“Yes. Masha, for the time being, try to get close with the servants of the Grand Duke’s residence. There will be a lot of information you can hear from them.”
“Information about His Highness the Grand Duke?”
“Yes. The truth is, all I knew about him was his face and name.”
If she were to count, there were a few more things she knew, but none of it was particularly useful in the current situation.
“I bluffed as if I could see right through his insides, but if it’s discovered that there’s nothing much to me, I’ll be thrown out immediately.”
Even if she held a gold mine. Olivia was even considering the worst-case scenario—that Winston, who had said he would deliberate on the marriage even after hearing about the gold mine, might give up on it if things went wrong.
So she, as the first young lady to have set foot in this residence, needed to show the best possible version of herself that would please him.
“So I’d like you to find out a little about his tastes.”
“You could win him over with just a smile, Young Lady. Is there really a need to go to such lengths?”
“……Just how do you think of His Highness the Grand Duke?”
“What would be different from the gentlemen of the capital?”
At Olivia’s face, which looked like she had a lot to say, Masha rolled her eyes.
“Alright. I don’t understand, but there’s no harm in looking better!”
“I’m glad you changed your mind.”
“Then what about attending to you, Young Lady? We came with just the two of us, without other maids……”
“The head maid said she would be exclusively attending to me for the time being, so it should be fine. I’ll call you when I need you.”
Having said that, Olivia briefly looked out the window. Now that things had come to this, today would likely be the last day she had true freedom.
She did not want to disregard in this way Winston’s kindness in stopping her from touring outside the residence earlier, but there was no helping the regret of giving up the only chance to move about excitedly.
* * *
After rejecting Olivia’s tea time proposal, the place Winston sought out was, in the end, his office again. Having entered, Winston took off his coat carrying the chill of outside and handed it to Victor, then immediately lay down on the sofa.
“You could have shared at least a cup of tea.”
“Perhaps normally I would have.”
“Why did you refuse? You even gave her a room in the residence.”
“If we talked more, I felt I would be drawn in.”
Winston spoke as if it were nothing, but Victor found it hard to take it that way. For Winston, of all people, to think such a thing during a conversation. Victor, having organized the coat, thrust his face in front of Winston.
“Pretending not to know is also a hardship. What on earth did you talk about in the carriage?”
“Victor. I will talk with Dale a little later.”
“Shall we just let the other servants misunderstand?”
“What misunderstanding.”
Victor widened his eyes as if asking if he really did not know.
“The other side is attaching tremendous significance to the fact that the honored guest Your Highness brought is Miss Russell.”
Victor, who had been pouring out words without even breathing, glanced around the empty office with a face afraid someone might hear, and whispered.
“Especially Marilyn, who is counting down the days until Your Highness marries.”
“……That is troublesome.”
Whoever she might be, the fact that he had brought a woman into the house alone made her a candidate for bride—it was truly ridiculous.
Winston recalled Olivia’s smiling face as she held out the card called a gold mine as if she knew everything. A fake smile shown to everyone. Just as he was thinking he was curious about the real face hidden behind it, Dale came looking for him.
It was a report that Marilyn had gone up with refreshments, and that a suitable room had been given to the maid. Winston, who had stopped him from leaving after delivering this, sat him down with Victor and opened his mouth.
“Since we’re gathered, let’s talk.”
“About what?”
“I received a marriage proposal.”
And the answer he received after that was this sort of thing, so Victor merely blinked, then suddenly came to his senses and shouted.
“M-marriage? Miss Russell proposed marriage first?”
“Yes.”
Victor covered his mouth and mentally searched for someone to discuss this tremendous gossip with. He soon sighed at the fact that there was only Dale beside him.
“No wonder it wasn’t ordinary treatment as an honored guest……”
“There was a lot of talk among the servants as well. Aside from the scandal about Miss Russell, the fact that the guest His Highness brought is a young lady does not change.”
“Good heavens, to think that young lady, who was called the finest lady in the kingdom, would end up like this……”
“To call it ‘like this’ is a bit much, considering she held her head quite high.”
When Winston crossed his arms and looked at him, Victor shook his head and continued as if it were quite regrettable.
