Chapter 49

Chapter 49

“You’ve come.”

Ines nodded, a little tense. Even in a light dress for indoors, nobility flowed from the imperial consort.

Her bright green eyes shone all the lovelier for the first-rate emerald necklace and earrings, which looked like a matched set, and her splendid golden hair, well brushed, gleamed with a gloss.

Her hair, braided to one side, made her look like a languid fairy who had forgotten her age.

“Your Highness.”

“How is it you never once come to see me? You’re just like your father in that.”

Though she gave a faint smile and shot her a reproachful glance, the imperial consort tucked Ines’s disheveled hair behind her ear to show her affection. On the face that looked at her niece, tender feeling melted through plainly.

“The older you grow, the more you resemble your mother. You’re the very image of my sister-in-law in her youth.”

The imperial consort sank for a moment into memory.

Back when their family was still a barony, not yet a county, even then the people of House Greenwood had been sparing in their expressions and cold in temperament, as they were now. She had been no different.

Born late, she was nearly ten years younger than her brother. The day that brother gained a wife was something the imperial consort had never forgotten, even now.

In the Greenwood barony, which had been desolate in the extreme for a small child, her sister-in-law had been a stand-in for the mother who died early.

Looking at the grown-up Ines’s face, the imperial consort missed that already-missed face all the more keenly.

“What would your mother have said to me, were she alive?”

The year her brother married, she had been seven. She might have laughed in astonishment, saying, ‘A child has had a child!’, now that the child of those days had given birth to a son.

“I wouldn’t know. She died when I was young.”

Baroness Greenwood had died without even seeing Ines’s debut. It was a tragedy brought on by the plague that had ravaged the capital.

At Ines’s gloomy words, the imperial consort too smiled weakly.

“The mood has turned strange. This isn’t what I meant to talk about.”

The imperial consort sent a glance to the ladies-in-waiting beside her. The head lady-in-waiting nodded.

“It’s cold, but inside the glass conservatory it’s no different from spring. Let us go and dine. I summoned you because I wanted to see your face after so long.”

Then she gave Ines a light opening.

“And in the time I haven’t seen you, I imagine you have something to tell me as well.”

* * *

The imperial consort was in good spirits.

She had finally borne the emperor a son. And before the Empress Consort, at that.

But there was one more thing that pleased her as much as giving birth to the child. It was the fact that her niece Ines’s engagement date had at last been settled.

“Goodness. If it was decided, you should have told me right away.”

“I didn’t know either.”

“What? Honestly, my brother. Making such an important announcement without even telling the person involved?”

Ines smiled faintly and made no reply.

Her aunt was only eight years older than she was. In a way, she was closer to an elder sister than an aunt to Ines.

Her aunt, when they were alone like this, was not very different from the person Ines had known in the old days.

The days when her father had not yet hungered for power as he did now, and had lived content with a moderately comfortable life.

The days when she had read books and played every day with her aunt, who had been something of a tomboy and not the noble imperial consort she was now, and had been scolded by her mother for it.

For Ines, it had been a short but happy time.

Now, though, those happy days had grown dim, like a fleeting mirage. Looking at her father and her aunt, who had changed so very much, she could not even be certain those days had been real.

“You seem to have lost a great deal of weight. Are you eating well? With your engagement ceremony ahead, you must take better care of yourself.”

Though she was known as cold and venomous, the imperial consort was soft only toward Ines. Taking Ines’s gaunt hand, she made a playful remark that she would see to it Ines ate everything prepared for today.

“Really now. If only I could have attended the New Year’s ball too.”

“We can simply meet like this, can’t we?”

“Child, is that the same? I’m hurt that I was absent at the very moment your engagement date was announced. You sound just like my brother.”

Lifting her teacup with graceful movements, the imperial consort shot Ines a playful glance. And yet she carefully and closely studied her niece’s face.

“Ines.”

“Yes, Your Highness.”

“I thought that once the engagement was decided, you would be so full of happiness that the smile would never leave your face, but it seems you have some worry.”

At the imperial consort’s words, Ines fell silent. This was the person who knew her better than anyone in the world. Any careless lie in front of her would only be exposed. After a moment of thought, Ines quietly looked at the imperial consort seated across from her.

“Aunt.”

Ines’s form of address, which had been so scrupulously deferential toward the imperial consort, had changed.

“Speak.”

“Why did you decide to become His Majesty’s woman, Aunt?”

In an instant, the air froze. Only after an odd silence had settled did Ines realize she had made a slip of the tongue.

