Chapter – 25
“Let’s swap clothes.”
“Huh? You and me, Your Highness?”
“Yes. Won’t it be fun?”
Looking at the prince’s mischievous face, the beggar hesitantly began to take off his clothes.
Once the beggar had stripped down, leaving only a thin cloth that barely concealed his pale skin, the prince snatched the clothes away and handed over his own.
Finally, the two had exchanged attire.
And then, the moment the prince, now clad in rags, momentarily stepped away from the beggar…
The prince stopped as if he had noticed something and delivered his line.
“A guardsman is approaching me. I tried to smile and greet him, but…”
Smack!
The prince brought his hand near his own cheek and clapped. Then, he fell backward, sweeping his hand across his cheek.
“…The guardsman didn’t recognize me. He seemed to think I was a beggar.”
And so it was.
The moment the prince and the beggar’s statuses were swapped with a simple change of clothes.
Starting from that point, Jeanne felt as if she had been struck on the back of the head.
“Louisa is finally getting the male actor undressed. Did you see that? Changing clothes on stage, how utterly vulgar,” Catherine muttered beside her.
Jeanne didn’t answer.
Vulgar?
Then how would she explain the numerous spectators immersed in that so-called ‘vulgar’ play?
Jeanne looked at the backs of the many audience members who were naturally mimicking the flustered gestures of the beggar-turned-prince as he tried to follow royal etiquette at the banquet.
Yes. Certainly, the royal plays Jeanne had seen were completely different from this one.
They were different even from the plays performed in the private theaters enjoyed by nobles.
Those plays, which sang of noble sacrifices and great myths, had actors reciting their lines as if reading poetry on stage.
They were boring and tedious, but no audience member could show they felt that way.
Doing so would lower their own standing.
But this was on a different level from those dull plays.
The actors performed with sincerity, and their movements and the story they created made it impossible to look away.
The stage action was complex, but the story was simple, which made it even more compelling.
It was just the story of the beggar who became a prince and the prince who became a beggar.
‘It’s just the story of two people… or is it?’
Her mother, Catherine, didn’t seem to have noticed, but probably any moderately perceptive person in the audience would have realized it immediately.
This could be interpreted in two ways.
First, it was the story of Louisa herself.
In the play, the prince, wearing the beggar’s clothes, wanders outside the castle but does not lose his dignity.
Because of this, he gets beaten more often by the beggar’s father and fails at begging, yet his elegant hand gestures remain unchanged.
The prince was Louisa herself, the one whose Duchy of Massena had fallen, the one pointed at by countless people.
At today’s party, Louisa embodied the dignity of the nobility more perfectly than ever before.
Whether holding a glass, greeting someone, or in every word she chose, elegance overflowed.
‘I knew she had received a proper education, but she’s utilizing what she learned much better than before.’
Honestly, Jeanne was a bit taken aback seeing that.
The Louisa of the past, who often made undignified mistakes as if she had thrown away the education her grandfather forced on her, showed not a hint of that behavior today.
Today’s Louisa, who was careful even in her every step, was somehow…
Truly…
‘She resembled her grandfather.’
She was the very image of the next heir to Massena.
Even if it was a useless discussion now that the Duchy had fallen.
So, when she said she would perform a play, the nobles said she had lost the dignity of Massena, but perhaps this play was created to show that Louisa had not lost the pride within her.
But the problem was, who was the ‘beggar’ in this situation?
As the play progressed, the beggar, who was initially only timid, gradually nurtured the desires within himself.
“It’s interesting. Just by changing clothes, even though I know nothing of royal etiquette or the kingdom’s politics, people treat me as a prince simply because I’m wearing the prince’s clothes. So I started thinking… Perhaps being a prince… isn’t such a big deal?”
Seeing the beggar’s gleaming eyes, Jeanne felt a chill run down her spine.
She glanced at Catherine.
She couldn’t help it.
The one who, taking advantage of the prince’s absence, wears the prince’s clothes and covets the prince’s position.
In this current situation, it was undoubtedly Catherine to anyone who saw.
When Catherine bought the Massena estate in the worst possible way, through an auction, borrowing money left and right and tarnishing the dignity of Massena, there was no one here who didn’t know about it.
So everyone watching this play would know.
This play was saying that an unqualified person had gotten hold of the Massena estate and was pretending to be the ‘prince’.
And just as Jeanne had, they would admire Louisa’s tact.
Who would have thought the scandalous lady who brought two male actors to this party was actually hiding such a blade?
‘Mother, you’re done for.’
Jeanne thought to herself as she looked at Catherine.
Her mother didn’t seem to have grasped the true intent of the play yet.
While cursing the play, Catherine had, before she knew it, become deeply absorbed in it, staring blankly at the beggar.
To be honest, Jeanne was the same.
Watching the beggar’s eyes turn before her very eyes, Jeanne found herself drawn into Louisa’s story.
Consumed by greed for something that wasn’t his, the beggar hides a knife in his clothes upon seeing the prince, who comes to the castle walls to meet him one morning.
“Tom! Let’s change clothes immediately! It’s been a horrible day.”
Looking at the brightly smiling prince, the beggar makes an unreadable expression.
The moment everyone tensed up, watching the beggar slowly ascend the stage.
Jeanne was tense too.
Was this how the situation between the prince and the beggar would be overturned?
