Chapter 23

Chapter 23

“Excuse me, Marchioness Blair. I shall open the carriage door for a moment.”

The captain of the guard, standing before the fully stopped carriage, cleared his throat to steady his voice. Then he knocked politely on the side of the carriage.

“By all means.”

Only designated persons were permitted to enter and leave, so every carriage passing through the main gate of the imperial palace had to be inspected both going in and coming out.

There was only one exception: the carriage in which the Emperor rode.

“As when you entered, I have confirmed that there are only the two of you, Marchioness Blair and Count Elpiers.”

The captain of the guard swept his eyes over the interior of the carriage and left it at that.

Lloyd was dumbfounded that the inspection was already over. He knew from personal experience that the captain’s inspections were never this lax.

“Wait, what kind of inspection is…… Ugh!”

“We are performing our duty. Do not interfere.”

The knight who shoved Lloyd back without hesitation had eyes as cold as ice.

Under that gaze, which seemed to find him a dreadful nuisance, Lloyd finally understood. He had truly become a kite with its string cut.

‘No……. How? Why? What did I do wrong?’

He truly could not understand. He had never committed any offense, at least against the Emperor, grave enough to deserve being turned away from the gate like this.

How could he have? He had not once been in a position to see His Majesty’s face up close.

“But what is going on here? That person over there…… unless my eyes deceive me, that looks like Young Master Matthias. What is he doing, not going in?”

“Ah, it is nothing. He is a man who was banned from entering the palace as of today, and he keeps pestering us to let him in. So I was in the middle of driving him off.”

“Goodness, what on earth did he do to be barred from the imperial palace?”

“I do not know the exact reason myself, but His Majesty seemed to be in a great rage. I suppose he committed some grave rudeness toward him.”

“Heavens. If it were me, I would have gone straight home, if only out of remorse. I cannot imagine with what face he was begging to be let in.”

“My thoughts exactly.”

The captain of the guard and Irenea chatted merrily, laughing together. It was as though Lloyd, standing right there, could not be seen at all.

His face burning red with humiliation, Lloyd trembled all over.

What shamed him most of all was the presence of Leonard, seated beside Irenea and looking down at him.

“……So that’s it. I could not make sense of what was happening, but seeing how things have turned out, I finally understand. Leonard Elpiers! It’s you again, isn’t it! Once again you are the one dragging at my ankles!”

“I have no idea what you are talking about.”

Leonard answered curtly, and as though he felt it was not worth his while to bandy words with him, he whispered to Irenea.

“It is a waste of time. Let us go home at once.”

“Shall we?”

Irenea smiled warmly at Leonard, then bade the captain of the guard farewell with a glance, signaling that they would be going.

Just as the captain nodded and moved to close the carriage door himself, a harsh laugh burst from Lloyd’s mouth.

“Pathetic wretch! A man with no ability, clinging to a woman and playing at pillow-talk schemes? Leonard Elpiers! Have you no pride as a man at all!”

“That is a very long way of saying you are jealous.”

“Wh-What?”

Only then did Leonard’s gaze turn to Lloyd. Since he was sitting in the carriage, he naturally ended up looking down at him.

His gaze, like something tossed out with a “here, take it,” was filled with pity.

“Do you think running me down like that will make my fiancée look at you again? The sight of you thrashing about to win even a sliver more of her attention is truly ugly.”

Shaking his head, Leonard muttered, half to himself and half not, loudly enough for everyone to hear.

“Aren’t you ashamed of having been dumped? If it were me, I would be too mortified to lift my head.”

At least two snorts of stifled laughter could be heard. Needless to say, they came from the guards, the captain included.

Lloyd’s face had turned so crimson that one worried it might burst.

“Y-You, you……! Wh-Who was dumped!”

“Only now are you embarrassed?”

“Ray, that’s enough now. Young Master Matthias has his pride too, you know.”

Irenea, who seemed to be restraining him while in fact piling on, was all the more galling to Lloyd. But her galling voice was not finished yet.

“I am sorry about what happened back then. But my taste runs to strong men who can protect me.”

As if to say that the man in question was this one, Irenea hugged Leonard’s arm and leaned her head against his shoulder.

“Fortunately, it seems the nose Ray broke has healed well. Your face is intact, so you will surely find another fiancée soon. Cheer up!”

Leaving that cheer that was no cheer at all, the Blair family head’s carriage, carrying Irenea and Leonard, quietly drove away.

Left behind, Lloyd stared at the retreating rear of the carriage, and only when he saw the door closing did he belatedly come to his senses.

“W-Wait……!”

“This is the last warning. If you keep making a nuisance of yourself, we may drag you off to prison.”

“Well, if you want to get into the palace that badly, go on, make more of a scene.”

The eyes of the guards looking at Matthias were full of contempt.