“You can’t know from appearances alone. Miss Russell must be quite desperate.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Think about it. She must have come to the North as a refuge because she could no longer endure the South, isn’t that it?”
A refuge? Winston, recalling Olivia absorbed in the northern travelogue, scoffed inwardly.
“I see. Then there’s only one thing left……. There’s no other way but to secure a new position through marriage.”
Even Dale, who had been quietly listening to Victor, agreed that it was quite a plausible story. Victor shrugged as if to say, see, then thought for a moment and sighed.
“But Miss Russell really did choose the wrong opponent. Of all people, His Highness the Grand Duke.”
“Why me.”
“Why do you ask? The noble young ladies Your Highness has made cry must number at least several dozen.”
Winston inadvertently let out a hollow laugh at Victor’s words. As he said, an ordinary young lady would probably have fled the moment she got off the carriage. But Olivia was not ordinary, and he had even escorted her and pushed her into a second-floor room.
The fact that he had not rejected her outright and had taken a step back to consider the proposal was, from his standpoint, an act of setting aside his pride considerably.
“Of course, this time as well, a rejection,”
“She came with conditions difficult to refuse.”
Winston, who had slowly opened his eyes, buried himself deeply in the sofa and turned his head toward Victor and Dale.
“P-pardon? What did you say?”
“The one about to be ruined from underestimating the opponent is me, Victor.”
Winston summarized his conversation with Olivia in a single line. That she had said she would bring the ownership of a recently discovered gold mine as a dowry if he would marry her. Victor, unable to hide his shock, rechecked the most important point.
“So, you’re saying she’s bringing a gold mine as a dowry?”
Victor’s mouth looked about to split from delight. And well it might, for it was Victor who had been most saddened by the fact that the gold vein discovered recently already had an owner.
“If it is true, it would be a great help.”
“Could she have known of the Grand Duke’s household circumstances?”
At Dale’s question, Winston gave a light nod.
The finances of the North, which had not been very affluent even before the war, grew even worse after the war’s end. There were limits to the support they received, and just as he was about to even liquidate personal businesses, Olivia’s action of offering a gold mine as a down payment could not be said to be unaware of these circumstances.
“……It seems like quite a decent condition.”
“It was hard to pretend not to know indefinitely. That was the reason I brought Miss Russell into the residence.”
He looked at the cigarette ash piled in the ashtray from the night before, took a small breath, and crossed his arms.
“So I plan to first verify the truth of those words.”
Until now, Winston had never once thought that the name Olivia Brown, or Olivia Russell, would affect his life.
That was why he knew nothing about her, and in order to resolve the matter at hand, the priority was to properly grasp the other party above all else.
The only information Winston currently knew about Olivia was that she was a traveler with an excessive fantasy about Libien.
“Commission information about Olivia Russell. Especially about the assets she holds—very thoroughly.”
* * *
At dawn, a maid who had received the newspaper from a deliveryman who had started his day early rubbed her nose, red from the cold, and handed the newspaper to Dale.
“Butler, here are today’s newspaper and newsletters.”
“During the height of the war, I was so afraid of the newspaper delivery arriving.”
Dale recalled the days when he prayed Winston’s name would not be in the newspaper as he opened it, filled with war situation reports and obituaries of the fallen. The maid smiled, saying she understood the old butler’s feelings.
“But today is frightening again, I see.”
It was probably because the former Duchess’s visit would be splashed across the front page. Was this something to be so afraid of? The maid thought so, but decided to let it pass. Because the headline she had glimpsed did not seem to be in a direction bad for the Grand Duke, at least not to the extent that Dale was worrying.
“I don’t think you need to worry that much.”
“Hm?”
At the maid’s words, Dale raised the newspaper to check, and his eyes widened greatly. As the maid had said, the article about the two’s meeting seemed quite favorable to them. Though a romantic rumor had arisen from the visit of the noble lady who had been called the greatest femme fatale of the age, the article placed more weight on the speculation that the meeting between the two—who were hostile to the Brown ducal family—was for business reasons.
“Oh. This is an unexpected harvest.”
