The Grand Duchess Runs Away
The Grand Duchess runs away.
Let's think this through.
This situation was a disaster for me, for the Grand Duchess—who wore an expression of pure shock—and, for that matter, for the Saintess, who stood there blank-faced because she couldn't grasp what was happening at all.
The Saintess, at least, was simply flustered because she couldn't understand why the two of us were standing there frozen, so I decided to set her aside. Right now, the important person was not the Saintess.
"..."
"..."
No—what mattered was me and the Grand Duchess, both of us petrified, staring at each other.
First: why I was so rattled.
It went without saying. I had never imagined Rebecca would appear out of nowhere like this. The whole reason I had braced myself against the distortion of the original story and come to the garden in the first place was to find the Grand Duchess who had supposedly fled here.
...Why now, of all times?
Why on earth was she arriving at the garden later than I was? If I'd known this would happen, I would have just waited at the entrance instead of walking in. Then I could have run into her without any of this mess, as casually as anything.
And so self-recrimination toward my past self, and resentment toward the Duchess of Valencia—who had fed me that misinformation (?)—took root and flourished in my chest. But no matter how I turned it over, the person in far more danger than I was Rebecca.
Until a moment ago, her reaction had stopped at shock. But now—
"..."
—as if she had fully grasped the situation, she was wearing the expression of someone who had lost her entire country. Even villagers who'd watched invaders burn down the town they'd lived in all their lives couldn't have imitated that look.
It wasn't as though I couldn't understand why she was making that face.
From her point of view, her fiancé had been nowhere to be found, so she'd come looking for him herself—only to discover him standing close with a woman she'd never seen before. A pretty woman, at that, deep in quiet conversation with him. What fiancée on earth would stay calm under those circumstances?
And even if it were just a prank I was playing to tease her—her fiancé, who had whispered that she was the most beautiful woman in the world mere hours ago.
Worse, Estelle might not have been a stranger to Rebecca at all. Ordinary people might not know the name of the Saintess well, but most recognized her face—she appeared in the newspapers often enough.
Rebecca had once sulked at me during our lessons simply because I knew the Saintess's name despite having no connection to the Church, and because I'd used the word pretty to describe a face I'd only seen in the papers.
And that same Grand Duchess didn't remember the Saintess's face?
...Not a chance.
It was, quite literally, impossible. I would sooner believe that Aaron, my swordsmanship instructor, had never once neglected his duties.
That was how absurd the idea was. Which meant that from where Rebecca stood, her fiancé was holding a secret rendezvous, alone, with the very woman he'd once called beautiful.
...Having spelled it out like that, I could see exactly how much of a piece of garbage I must look like to her. Not even ordinary garbage—food waste, the kind that can't even be sorted for recycling.
I'd only tried imagining things from the Grand Duchess's perspective, and even I gave myself that bottom-of-the-barrel evaluation. So what must Rebecca—the actual party slammed head-on by this situation—be thinking as she looked at me?
Betrayal, for deceiving her. Fury, for toying with her. Every negative, vicious emotion conceivable was probably reigning over her mind right now.
Even if that suspicion was, in truth, nothing but a misunderstanding rather than fact—
At this moment I had no way to prove it to Rebecca, no way to explain myself. The evidence laid out in front of her was simply too damning. Whatever my reasons, the fact remained: a man with a fiancée had had a private conversation with another woman in the garden. Hadn't he?
And that was exactly why the situation was so utterly hopeless. I knew what Rebecca must be thinking. I knew every point on which she must be disappointed in me. And I also knew that explaining or justifying myself would be monumentally difficult.
Knowing the cause of a problem is not the same as being able to solve it.
"...My lady."
Still, I couldn't just stand there and do nothing. Brushing the whole thing under the rug wasn't even a coherent option—I had to find some way to explain to her why I had behaved as I had. Whether she would understand after hearing it was an open question. But that choice belonged to Rebecca, the one doing the forgiving. Not to me.
"...Don't come near me."
When I called her name and took a step closer, Rebecca immediately stumbled backward, putting distance between us. The shock must have been considerable—her eyes were still trembling at the corners.
She stood frozen like that for a long moment. Then—
Skrrt—!
—she spun on her heel and fled into the depths of the garden.
Every footprint she left behind seemed stamped with a different emotion. And I had a feeling I wasn't imagining the something bright and watery that had fallen on the spot where she'd stood.
