The Grand Duchess Eats Cake
The Grand Duchess eats cake.
"......You may come in."
The Grand Duchess's lovely voice drifted out from within the room, granting permission, and I carefully eased the door open, taking pains not to make any loud noise.
And there it was — Rebecca's room, spreading out before my eyes. Washed throughout in shades of red, the room alone was enough to tell you exactly who its mistress was.
"..."
Lady Rebecca, mistress of that room, sat on the edge of her bed, staring unblinkingly at me as I entered.
Seeing her gaze burn into me like that, the guilt that had sprouted earlier came creeping back all over again. Her face was still flushed, no doubt bearing the traces of the tears she had shed not so long ago, and the weight of my wrongdoing settled on my shoulders with a vengeance.
"......Sit there, please."
"Thank you, my lady."
Fortunately, rather than throwing me out, Rebecca asked me to take the chair facing her bed, and I obeyed her words faithfully. Never mind the Grand Duchess I might want to quarrel with — right now, I was the guilty party. Making the person you were promised to marry cry? If this were reality instead of a novel, I'd deserve to be buried alive without a word of protest.
"So. What business brings you here?"
Apparently my sitting there in silence had grown too frustrating to watch, and Rebecca spoke first. In answer, I replied with all the servility and apologetic contrition I could possibly muster.
"......I came to apologize for what happened in the dining hall earlier."
"What happened earlier?"
"..."
The moment I said I'd come to apologize, Rebecca claimed she couldn't recall what had happened at all. The expression she wore was one of pure blank forgetfulness — as though she had no memory whatsoever of crying over it.
Watching her, a serious question began to form in my head.
'......Was it all an act?'
Those tears from before — had she shed them deliberately, staged to set up this very situation? The corner of Rebecca's mouth was even now curling up ever so slightly, as though she were rather enjoying herself. Not so long ago, her face had been genuinely brimming with sorrow. But seeing her lips twitch and quirk like that now, suspicion was only reasonable.
Still, as I'd said before, the criminal in this situation was me. Giving Rebecca the answer she wanted was the best course available.
"......I was thoughtless. I failed to notice that you were distressed, my lady."
"And?"
"I brought tears to the eyes of the Grand Duchess, who is as exalted as the heavens themselves."
"You seem to know quite well."
Saying I was remorseful to Rebecca as she wore a thoroughly satisfied smile made a deep sense of defeat wash over me — but.
"I am reflecting on it deeply."
I was, after all, the one who had made her cry. It couldn't be helped.
"Well, if you're repenting so earnestly... I suppose I could forgive you?"
"......Please do."
"Hmmmm..."
Now the Grand Duchess had begun her little game of push and pull, granting forgiveness or withholding it on a whim. She already seemed fully mollified from watching me apologize, though. Just how humiliating could yesterday's loss have been, that she wouldn't forgive me easily?
'......Did I tease her too harshly?'
By this point I was starting to wonder if I'd overdone it yesterday — but Rebecca still held the upper hand, so I decided to bring out what I'd prepared to smooth things over properly.
"......What is that?"
Even as she debated whether to forgive me, Rebecca was clearly curious about what I was pulling out, leaning her head forward slightly for a better look.
"It's nothing much."
"..."
For my part, I wanted to maximize her surprise when she figured out what it was, so I deliberately declined to explain. And since I offered no explanation, Rebecca waited in silence until I had fully revealed it. At last, when what I had prepared showed itself in all its glory, Rebecca spoke in something like a whisper.
"Is that... a cake?"
"Yes."
What I had prepared for Rebecca was a cake. And not just any cake — a bright, refreshing strawberry cake absolutely loaded with strawberries.
If one were to list the defining traits of Rebecca Valencia as a character in The Crown Prince Holds the Sword, they would be: devastatingly beautiful, ferociously proud and competitive, and utterly lacking in manners. But beyond those three, there was one more trait that had stuck with me quite memorably as a reader.
"That red in the cake... could it be strawberry?"
"It is, exactly as you see, my lady."
That trait was: Rebecca loved strawberries more than anything in the world.
Calling this unusual was a bit of a stretch, admittedly — everyone has a favorite food or two. It was simply that the Grand Duchess's favorite happened to be strawberries; on its own, that hardly counted as remarkable.
What was remarkable was this novel's worldbuilding.
'A world where the concept of cooking fruit doesn't exist.'
In The Crown Prince Holds the Sword, the idea of preparing fruit as a dish simply did not exist. To use a simple example like the apple: people would peel an apple and eat it plain, but no one ever thought to turn it into apple juice, apple pie, or any other dish. That was a signature quirk of this novel.
To be fair, fruit in this world was a fairly precious crop, unlike in reality — but it wasn't so rare that even nobles struggled to buy it. And yet the only way anyone had ever developed to eat fruit was to wash it and bite in. It was a setting that left you wondering what on earth the author had been thinking.
