Chapter 3

Chapter 3

What words could possibly explain what had happened to her in the past?

To sum it up in a single phrase, it had been the worst failure ever woven from her own foolishness and naïveté.

Fully three years had passed since she’d returned to the past. A considerable length of time by now, and yet every so often she still wondered whether all of this was a dream.

Each time, Irenea steadied her sense of reality by chewing over what her uncle had done to her, letting the rising anger anchor her.

‘If you give up here, I’ll see to your sisters’ dowries. But if you’re insolent enough to cling to your uncle and make trouble… what do you suppose will become of your sisters?’

“How foolish I was…”

Why had I believed the words of that cunning wretch back then?

“Hm? Sister, what did you say?”

“Nothing. More importantly, that hat looks lovely on you. Let’s buy that one too.”

Spica, the finest dressmaker’s in the capital, where one couldn’t even set foot inside without a reservation.

Settled confidently in its VVIP room, Irenea smiled contentedly at Elizabeth, who was already trying on her fifth hat.

“As expected of my sister, there’s nothing that doesn’t suit you.”

Golden hair, curling yet glossy, and eyes as blue as a lake.

She had merely put on a dress and hat to match, and yet the girl, her youthful vitality and fresh innocence so charming, looked as lovely as a doll.

Irenea clapped in genuine admiration, but Elizabeth, the one being praised, only narrowed her eyes at her sister.

“You tell me to buy everything I try on. Sister, are you actually looking properly? I asked you to pick the one that suits me.”

“What am I supposed to do when everything suits you?”

“Don’t say that!”

Elizabeth stamped one foot, as if in protest.

“Just pick the one that suits me best. Come on, look again. Which of these is the prettiest?”

Before Elizabeth had even finished speaking, the staff standing behind her brought over the hats they held and set them on the table.

A large bonnet trimmed with showy lace. A silk hat in a delicate color. A dyed straw hat, easy to wear on a day out.

Irenea ran a casual glance over them, then sank back into her chair and took a sip of warm black tea.

“They’re all pretty. They all suit you. But why must you buy only one? You know your sister is rich.”

Rich was putting it mildly.

In truth, this very dressmaker’s belonged to her. The wages of the designers and staff who worked here also came out of her coffers.

She paid by check only as a matter of procedure; these were things she could have simply carried out without paying a coin.

But though she knew this perfectly well, Elizabeth stubbornly insisted she would choose just one.

“Even if I buy a lot, I have nowhere to wear them. I haven’t even made my debut in society yet.”

“Do you have nowhere to go without a society debut? You can wear them when you go shopping like this, and on picnics, to the opera, riding, the auction house, the coffeehouse, out on the yacht. Goodness, there are so many places to go out! I think I’ll buy them all.”

“I said one is enough!”

Elizabeth cried out in alarm, then promptly put on a gloomy face.

Dropping her gaze to the floor, she took off the hat she’d been wearing, fidgeted with its edge, and murmured, almost to herself,

“Sister’s been strange since Mother and Father died.”

“Have I? In what way?”

“You used to say no unplanned spending, ever, even when I asked for just a little more allowance. Now you keep buying me clothes and jewelry even when I say I don’t need them.”

“Well, that’s…”

Irenea was lost for words for a moment and gazed at her sister with distant eyes.

She knew her attitude had changed all of a sudden. But how could she possibly explain why?

‘We were unjustly robbed of what we were rightfully meant to inherit. And then we died miserably.’

Elizabeth, who had grown up too soon. Charlotte, who had been nothing but adorable.

And… Irenea herself as well.

It was something that would never have happened if she had kept her wits about her.

How far a person’s life could plunge into the abyss through a single moment of idleness and one wrong choice.

Now Irenea knew that better than anyone.

“Elly, I’ve been thinking.”

“Thinking about what?”

As if soothing the sulking Elizabeth, Irenea spoke in a gentle voice.

“Well, if spending grows beyond your means, that is the shortest road to ruining a household. But even at this very moment, the numbers are climbing fast, not only in the House of Blair’s coffers but in the accounts opened in my own name.”

Afraid of giving anyone a handle against her, she paid enormous taxes in full, without a single trick.

It was no exaggeration to say that the House of Blair bore a tenth of the nation’s annual budget. It was not for nothing that the Emperor doted on her.

Of course, Irenea did not begrudge that money any less for it. But as long as she honestly paid those enormous taxes, the Emperor would take her side, even if fools who envied her, her uncle among them, tried to find fault for no reason.

The current Emperor was not stupid enough to slit open the belly of the goose that laid the golden eggs.

‘For at least ten more years, the Emperor will rule, crushing the nobles beneath unprecedented imperial authority.’

What would happen after ten years, she didn’t know. She had died then.

But that was enough. How could an Emperor who had boasted such formidable authority for ten years die out of nowhere overnight?

Even if such a thing did happen, once the Emperor changed, she could simply pass the title to a suitable heir, shut herself away in some quiet countryside, and live a life of leisure.

Her goal was only one.

To take revenge on her uncle without letting her precious things be taken from her.

And one of the three most precious among them was right in front of her.

