The Lady Realizes She's Drunk
"What... did you... talk about? With Lady... Bluebell?"
If ever there was a sharp question, it was the sharp question Rebecca asked me.
"...We didn't really discuss anything special."
What I chose, for the moment, was to deflect.
For one thing, it was true that Isabella and I had hardly exchanged any real conversation.
And for another, there was nothing good that could come of my fiancée Rebecca hearing that I'd been chatting with another woman.
"You're... deflecting... again."
"···."
But Rebecca's mind seemed to be working in exactly the opposite direction from mine.
"What... delightful conversation... could you possibly have had... that you won't tell me about?"
The way her face twisted the instant she heard my answer said it all.
"...You're drunk, Lady."
It was here that I realized, once again, just how thoroughly Rebecca had been drinking.
My lady was the kind of person who, whenever something upset her, would simply clamp her mouth shut and make her sulking known in silence.
She was not the type to press and pry for the reason behind her own bad mood.
I had no idea how thoughtlessly she'd been drinking, but one thing was certain — it hadn't ended at a glass or two.
"Why would someone who hasn't even had her debutante ceremony be drinking at all?"
"...Someone... didn't realize it was alcohol when she drank it..."
"···."
Just as I'd suspected.
Just as Mikhail had downed the glass Rebecca handed him without knowing it contained alcohol, Rebecca, too, had clearly drunk hers believing it to be an ordinary beverage.
"Just as you said... some people haven't even had their coming-of-age ceremony yet... so why on earth was the alcohol just left out in the open..."
"...I imagine it was a consideration for those who have already celebrated theirs."
There were bound to be people born before a regularly scheduled Imperial Banquet who had already come of age by the time it arrived.
The alcohol, I suspected, had been laid out for people like them.
"...Even so, there's someone like me... why would they leave the alcohol somewhere so easily reached, I ask you..."
"···."
It was simply a fact that proved difficult for a thoroughly drunk, whining lady to comprehend.
"Anyway!"
Rebecca shook her head, as though this were no time for such talk.
"Stop deflecting... I asked you what you talked about..."
She demanded once more that I answer her question.
That sulking, fussing expression of hers was adorable, and besides, if I didn't answer honestly, it didn't look like Rebecca had any intention of ever letting me go.
"Lady Bluebell asked me for a dance."
I decided to lay out what had happened, just as it was.
"Lady... Bluebell did?"
"Yes. She came straight up to me out of nowhere and asked, saying she'd enjoyed my dancing yesterday."
"···."
Had those words — my dancing yesterday — struck some chord within Rebecca?
Well, even by Rebecca's own reckoning, her waltz with me yesterday had gone far beyond merely impressive, bordering on outright theatrical performance.
It was only natural, perhaps, that the lady's cheeks were slowly turning red.
"Even after... seeing all that... she still asked you to dance?"
Rebecca seemed unable to understand Isabella's behavior.
"...Tell me about it."
Neither could I, for that matter.
I still hadn't figured out what had driven Isabella to approach me in the first place.
According to the lore revealed in the original story, 'Isabella Bluebell' had been groomed from childhood to become Empress. Why she was showing interest in me — of all people, who was not the Crown Prince — I couldn't fathom.
...Though honestly, with so much having already diverged from the original, I wasn't sure the original story even mattered anymore.
That was how things went in The Crown Prince Wields a Sword, at any rate.
"What a... strange person."
"It would seem so."
And so I found it easy to agree with Rebecca's assessment of Isabella as strange.
After all, there was a measurable gap between the characters I knew from the page and the ones I'd met in the flesh.
"If all your questions have been answered, please have this and rest a while."
And there, I assumed, the conversation would end.
Rebecca had said it as though everything she'd been curious about was now resolved.
I really had brought things that would help with her hangover, after all.
What cures drunkenness better than a good night's sleep, as they say?
The plan was to stay by her side until the visibly exhausted Rebecca drifted off, and then go find the Duke and Duchess of Valencia.
"...You're... planning to leave me behind again?"
"···."
At least, that was the plan — right up until Rebecca grabbed me as I rose slightly to hand the lady her hangover remedy.
"You abandoned me earlier... and now you're planning to do it again?"
Rebecca's voice carried a note of hurt.
The hurt of someone who had already endured something once, only to be made to endure it all over again.
That hurt came through, vivid and unmistakable, in her voice.
"When did I ever abandon you, my lady?"
"Just now, that's when."
"...Did you not tell me yourself that I needn't come anywhere near you?"
I, the one actually on the receiving end of that feeling, felt deeply wronged.
It was Rebecca who had said the hurtful thing first.
The image of the lady declaring it made no difference to her whether I was beside her or not was still vivid in my mind.
How could she forget her own words and then say such things to me?
But then.
"...You knew I didn't mean it."
"···."
