The Crown Prince’s Fiancée, Episode 7
I was shocked, too.
It was something I already knew, but hearing it from someone else’s mouth gave me a fresh sense of wonder.
The maid who had spread the rumor chattered on with confidence.
“That’s right! He dislikes Lady Gabriel, and he dislikes the other ladies, too.”
“Well, but that’s not enough to say flat out that he likes men…”
The other maids waved their hands dismissively.
“Right, and there’s Lady Artienne, after all.”
Tsk, tsk. The maid who had been telling the rumor clicked her tongue as if the others knew nothing. Then she lowered her voice even further and spoke slyly.
“Actually, there’s a rumor that Lady Artienne is a smokescreen.”
Me… I was a smokescreen…?
“Lady Artienne!”
Who’s Artienne? Oh, right, that’s me! It wasn’t a familiar name yet, so I hadn’t recognized it.
I had been standing by the door, and when I saw Madam Lucy calling me, I nodded.
I had no idea where she had been, but in Madam Lucy’s hands was a monstrous thing that looked like an encyclopedia.
I went back into the room and sat down in a chair, and Madam Lucy set that enormously thick thing down in front of me with a thud.
“Now then, you’ll be memorizing this! Ohoho.”
What Madam Lucy had set down was a weapon.
Yes, that’s a weapon. There’s no way that’s a book…!
“You’ll begin absorbing it starting today!”
I stared in dismay at the book in front of me.
Its thickness was truly staggering. On top of that, the hardcover binding made it even more terrifying.
There was no way I could get through it in the time I had left. It was a volume I couldn’t finish even if I did nothing but read all day.
I quietly opened the book, then closed it again.
Madam Lucy paid no mind and cried out cheerfully as she watched me.
“From seven o’clock we’ll practice dancing! Ohohohohoho!”
“…”
Madam Lucy’s laughter felt as if it were leading me to the underworld.
So death is certain after all.
To survive, I opened that weapon of an encyclopedia.
* * *
“How is that maid?”
“Goodness, Your Highness. You should say ‘my fiancée.’”
Madam Lucy opened her eyes wide and corrected him. Adrian looked at Madam Lucy with a displeased expression.
In the end, it was Adrian who gave way.
“Fine. How is ‘my fiancée’?”
“She’s doing very well! Honestly, wherever did you find such a darling, lovable young lady? Ohohoho.”
“Darling and lovable?”
Adrian’s face twisted slightly at an epithet so dubious he wondered whether they were even talking about the same person.
“She’s truly gentle, and she follows me so well. Her beauty may not match Sir Essen’s, but that’s exactly what makes her a pleasure to dress up! She’s the kind of beauty whose charm bursts forth however you style her!”
“Where, exactly, is that?”
Madam Lucy didn’t seem to hear Adrian’s retort, and went on heaping praise all by herself.
“From morning till night, she studies hard in so many fields, from etiquette and poetry to song, dance, instruments, history, and even philosophy. Studying that diligently without a single word of complaint is truly not easy!”
After Terni, Madam Lucy, too, gave the new Artienne a favorable review.
“Diano.”
“Yes, Your Highness.”
“What do you think of Artienne?”
“I can’t say I know her well, but seeing how well she gets along with the people in the palace, I think she’s fine. Why not watch her a little longer?”
“Watch her a little longer, hmm…”
Taken together, the opinions around her were not bad at all.
“Is it all right to just leave her be?”
Adrian was honestly uneasy.
Could they get through the ball coming up soon without incident? If anything went even slightly wrong, he would immediately end up married to that crazy woman.
He wanted to avoid that at all costs. He would sooner destroy this country.
“Is there still no news of Essen?”
“No, Your Highness.”
At this point, he began to wonder whether the failure to find Essen was due not to his subordinates’ incompetence but to Essen being too competent.
Adrian recalled the heated conversation in the bedchamber with Essen a few days earlier.
“How long do I have to keep doing this?!”
