Chapter 12
“Mother.”
Romian called out to her in a low voice.
It was a warning telling her to stop talking immediately.
But Countess Veldegart, who was usually looked down upon in high society, could not resist an opportunity to show off. She laughed loudly and boasted proudly.
“Hohoho! His Highness the Crown Prince has finally taken a deep interest in our Romian. Not long ago, he even invited her personally to the royal palace and spoke with her alone, comforting her with such gentle words.”
“Oh my, how affectionate of him.”
There was something distinctly different about those words.
Until now, apart from the days designated by the King, the Crown Prince had never met Romian privately.
But he had invited her personally—and even met with her alone?
The eyes of the noblewomen who had just gained this information sparkled.
“Oh my! Even after meeting with you alone, Lady Romian still wasn’t chosen by His Highness the Crown Prince for this year’s Hunting Festival? Shall I lend you one of our family’s knights?”
It was mockery disguised as consideration.
It was also a subtle attempt to probe her.
You really have experienced some kind of change, haven’t you? Then why weren’t you chosen by the Crown Prince this time?
Romian was not foolish enough to fall for such a shallow trick.
With an expressionless face, she calmly replied,
“How could I give a ribbon to another knight when I am already engaged? I shall simply accept your kind consideration.”
“Oh my?”
The noblewomen exchanged glances at Romian.
So many eyes were fixed upon her that it was impossible to tell who was looking at whom.
Then one of them opened the attack.
“But aren’t you in a position where you could be abandoned at any moment? Surely it would be better to enjoy someone’s favor while you still can.”
The barbed words pierced painfully deep.
Romian lowered her head to hide her expression.
I know that without you having to say it.
Because she was afraid of giving them anything they could use against her, she listened carefully to every single word.
Her chest began to sting.
Eventually, Romian could bear it no longer and carefully rose from her seat.
“I apologize, but I’m not feeling well…”
“Wait a moment, Lady Veldegart.”
But the noblewomen did not willingly open even an escape route for Romian.
And because the person stopping her was the Duchess of Formier herself, Romian could not simply pretend not to hear and walk away.
The duchess smiled elegantly, like a single blooming flower, and said,
“It seems we may have bored the young lady. In that case, why don’t we play an entertaining game?”
“Oh my, what kind of game?”
Countess Veldegart had been upset that her daughter was trying to leave despite having finally been invited to such an exclusive gathering.
Without realizing that she was stepping directly into a trap, she eagerly accepted.
“Young Lady Romian is dressed so brightly today, after all. It would be boring to simply sit around. So we’ve prepared something a little more active.”
It seemed that the women had already reached an agreement among themselves before inviting Romian.
They rose from their seats and headed off to play the game with such natural ease that it was obvious this had been planned beforehand.
The group moved to a grassy field some distance away from the tents of the hunting grounds.
There, the women pointed toward a moderately sized cylinder that had been placed in the grass.
The Duchess of Formier removed the ruby ring from her finger.
The ruby was roughly the size of two thumbnails placed together.
She held it up and said,
“The game is to throw this ruby ring into that target. Very easy, isn’t it?”
The rules might have been simple, but the ruby ring glittering in the Duchess of Formier’s hand was anything but insignificant.
A ruby of that size was undoubtedly worth tens of millions of dena.
Even Countess Veldegart, who had been excitedly basking in the attention of the noblewomen, visibly faltered.
She asked in a trembling voice, desperately trying to sound unconcerned.
“Oh, my. But what if the ring breaks?”
“If it breaks from being thrown such a short distance, then it must be a fake gemstone, and we should punish the person who sold it to me. Don’t worry, Countess. Surely you don’t think I would deliberately put the future Crown Princess and her mother in a difficult position?”
The Duchess of Formier’s voice was exceedingly sweet.
So sweet, in fact, that the countess, who had been trembling with anxiety, immediately puffed out her chest like a sparrow at the words future Crown Princess and her mother and began to swell with pride.
“Then who shall go first? Countess, would you like to try?”
“Yes, yes.”
Countess Veldegart ended up being the first to receive the ring.
As soon as she felt the weight of the heavy ruby in her hand, her courage shrank.
She timidly lifted the ring and threw it.
Rumble.
The ring did not even come close to the cylinder.
It simply rolled along the ground.
The Duchess of Formier laughed loudly, clearly amused.
“Oh my, you can throw it a little harder. I told you, it won’t break.”
“Yes, yes.”
Countess Veldegart answered timidly.
A maid nearby picked up the ring rolling across the ground and brought it to the baroness whose turn it was next.
Just as the baroness was about to throw it—
“All right, here I go.”
“Eek!”
Countess Veldegart, who had been watching intently to see how well the woman would throw it, suddenly staggered violently.
Someone had shoved her in the backside while she was bent over.
She stumbled forward, grabbed hold of the baroness who was in the middle of throwing the ring, and fell with her.
Whoosh!
As a result, the ring that the baroness had been about to throw flew far off in a completely different direction.
It landed so far away that they could not even hear the grass rustling.
“Gasp!”
“Oh my!”
Both the baroness and Countess Veldegart turned pale.
The baroness suddenly shouted angrily.
“Why did you push me?! Because of you, the ring flew off somewhere completely different!”
“No, I was pushed by someone too…”
Naturally, there was no one standing there who appeared to have pushed her.
Only then did Countess Veldegart realize that she had fallen into a trap.