Rebecca's next words were more than enough to fluster me, wronged as I'd been.
"You knew I only said it because I hate to lose — that it was nothing but empty words."
"...I didn't know."
A lie.
The truth was, I had known perfectly well.
Hadn't I even gone so far as to monologue about how I understood her heart perfectly, but played oblivious out of the hope that I might glimpse a new side of my fiancée?
"...Liar."
Rebecca, it seemed, already knew that too — and she was, moreover, still every bit as drunk as before.
"There's no way you didn't know how I felt."
"···."
"Not when you always read other people's hearts like a damn ghost."
To watch her spill such blush-inducing words without a shred of hesitation —
The Rebecca of any ordinary day could never have managed them.
These days, even when she spent a Wish Ticket — the spoils of our little wagers — I doubted I'd hear her say anything like this.
That was how much my fiancée despised embarrassment.
Natural, then, that it should be so.
"...Why didn't you accept the dance?"
"...I beg your pardon?"
"Lady Bluebell's invitation. Why didn't you accept it?"
Rebecca's expression as she asked looked darker than it had all evening.
"We agreed that at today's banquet we'd treat each other as strangers and enjoy ourselves separately, didn't we?"
"···."
"So why did you refuse the dance?"
Whether it was the fact that another lady had, in the end, asked me to dance that had darkened Rebecca's face —
Or the fact that I truly hadn't approached her once through the whole course of the banquet — I couldn't say.
"Isn't it obvious?"
"···."
"I have a fiancée in perfect health. How could I possibly accept another lady's invitation to dance?"
One thing was certain: I did not want to keep looking at that dark expression.
"...Why not?"
Rebecca's face said she found my reasoning hard to follow.
"It's only natural for a noble newly entered into high society to accept dance invitations in order to build connections—"
"You're making the exact same argument Lady Bluebell did just now, my lady."
"···."
At the revelation that she was echoing Isabella, that expression vanished at once.
"Lady Bluebell said the very same thing to me. That it's only natural for a noble to accept dance invitations at an Imperial Banquet in order to build rapport."
"...Then why—"
"Because that argument applies only to nobles who actually want to build rapport, wouldn't you say?"
"···."
"Did I look to you like someone who wishes to cultivate friendships with the people around me?"
"...No."
Rebecca knew, too.
She knew that the man who supposedly wanted noble friendships practically lived at his fiancée's estate, he visited so often.
That when he did drop by, it was perhaps once every two weeks — nothing like his habit of calling at least once every three days.
"Why would someone who knows all that ask me such an obvious question?"
"...Because I was anxious."
"···."
"Because I was anxious... that you might dance with someone other than me..."
"My fiancée certainly does carry around the most pointless anxieties."
"...I'm sorry, what?"
The lady's two red eyes widened, as if to say what on earth was that supposed to mean.
Looking those clear, unclouded eyes dead on,
I spoke quietly.
"Did I not make you a promise, back at the estate?"
"···."
"That I am your one and only fiancé, and that I would not dance with any other lady."
"You... you remembered that?"
Whatever Rebecca had meant to say, it was probably this — the words that died before they could leave her lips.
And if I was right, if that unfinished sentence really was what I thought it was,
If that really was what she had wanted to ask me,
Then this was the answer I wanted to give.
"Someone once said that to me. Do you honestly think I could forget it?"
Whose words were they, that I would dare let them slip my mind?
"They were spoken by my fiancée — not by just anyone. How could I possibly forget?"
"···."
They were your words, the words of the person dearer to me than anyone in this world. How could I ever lose them?
That was what I wanted to say.
A flush of warmth—
Rebecca's cheeks, already red with drink, burned even redder at my answer.
"...I really must be drunk."
"You're only now realizing this?"
"If I were myself, I'd have told you to stop teasing me and left it at that."
"···."
"But tonight... somehow... it sounds almost dashing."
"...Does it, now."
Frankly, I wasn't holding out hope that tonight's memory would stay with Rebecca.
The lady was thoroughly drunk right now, and the proof was that she was saying things she'd never say otherwise.
It's common enough for the drunk to lose their memories of the night.
Just as that sweet first kiss remained a memory I alone held, tonight's memories could very well vanish from Rebecca's mind as well.
But even so.
Even if today, too, ended up as a keepsake that I alone would remember,
"I've always thought you beautiful, my lady. I'm a little disappointed, that's all."
"···."
Of everything, this was the one thing I wanted to say.
Because chances to speak my true heart to Rebecca didn't come around often, either.
"Sleep now, my beloved fiancée."
"...You're insufferable."
With those last words, sleep won its victory at last, and Rebecca's eyes drifted shut.
"Rebecca!"
"Young Master Albert — is our daughter all right?"
I kept quiet vigil at her side, until at last the Duke and Duchess of Valencia, having heard the news, came hurrying to the lounge.