“My beloved sister, you were disappointed that I didn’t give you much allowance when you were little, weren’t you? I’ll give you all the allowance I couldn’t give you then.”

At Irenea’s deep, fond gaze, Elizabeth was startled and leapt in the air.

“No, I don’t need it! What I meant was not that I want allowance, but…”

“Actually, there’s already an account opened in your name at Jacqueline Bank.”

“What?”

“I’ll give you a checkbook, so whenever you need money, you can just pay with your signature. It will be drawn from that account.”

At the words that poured out as if she had made up her mind, Elizabeth’s mouth fell wide open. Then her face scrunched up as though she would cry.

“You can’t be my sister. What did you do with my sister? Bring her back, you villain!”

“Oh dear, what a pity. Your sister is already dead and gone.”

Truly.

Your naïve sister is already dead, Elly.

“What! Don’t brush it off like that! It’s only been three years since Mother and Father died…”

Elizabeth’s eyes brimmed with tears. At the sight, Irenea clicked her tongue softly.

“I’m sorry. Your sister took the joke too far. There, there, stop crying, all right?”

Elizabeth, who had been sniffling, looked at Irenea with slightly resentful eyes, then slyly made a demand.

“…Then pick one of these quickly. The one that suits me best.”

“You really are impossible.”

Handing Elizabeth a handkerchief, Irenea gave a resigned little laugh and set a snow-white straw hat on her sister’s head.

“You’re going on a picnic with Charlotte this weekend, aren’t you? Wear this one.”

“Hehe, I knew this one suited me best! Anything too big and showy doesn’t suit me.”

Elizabeth beamed, then gripped both sides of the brim and tugged it down, as if to hide her reddened eyes.

Irenea gave her adorable sister’s cheek a light pinch and wobbled it.

“I told you, the others suit you too. How strange. Since when has my sister stopped believing her own sister’s words?”

“Since you got busy and stopped playing with us!”

Just as Elizabeth was sticking her tongue out rudely, someone knocked politely on the door of the VVIP room where the two sisters sat.

When Irenea gave permission to enter, the door opened carefully. Bowing respectfully beyond it was a young woman with short silver hair and ash-gray eyes.

“An urgent message has come from the Cleo Branch, Marchioness.”

“From the Cleo Branch? …Understood, I’ll be there shortly.”

“You’re going to work again?”

As she rose from her seat, Elizabeth looked up at her with eyes still wet.

‘Hmm…’

She had finally made time after such a long while.

She felt terribly sorry, but with word from the Cleo Branch, there was nothing to be done.

“To make up for it, I’ll come home early today. Let’s have dinner together, the three of us, with Charlotte, for the first time in ages.”

“Really? Charlotte and I will wait to eat until you come home. If you’re late, we’ll stay up and wait for you!”

“All right, I promise. Kiri, give her what I mentioned earlier, now.”

“Yes.”

What Kiri took out of the bag slung over her shoulder was a checkbook.

“I wasn’t joking about what I said earlier, so if there’s anything you want to buy, use this.”

“S-Sister!”

“But keep it secret from Charlotte. She’s still too young to have a checkbook.”

As Irenea turned away with a wink of one eye, Elizabeth’s dumbfounded voice reached her from behind.

“B-but I’m too young to have a checkbook too…”

I wonder when I’ll finally find out just how big my sister’s nerve really is.

The expression vanished from Irenea’s giggling face the moment she climbed into the carriage with Kiri.

“So… what has my dear uncle gone and done this time?”

The Cleo Branch.

It was a real place name, with a real branch office, but it was a quiet backwater from which no urgent message would ever come.

It was a code between Irenea and her chief secretary, Kiri. It meant there was something to report about Viscount Calio.

“He went to see an alchemist at the black market, they say.”

“Good heavens, that lofty gentleman has stooped so low as to set foot in the black market?”

A noble to the bone, steeped in a sense of chosen superiority perhaps even deeper than the Emperor’s, he disliked even exchanging words with the servants who worked in his own house.

Naturally, he would never set foot in the back alleys, full of the poor and vagrants.

“An alchemist, though…”

After the abundant magic gradually faded and the age of magic came to its twilight, the continent began to enter an age of machines, driven by coal and steam, clockwork and cogs.

In that transitional period, there were those who appeared like comets and vanished just as quickly: the alchemists.

How many people had been swayed by their claim that they could turn ordinary stones into gold?

But most alchemists were frauds, and what they produced with the backing of assorted nobles and merchants was nothing other than poison.

In a word, they were closer to poison makers than to alchemists.

Even an ordinary dispute, once an alchemist cut in, would turn into a dreadful affair.

At last, when a single vial of an alchemist’s poison set off an epidemic across the eastern part of the empire, the furious Emperor of three generations past began suppressing alchemists.

Back then, countless alchemists were led to the scaffold and beheaded. Those who barely survived either left the empire or hid their identities and slipped into the back alleys.

Irenea also knew that one of the alchemists who had become so hard to find was in the capital’s back alleys as well.

The reason she had never reported his existence was simple. Because she had once received his help, in a past that had since been erased.

Conversely, in this life, he regarded Irenea as his benefactor, though.

This man, who in this life regarded Irenea as his benefactor without a shred of doubt.