And then, the prince, with a genuinely pitying look, said,
“But when I return to the palace, I won’t forget you. I’ll make you a count.”
At the sincere tone, Jeanne was taken aback.
Because she saw hesitation flash across the beggar’s face.
If he became a count, the beggar could somewhat escape his current life. Then, perhaps he wouldn’t go so far as to commit murder.
Just as Jeanne thought that, the prince subtly sidestepped.
For an instant, something glinted from behind the prince’s back.
“……!!”
Jeanne unconsciously clenched her fist tightly.
That was a knife.
So, while the beggar was hiding a knife, the prince had also hidden a knife behind his back.
The two stood facing each other.
Just like when they first met on stage, they looked at each other as if into a mirror, each raising a hand and taking a slight step back.
And the prince opened his mouth.
“Now, then… will you give me the clothes?”
As the prince reached out his hand, the beggar reached out his. Like a mirror, their hands moved in unison.
In that tense moment for everyone.
Thud.
“……?!”
The curtain on the stage fell.
Simultaneously, the lights near the stage dimmed.
As the two actors on stage disappeared, everyone was bewildered.
The play had just ended.
Without revealing whether the prince would kill the beggar, or the beggar would kill the prince.
“Is this… the end?”
“It ends like this?”
“Isn’t there a sequel?!”
While everyone was desperately asking for a sequel, someone started clapping.
Baron Jean-Pierre. As far as Jeanne knew, he was a famous drunk in social circles.
Even that drunkard was clapping; it was a play where you couldn’t let your guard down for a single moment.
The applause gradually spread, soon filling the entire banquet hall.
But Catherine couldn’t clap. She was just looking around with a face that wanted to immediately find Louisa and confront her.
“This… it seems like it’s about her, right? The story after the Duchy of Massena fell.”
It was only after hearing a few murmurs from those around her that Catherine finally realized the true meaning of the play.
“That ungrateful wretch! I pitied her for being an old maid on the verge of being abandoned by her fiancé, and even invited her to a party like this… How dare she… to me…!”
“Mother, lower your voice.”
“Jeanne. We are Herotia. The family currently most favored by His Majesty the Emperor. Whose displeasure do I need to fear?”
Catherine spoke as if it were absurd. But Jeanne just replied in a languid tone,
“You need to fear His Majesty the Emperor’s displeasure.”
“What?”
Catherine absolutely could not confront Louisa about this play.
The reason lay in the play’s other meaning.
While one could see the prince and the beggar as Louisa and Catherine, viewed differently, this was also the story of the missing First Prince.
Nine years ago, during the height of the rumors about the late emperor’s assassination, the First Prince, who suddenly disappeared from the imperial palace, and the current Emperor Callinan, who, taking advantage of the First Prince’s disappearance, eliminated the late emperor’s loyal supporters one by one.
The First Prince was probably wandering somewhere, hiding his identity as the prince, so he fit the ‘prince who became a beggar,’ and Callinan, who was merely a frontier count, suddenly rose in status to become emperor, so he fit the ‘beggar who became a prince.’
So-
‘From the Emperor’s perspective, this play becomes a very dangerous one.’
But Catherine, while buying this estate, had used a lot of the Emperor’s money. That meant she was in a situation where she would be in big trouble if she incurred the Emperor’s displeasure.
And in her estate, such a dangerous play had been performed. Going around publicly complaining that she had been insulted by Louisa would be like cutting her own throat.
When Jeanne briefly whispered this fact to Catherine, Catherine’s expression hardened.
“You don’t think… His Majesty would believe I knew about the content of this play and allowed it, do you?”
“There’s no guarantee he wouldn’t.”
Watching Catherine’s face turn pale, Jeanne felt, for some reason, a little… just a very little… satisfied.
‘She used her head.’
It was honestly a bit surprising that Louisa had devised such a meticulous plan.
Even though Jeanne didn’t think Louisa was as奢侈 a woman as people said, to the point of selling off the Duchy, she, like Catherine, had also thought that Louisa wasn’t fit to be the heir to the Duchy of Massena.
The Louisa she knew was clumsy at social maneuvering.
Louisa was fundamentally more concerned with whether she could obtain what she wanted than with what others thought of her.
No, that’s what she thought, but-
‘I completely misjudged her.’
It was the moment she realized why her grandfather had placed Louisa, notorious as a troublemaker, in the position of heir.
If by any chance the missing First Prince reappeared, was restored to power, and the late emperor’s families returned to their rightful places…
With that social skill, even if Louisa Massena couldn’t revive the Duchy, she would be more than capable of securing at least a count’s title for herself.
Of course, that was assuming the First Prince, who hadn’t shown his face for nine years, was even alive.
Soon, the party venue became noisy with talk of the play.
People gathered around Louisa.
They all seemed curious if there was a ‘sequel.’ They were eager to know what happened next to the prince and the beggar.
Watching Louisa become the center of attention, Catherine trembled with rage.
“How dare she… at my party… become the main character…”
‘That’s why you never should have told her to perform a play.’
Avoiding her mother, Jeanne entered a nearby lounge and sat in the most inconspicuous spot.
She listened to the voices of the nobles outside, sharing their impressions of the play.
“Hmm……”
If a sequel came out, she wanted to see it immediately.
To be honest, that was all Jeanne could think about too.