Her face turned deathly pale.
Romian, who had been standing some distance away on purpose, realized the same thing.
The Duchess of Formier, the owner of the ring, leisurely murmured,
“I thought it couldn’t possibly break, but I never imagined it would be lost.”
I said it wouldn’t break, so if it had broken, I wouldn’t have demanded compensation.
But this is a different matter.
The meaning behind her words was painfully obvious.
And the current Veldegarts had no means of compensating her for the loss.
Dukein was involved in an incident only recently, too.
Romian looked at the Duchess of Formier with a pale face.
Contrary to the viciousness of her words, the duchess smiled brightly like a blooming rose.
“You’ll have to find it yourself, Lady Romian.”
There was no way the ring, deliberately thrown so far away, would be easy to spot.
As the situation began to escalate, Countess Veldegart quietly backed away.
“Perhaps it’s because I suddenly spent so much time in the sunlight. I feel dizzy. I think I’ll go inside and rest.”
Where exactly does she think she’s going?
Yet the countess was clearly trying to evade responsibility by leaving her young daughter behind.
After years of repeated experience, she seemed to have developed the belief that if she simply left everything to Romian, somehow Romian would manage to solve it.
Naturally, for Romian, who was repeatedly forced to clean up her mother’s messes alone, the situation was maddening.
It should be visible.
Romian pushed her way through the grass.
Before she knew it, she had reached the lakeside of the hunting grounds.
Of course, this was not a path people normally used.
Branches and blades of grass scratched sharply against Romian’s arms and legs.
“Ouch.”
It hurt terribly.
Yet not a single person turned around at her cry.
There were countless servants scattered around the hunting grounds, but not one of them came to check on Romian.
That was because the Duchess of Formier had given them advance instructions.
How long am I supposed to wander around here?
The answer was obvious.
Until the Duchess of Formier grew bored of tormenting Romian.
But that was precisely what made it so vague and cruel.
The moment Romian sighed, something suddenly yanked at her leg.
A grass root.
Romian’s delicate knees buckled, and she collapsed into the grass.
She had already been feeling sick for some time.
After falling like this as well, her head naturally began to spin and her stomach churned violently.
In the end, Romian vomited right where she had fallen.
“Ugh!”
Only after several bouts of vomiting had emptied her stomach did the nausea finally subside.
The first thing she did was gather up her skirt, afraid that it might have been stained.
Tears streamed down her cheeks.
Romian desperately blinked to keep her makeup from running.
As she sat there, sorrow naturally filled her heart.
Why do I have to suffer like this?
These were cruel humiliations that an ordinary Romian Veldegart would never have experienced.
Insults that she never would have endured simply as the daughter of an insignificant noble family in the countryside.
It’s all because of Shihab.
Because of that man.
If I had never met him…
Everything had ultimately happened because she had become the Crown Prince’s fiancée.
But after spending so long blaming Shihab, the face that eventually appeared in Romian’s mind was Shihab’s cold expression as he merely stared at her.
Had he wanted to become Romian’s fiancé either?
No.
Is it all my fault, then?
Because I was born this way…
Once again, Romian blamed herself.
And blamed herself again.
Because young Romian, who possessed neither power nor influence, had no one else to blame but herself.
After mercilessly condemning herself for a long time, Romian cautiously got to her feet.
She was straightening her crumpled skirt when an elegant yet blunt voice came from behind her.
“You really are foolish.”
“…?”
Who could possibly have cared enough to follow her all the way here?
Unable to conceal her confusion, Romian turned around.
Then her shoulders stiffened in surprise at the sight of the noblewoman standing directly behind her.
It was none other than Duchess Julietta Linhardt, the younger sister of Henri IV.
“D-Duchess Linhardt, I greet you.”
Romian hurriedly gathered her skirt and bowed.
But instead of answering, the Duchess of Linhardt abruptly turned away and said,
“Just wipe yourself off with this handkerchief first. You’re so dirty that I don’t even want to speak to you.”
The handkerchief came from the duchess’s personal maid, who had followed her.
After handing Romian a neat cream-colored handkerchief, the maid opened a parasol and returned to the duchess’s side.
Romian accepted the handkerchief with a bewildered expression.
Then, when she noticed the maid pointing toward her mouth with a finger, she belatedly realized what was wrong and wiped her lips with the handkerchief.
She had been so concerned about the vomit on the ground that she had failed to notice that some of it had gotten on her mouth as well.
How embarrassing.
She couldn’t even imagine how much the nobles would laugh if they found out about this.
She had accidentally lost the Duchess of Formier’s ring, had no means of compensating her for it, and had ended up wandering around the hunting grounds until she vomited.
But even more than embarrassment, another emotion pressed heavily against Romian’s chest.
Confusion.
Even the servants scattered around the hunting grounds had ignored her.
So why had someone as powerful as the Duchess of Linhardt—someone who rivaled even the Duchess of Formier in influence—followed her?
Romian’s voice trembled involuntarily.
“W-What brings you all the way here?”
“My stomach was thoroughly upset.”
The woman Romian had always regarded as someone impossibly high above her casually used surprisingly rough language.
She looked at Romian, whose eyes had widened in surprise, then jerked her chin toward the path ahead.
“Come with me.”
Then she turned around without hesitation, as though it were only natural for Romian to follow her.
Romian felt awkward, but she had no choice.
She followed behind the Duchess of Linhardt.
