heart into the work.
The plants brimmed with life, as though they'd been watered fresh this very morning.
So absorbed was she in admiring them that—
“······The gardener has clearly put a great deal of care into this.”
A familiar voice sounded behind her.
And it soured the mood she had only just lifted, admiring the flowers as she'd been.
“I told you not to follow me. ······Never mind. I'll go somewhere else.”
Her mood spoiled anew, she turned on her heel without so much as a glance at the voice's owner, intent on leaving the garden just as she had before—but.
“······I would like to claim my wish.”
“···.”
At her fiancé's declaration that he meant to spend the wish he'd won from their wager, her footsteps froze in place.
“······What did you say?”
“I said I'm using the wish I earned earlier. Now.”
Ba-dump. Ba-dump.
A heartbeat she couldn't attribute to anyone began to thunder through her once more.
And something about this situation felt achingly, unshakably familiar.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
Rebecca, who had been on the verge of walking straight out of the garden and away from me—
“······What is your wish?”
Thankfully, she didn't turn a deaf ear even to my request.
“I would simply like you to hear me out.”
“······That's really all?”
Her voice carried the unspoken question: don't you have some other wish you ought to be making?
She had surely assumed I would use my wish to beg her to accept an apology.
If I announced a wish in the middle of a situation like this, she would guess my motive a hundred times out of a hundred, after all.
“Yes. That's all.”
“···.”
But that was the very wish that ran against what I truly wanted.
The wish I genuinely desired was—
“I simply want you to listen to what I have to say.”
Not patching up our relationship through the artifice of a wish, but mending it sincerely.
My aim was not to dodge this situation. It was to walk through it.
“······Go on, then.”
Having heard my wish, Rebecca gave a nod that seemed to say get it over with.
“Thank you, my lady.”
I offered the princess my thanks.
“First, I owe you an apology for what happened earlier.”
“···.”
“I failed to read your heart and said something thoughtless. I am truly sorry.”
“······And?”
The princess, judging that answer only half right, demanded the next reason.
“With the most beautiful fiancée in the world standing before him, that man went and called a different woman pretty.”
“···.”
Rebecca was, by all appearances, covering her mouth with her hand.
Then why did I get the distinct feeling the corners of her lips were curving upward?
I couldn't know the truth of it—but if her mood had improved from my words, then nothing about this moment could possibly be bad for me.
So I decided to let it slide.
“Is that all?”
By now her anger seemed well and truly spent, her voice returning to its usual tone rather than the frost-edged one from before.
This alone would have been enough. My goal—defusing Rebecca's anger—looked to be already accomplished.
Even I, with my notoriously abysmal read on people, could tell that Rebecca's mood was no longer bad.
There was no real need to say anything more.
“There is still more.”
And yet I did not stop.
“...?”
Even Rebecca, the person concerned, tilted her head at my claim that I had more to say.
But I could not stop here.
If I fell silent now, wouldn't that amount to my defeat at her hands?
Winning nothing from my wish but Rebecca's forgiveness—that was something my pride could never abide.
At the very least, seeing the princess at a loss for words was my only path to turning this match—already as good as lost—into a draw.
“I have wounded the heart of the woman I love.”
“Wh-what did you just say?”
The word love proved devastatingly effective.
At my words, Rebecca's face went scarlet on the spot, and she began sputtering like a machine that had jammed.
But—
“Standing before the most beautiful, most beloved lady in all the world, I let my mouth run on about another woman's looks.”
“···.”
“It is only natural that the fiancée I adore should be upset with me.”
As I said, I had no intention of stopping until this contest was, at minimum, a draw.
“My failure to grasp the heart of the woman I love more than anyone in this world is a sin deserving of death—so.”
“···.”
“I ask that my beloved fiancée pass judgment upon me.”
“······Stop—”
Rebecca's face was already as red as red could be, past any further deepening.
She had buried it in both hands, as if she wished to hide it from my eyes entirely.
And having confirmed that sight, I—
Step. Step.
“······Don't come any closer.”
I ignored the princess's plea entirely.
“I said don't come closer...”
Drawing near her, one unhurried step at a time—
“If you insist on hiding it like that, I won't be able to see your lovely face, will I?”
I gently swept away those incorrigible hands that had been concealing her burning cheeks.
“···.”
“······There. Isn't that better? The most beautiful lady in all the world—Rebecca Valencia.”
I gazed straight into those clear crimson eyes, dyed through and through with embarrassment.
That meeting of the eyes might have been sweeter than any kiss.
It felt as though time itself had stopped for everything in the world except Rebecca and me.
“······I give up.”
“Pardon?”
“I... I lost... so please... just stop...”
It was Rebecca who declared her surrender first.
Her face was already as red as her own hair, and she could no longer hold my gaze at all.
And I was hardly so cruel a man that I would refuse to accept the surrender of the woman I loved.
“Understood, my beloved fiancée.”
“······Uuu.”
I accepted her surrender, gladly and completely.
The Grand Duchess, in the end, could not win today either.