‘A man like that could have become my subordinate?’

‘Was there really some kind of corruption involved?’

Someone nearby even muttered such things.

His whole body trembled with humiliation, but there was nothing Lloyd could do. He could hardly throw down a glove against the guards who kept the gates of the imperial palace.

‘Damn it, damn it, damn it……! Leonard Elpiers……!’

How could a lowborn wretch from who knew where interfere with his life like this!

Reciting his grudge against Leonard, Lloyd returned home with nothing to be done.

And upon hearing that he had been barred from the imperial palace by imperial decree, his father ordered him confined to the house in penance.

Just like the Second Prince, who had been thoroughly scolded by the Emperor.

* * *

Inside the speeding carriage, Irenea glanced out the window and gave a small “hmm.”

‘So Lloyd Matthias has been barred from the imperial palace…….’

That meant Lloyd had been pushed out of the Second Prince’s faction. A man who could not even enter the palace could not be one of the Second Prince’s close associates.

‘What will he do? Even that frayed old rope has been cut away completely, hasn’t it?’

Originally, Lloyd Matthias, as the top graduate of the military academy, had been scheduled to join the imperial knights.

But because he had been wretchedly defeated in his duel with Leonard, doubts had arisen over whether he had truly graduated at the top, and his admission had been revoked.

After that, an inspection team headed by the Crown Princess had turned the military academy inside out, and many problems had come to light, such as several teachers taking bribes to manipulate scores and nobles bullying commoners.

Yet among them there had been no corruption related to the graduation exam. Lloyd Matthias had truly won first place by his own ability.

Of course, that did not mean the revoked chance to join the knights had come back.

Even though he was a military academy graduate, his admission to the knights had been disgracefully revoked. Few paths were left to a man like Lloyd.

And now he had even incurred the Emperor’s wrath.

‘If it were me, I would simply go down to my domain and live as though dead.’

Who knew? If he looked after his domain well, or ran a business, or showed talent in something, the Emperor might one day look on him again.

‘Unfortunately, he surely lacks the ability.’

As Irenea recalled Lloyd Matthias’s end, which had not been good even before her regression, and one corner of her mouth curled upward, Leonard, who had likewise been lost in thought, suddenly seemed to remember something and checked outside the window.

“Where are we going now?”

“Home, of course. Ah, but first I need to pack my things. I’ll tell them to go to Ivy Street.”

Irenea knocked on the wall herself to change the destination. While the coachman, answering that he understood, turned the horses’ heads around, Leonard spoke with a troubled face.

“Come to think of it, I had no chance to tell you beforehand. I must now go to repay my debt to the Miles domain.”

“Ah……”

Don’t go.

Irenea very nearly let those words slip from her mouth.

It was because she knew. She knew what would happen in the Elpiers domain while Leonard was away repaying his debt.

“Do you have to go yourself? Can’t you send someone else?”

“The schedule is tight, and the risk is a little too great to entrust to anyone. They have extended the repayment deadline several times already, and this is the final extension.”

Elpiers absolutely had to meet this repayment deadline.

Otherwise it would be proven that Elpiers lacked the ability to repay, and Miles would gain the discretionary right of repayment, allowing it to take whatever it wished from Elpiers in place of the unreturned principal.

In the past, because of the schemes of the Second Prince and Lloyd, Leonard had put the family heirloom up for auction and still been unable to repay the debt.

And what Count Miles had demanded of Leonard then was Jenis.

To be precise, he had proposed to call the debt even with the dowry that Jenis should have brought as a bride.

‘I can’t hold Ray back here.’

For now, clearing the debt by repaying it came first.

Letting out a short sigh, Irenea smiled at Leonard.

“Then it can’t be helped. To the Miles domain…… it takes about ten days round trip from here, doesn’t it?”

“I plan to reach the Miles domain in three days, so I should be able to return sooner than that.”

“Don’t overexert yourself. You know you must not get hurt even in a single place, don’t you? Because you have to marry me one month from now.”

Having finished speaking, Irenea pursed her lips slightly toward Leonard.

She had naturally expected his lips to come down on hers, but Leonard only blinked in bewilderment.

At that reaction, Irenea too was inwardly flustered.

‘I misjudged.’

With Leonard beside her, an old habit had surfaced.

Fortunately, her poker face as a businesswoman was exceedingly thorough.

Without showing the slightest sign of her fluster, Irenea asked Leonard in a confident voice.

“What are you doing?”

“What am I doing……”

“It’s not as if you don’t know what this is.”

Irenea wrapped her arms around Leonard’s waist so he could not escape, and pursed her lips out again.

And she even closed her eyes.

“You must not have read the memorandum properly earlier, so you wouldn’t know, but whenever we must be apart for more than a day, we are to exchange a reluctant parting kiss.”