I couldn't just stand by and watch her go, either.
"Forgive me—I need to step away."
With a half-hearted apology to Estelle, I chased after the Grand Duchess.
"Wait—just a moment!"
I thought I heard the Saintess calling after me from behind. No—there was no thought about it. I had definitely heard her.
After all, she still had no idea what kind of mess this situation actually was. From Estelle's perspective, both the Valencia Grand Duchess who had looked at her and bolted, and the man now chasing after that Duchess, must have been completely incomprehensible.
But—
...Rebecca.
What mattered right now wasn't someone else's heroine. Not the heroine of the novel I'd been dropped into.
Estelle would be fine; before long, Mikhail—the protagonist—would appear, exactly as the original story demanded, and comfort her.
The person who truly mattered was my fiancée, who had been hurt and brought to tears because of me. What did anyone else's importance matter in a moment like this?
Without so much as a glance back, I ran after Rebecca.
Rebecca ran.
Even she didn't understand why she was running. She didn't understand why tears were slipping down her cheeks in slow threads, either. She simply ran.
Because if she didn't run, she couldn't bear this unknown emotion flooding her head. Because if she didn't run, she couldn't hide the tears streaming down her face.
Nothing made sense. Why did she feel this wretched? Why were the tears coming at all? All she had witnessed was a single fact—her fiancé, talking with a woman who wasn't her.
That was all. It was only that.
So why were her eyes spilling over like this?
It wasn't as though what she'd stumbled upon was some outrageous scene. A man with a fiancée, talking with another woman? Not exactly pleasant, but perfectly within the realm of the ordinary. Granted, once you layered on the facts that it had been the two of them alone, and that the woman was the one her fiancé had called pretty—well, perhaps that warranted a little more thought. But still. It was, on its face, a forgivable thing.
Why had the two of them come here today? She, for her debutante. Albert, to enter high society for the first time. Society was a place for forging connections, for cultivating goodwill. And in such a place, her fiancé had managed to form ties not with just anyone, but with the Saintess herself.
Properly speaking, running away like this—so gracelessly—was the wrong response. She should have greeted the Saintess and built connections alongside her fiancé. She didn't love her fiancé, after all. And even if they had been in love—the other party was the Saintess, a woman one might meet only a handful of times in an entire lifetime. Keeping private feelings to herself was the correct course. That was the right judgment, both as the future Duchess of Valencia and as the fiancée of a future Count.
And yet.
Rebecca couldn't do it.
The sight of her fiancé speaking to the Saintess brought back the Albert who had whispered those mortifying words into her ear mere hours ago. The sight of the Saintess smiling brightly at whatever he said brought back the fiancé who had, only days before, pronounced the Saintess pretty. And the sight of the two of them standing close, heads bent together in the lamplight—
—left her mind utterly blank.
So she could do nothing at all.
Greet the Saintess for the sake of connections, or scream what do you think you're doing with my fiancé, or rail at Albert—you swore you'd look only at me, so what is this? Any one of the three. She should have done any one of the three.
Instead, her mind gone white as paper, she did nothing. Like a defeated soldier, she simply fled. Deeper into the garden, and deeper still—running without pause until, at last, she reached the very heart of the Imperial Garden and there was nowhere left to run.
And the heart of the Imperial Garden, when she finally arrived—
"...It's... beautiful."
—was breathtaking. As befit the gardens of the Imperial Family. More beautiful even than the gardens of the Valencia Ducal Estate, which she had seen so often they barely registered anymore. More beautiful than the gardens of House Zernias, where her fiancé had told her—
"See? Isn't it? The most beautiful woman in the world—Lady Rebecca Valencia."
More beautiful than the Zernias gardens where she had once—
"...I lose."
"I beg your pardon?"
"I... lost... so please, stop already..."
"...As you wish, my beloved fiancée."
—than the gardens where she had admitted her defeat.
Damn it all—it was beautiful.
Perhaps that was precisely the problem.
"..."
The tears came faster now than before. It had to be because the Imperial Garden was far lovelier than she had imagined. Because, like some greedy miser, she was drinking in this beautiful scenery all alone. Because she felt sorry for the person who should have been viewing it beside her, and couldn't.
And then—
"...My lady."
"..."
From somewhere behind her—from the very direction she had come running—a low voice drifted through the night air.
The voice of the man who should have been sharing this view with her.