Essen, who was prickly in his own way, though not quite like Adrian, and twice as sensitive, flung away the wig he had been wearing that day, too, and shouted in anger.
Essen was the man who had been playing the fiancée under the name ‘Artienne,’ and he was originally Adrian’s guardian knight.
Essen did this every other day, so that day too Adrian brushed off his protests without a flicker of feeling.
“How long? Until I become emperor.”
“If I kill you, can I stop?”
“Is that treason?”
“This isn’t what I became your knight for!”
Essen protested, but Adrian would not accept it.
“I know. Even so, you’re still my knight.”
“Have you ever seen a knight in a dress?”
“You’re the first, so consider it an honor.”
“You want to die by my sword right now, don’t you?”
“You’ll die before you get to kill me.”
Unable to counter that, Essen only scowled instead of answering.
In truth, Essen was so perfectly beautiful that no one would have thought him a man.
Silver hair that shone as if steeped in moonlight, and skin as white as fresh snow.
Ice-blue eyes.
He seemed better described as a work of art than as a human being.
With a beauty that made one doubt he even breathed, Essen pressed his lips together and then shouted.
“I won’t do it!”
Essen flung off the bolero he was wearing and stormed out of the bedchamber.
Terni and Diano and everyone else had been worried about Essen, but Adrian had ignored it, as if it were nothing unusual.
Hah, I should have crushed him completely back then.
“To think he would actually run.”
With the rage seething up in him again, he remembered when he had forced Essen into hurriedly becoming his fiancée.
Along with it, he remembered the Empress, the root of this whole affair.
And ‘that woman,’ too.
“If it weren’t for that woman.”
Adrian ground his teeth.
It was widely said that Adrian hated women, but that wasn’t true.
He hated every human being, woman or man.
So much so that he disliked exchanging even a single word with anyone other than the aides who had grown up beside him since childhood.
Others dressed it up by saying he was shy around strangers, but those who knew Adrian well knew it was not so.
The Empress had always disapproved of Adrian’s lack of interest in women.
It was a sort of misanthropy that had come from having ‘that woman’ stuck to him since childhood, but without taking any of that into account, the Empress had suddenly handed down a stern order to Adrian.
If he did not bring a lady he would marry within the week, she would have him marry that very woman!
Adrian’s reasons for shunning and loathing ‘that woman’ were many and countless, but the most representative incident was that one.
The incident in which he had been forced to let his beloved horse die.
Even now, whenever he thought of that day, Adrian had nightmares.
The seven-year-old ‘that woman,’ angry that he rode his horse instead of playing with her, had hidden Adrian’s horse, and since she wouldn’t say where, it had ended up starving to death.
On top of that, ‘that woman’ had even forgotten that she was the one who hid it. When he questioned her afterward, what she said was beyond belief.
“Oh, it died?”
That was the decisive incident that made Adrian hate humans, ‘that woman’ included.
He could not possibly marry ‘that woman.’ Adrian had hurriedly held balls throughout that whole week to find a lady he liked, but it was hopeless.
Adrian disliked that woman, but that didn’t mean he liked the other ladies either.
In the end, the fateful week passed, and with the prospect of being married to that woman right away, the final decision Adrian made was to dress Essen as a woman and stage a false engagement.
Of course, Essen’s consent had not been part of it.
“Have him brought back. No matter what.”
“Understood, Your Highness.”
Just as Diano stood up to pass on Adrian’s order,
Knock, knock.
A servant’s voice came with the knock.
“Your Highness, Albert of Grace Palace has arrived.”
Grace Palace was the Empress’s palace.
“Tell him I’m not here.”
“Your Highness, I know you’re in there.”
Albert’s voice came from outside the door. Adrian bit down on his lip. Nothing ever went his way.
“Her Majesty the Empress has commanded it. Lady Gabriel has come, and she insists you attend the tea.”
“…”
Adrian clutched the hilt of his sword, fingers twitching, and Diano desperately held him back.