"You put... strawberries... in a cake?"
But thanks to that very setting, here was Rebecca staring at me in open bewilderment. A setting the author conjured without a second thought was, naturally, something anyone transmigrated into the novel had a duty to exploit.
"I thought the sweetness of fresh cream would pair beautifully with the tartness of strawberry, so I made one."
"You made it yourself?"
The Grand Duchess expressed her astonishment all over again at the fact that I had made the cake myself. Under that sparkling gaze, brimming and unable to hide its wonder, I was briefly forced to confront my conscience.
After all, the only thing I had actually done was arrange the strawberries on a fresh-cream cake the head chef of House Valencia had prepared.
'......Well, the chef did praise it as a brilliant idea, so it should be fine.'
Remembering the chef gazing at me in pure admiration, I wanted to ask my conscience how it was holding up — but I forced myself to shrug it off, telling myself I'd simply shared a good recipe with him.
"May I... try it?"
Rebecca, who mere moments ago had been deliberating over whether to forgive me with a smirk, now flashed eyes bright with an eagerness she plainly couldn't contain — dying to know what the cake tasted like. And from that look, I could finally confirm the hypothesis I'd only been guessing at until now.
'......She got over it ages ago.'
Rebecca's mood had long since recovered entirely. She had only been pretending to still be angry, purely to watch me squirm in apology. Which made me irrationally annoyed — because while I had genuinely prepared myself to offer a heartfelt apology, the person concerned had been planning to tease me the whole time.
The cake had been made in the first place to lift her spirits. If her mood was already fully restored, didn't that mean I hardly needed to hand it over so easily?
"It was made for you, my lady. Of course you may eat it."
"Truly? Then right away—"
At my permission, Rebecca made straight for the strawberry cake — but.
"On one condition."
"......A condition?"
She pulled a sullen face at my words. Savoring that disappointed expression considerably, I made my declaration.
"If you wish to eat the cake, you may only eat it from my hand — bite by bite, fed by me alone."
"..."
In other words: the only permitted method of consuming this strawberry cake was for me to feed it to her. Hearing this, Rebecca's face went utterly incredulous. Only moments before, she had been thrilled at the prospect of eating a cake the likes of which she'd never seen — and one studded with her beloved strawberries, no less. And now suddenly she could only have it if I spoon-fed her, exactly as I'd done with the soup at breakfast. Of course she found it absurd.
It was, by any reasonable standard, a proposal she was certain to refuse. And yet.
"Very well. Feed me."
"If you'd rather not, I'll simply accept your apology for teasing me earl— I'm sorry, what did you say?"
There was nothing certain in this world. For a moment, I wondered if I'd misheard. But Rebecca's crimson eyes, meeting mine dead-on, declared that she meant every word.
"..."
Despite having proposed it myself, I found myself utterly flustered. Truthfully, I hadn't expected her to accept at all. I'd only made such an outlandish offer because Rebecca, teasing me when I'd sincerely resolved to apologize, had struck me as insufferably cheeky. The plan was to pretend I had no choice but to relent if she swallowed her pride and begged — after all, as I'd said, that cake had been made for her from the start.
Never in my wildest dreams had I imagined she would agree to a condition as absurd as being fed by my hand.
"What are you doing? You said you'd feed me."
"......Pardon? Yes."
She even hurried me along, urging me to feed her quickly while I stood frozen, flustered by the answer I'd never anticipated. Still in a daze, I drew out the spoon I'd brought and loaded it with the cake, aiming for the strawberries that sat in neat little slices on top. Then I approached Rebecca, whose lips were already slightly parted.
The distance shrank, until soon we were close enough to hear the soft rhythm of each other's breath. When Rebecca gave a small nod, as if to say hurry up and feed me, I — as though bewitched — brought the spoonful of strawberry cake to her lips.
Her pale-pink lips working softly around the cake, her cheeks tinged faintly red. And when I confirmed that those scarlet, vivid eyes of the Grand Duchess held no one in them but me—
Whoosh—
I shot to my feet on the spot.
"......I'll excuse myself first."
"..."
Even though it was discourteous for the junior party to rise first, Rebecca did nothing to stop me, and I fled her room like a man pursued.
Thump-thump, thump-thump—
My heart was hammering as though I'd come down with some mortal illness.
"......What is wrong with me."
I posed the question to myself at this incomprehensible turn of events — but no answer came. All that remained was my face, blazing red enough to burst, and my heart, pounding without pause.
Albert had gone, and only Rebecca remained in the room.
Thump-thump, thump-thump—
In that room where the only sound was a racing heartbeat — though whose it belonged to was anyone's guess—
"......I won."
Rebecca quietly ate her cake, celebrating her very first victory. All without realizing that the depth of her blush and the frantic pace of her heart made it, in truth, a defeat in everything but name.