Imperial consort was a fine-sounding title, but in the end she was a secondary wife, one who shared a man with his lawful wife. Had the man not been the emperor, hers would have been no different from the position of a mistress.

That she had offered up her young sister to the emperor to monopolize a countship and all manner of wealth, that she had a remarkable head for business: in society they had belittled her and House Greenwood day and night, without even bothering to hide it. Now no one dared to show such an attitude, but it was also an old inferiority complex of the imperial consort’s.

The imperial consort’s ladies-in-waiting lowered their heads, pretending not to have heard anything. The head lady-in-waiting led all the attendants away from the spot so that their mistress could converse in comfort.

It was a well-soundproofed place, so there was no chance of words leaking out. Only after the sound of the door closing did the imperial consort reprimand Ines.

“Even if it is a place with only my own people, what you said just now was a mistake. It sounded as though I had some separate desire of my own and became His Majesty’s woman because of it. Once you become a duchess, the eyes and ears attached to you will be considerable, so you must cultivate the habit of always guarding your tongue. We never know where a rat may be lurking.”

“…I’m sorry. The words slipped out.”

“What a strange question to ask. You must be quite anxious with the engagement approaching.”

The imperial consort’s expression softened. Seeing Ines so unsettled before her engagement reminded her of when she herself had been that young, so she could fully understand her niece’s anxiety.

“Yes. I was the same. With no one to give me advice, I was simply afraid.”

Letting out a faint sigh, the imperial consort murmured to herself.

“If only my sister-in-law had been alive.”

Then she turned her gaze to Ines and spoke.

“Are you curious why I decided to become His Majesty’s woman?”

Ines nodded.

“It was not long after Mother died. At the time, I wished that you would stay home with me. If you had…”

“You wouldn’t have been lonely.”

The imperial consort gave a bitter smile.

“I was very naive then. Since we had enough wealth to live comfortably, I thought my life would flow on quietly and peacefully.”

Afterward, she looked at Ines, propping her chin on one hand.

“Back then I… yes, I told you about it too. That the second son of the Count of Nagrange had taken a liking to me.”

Ines nodded.

She remembered her aunt of more than a decade ago, eyes sparkling as she said that if she were joined with the second son of the Nagrange count’s house, a soldier, she could travel to many cities with him.

She had been lively and full of curiosity. She would have been better suited to roaming many cities freely than to living shut away in this cage of an imperial palace.

But her aunt had chosen this road. The place of a concubine to an emperor twelve years her senior, and of her own accord at that.

“Have you ever… regretted it?”

“Regret? Hasn’t too much time passed to feel such a thing?”

At her niece’s words, the imperial consort let out a snort of laughter.

“It’s all ancient history. One cannot go on living in naivety forever. There comes a moment when, suddenly, you become an adult. For me it was then, and for you…”

The imperial consort spoke, gently pinching Ines’s cheek.

“It seems you haven’t reached it yet.”

Yet the imperial consort did not dislike that. At the least, asking such a question was proof that Ines had lived a peaceful enough life not to know the answer.

Her beloved niece had had to become an adult without ever having time to act spoiled. Because of that, she had grown into a timid and quiet person.

The wounds of that day had left deep scars on every member of the Greenwood family.

Even now, when the imperial consort recalled it, she felt as though someone were carving out her heart with a knife.

The reason Madam Greenwood, who was now called ‘Countess,’ had passed away was something far too absurd.

She had always been frail, but in the end the reason her sister-in-law had left the world so abruptly came down to one thing.

It was that the Greenwood barony had had no power.

There is a contagious illness that children commonly catch. It was a common sickness that, once caught in a lifetime, one never caught a second time.

Two conditions had converged in Madam Greenwood’s misfortune.

The first was that she had never caught that disease, and the second was that in the very year, twelve years after Madam Greenwood gave birth to Ines, an abnormally large number of children in the capital came down with it.

The price of medicine soared skyward, and by the time her brother tried belatedly to obtain medicine, it was already too late.

The last remaining medicine went to a house with a high title. There had not even been a sick child there. She had heard they took it as a spare, just in case.

Her brother’s efforts, even offering up the manor, begging that his wife be saved, were all in vain.

The Greenwood siblings realized that power held greater influence than money only after paying far too great a tuition.

As she buried her sister-in-law at the graveside, Lea Greenwood, holding the young Ines in her arms, made a vow.

Never again.

That she would never again suffer such a thing.