"I heard that Kaian spends time with a woman from the capital several times a day."
Claudel parted her small, pretty lips and opened her eyes wide as if she'd never imagined he would say it aloud like that.
"Why are you so surprised?"
"No, it's not like that..."
"I'm human too, so I can't say I didn't hear people talking freely inside the castle."
"..."
Valquiterre approached the woman who stood there with her face caught off guard by the sudden words.
"Would you like to walk with me for a moment?"
The hem of Valquiterre's garment lightly brushed the grass as he took his steps. The footsteps that had been hitting the grass with different beats soon became synchronized.
"Aren't you disappointed?"
"What should I be disappointed about?"
Claudel hesitated as if she was worried.
"It means that the Duke and I can't get along smoothly."
"Haha, it's not possible to achieve perfection."
Valquiterre laughed genuinely.
"You're mistaken."
"Yes?"
"You're doing very well now, considering it's between Vermont and Temnes."
He narrowed his eyes and smiled.
"In the capital, gamblers were betting they'd see blood on the first night."
Claudel shuddered at the cruel expression heard without a filter.
"They said the bride wouldn't make it out of the bedroom alive. They said the Duke's sword that he was sharpening couldn't reach Valmonde, but it would at least strike the bride's head."
Valquiterre showed his poisonous concern for such a woman.
"Didn't the Duke of Vermont send you to Temnes on purpose? Even if Temnes had pushed the bride from Vermont into the moat so she couldn't even set foot in the castle, the fact would have been covered up."
The woman turned pale and unconsciously covered her stomach with her hands. Her attitude toward something that wasn't even noticeable yet was quite desperate.
"But a successor has been conceived. Why should I be disappointed?"
He spoke gently.
"Thanks to your great courage in marrying into an enemy family, I can hear praise as someone who successfully reconciled two families, so I'm just grateful."
"Thank you for saying that."
However, Valquiterre knew that each and every word he said would cloud Claudel's inner thoughts like muddy water hit by strong raindrops. Because it was what he did best.
"If it bothers you, how about you get that woman out of the castle?"
"Yes?"
"Madame Marcel. Ah, of course, this proposal contains a bit of selfishness."
Valquiterre added playfully.
"I'd like her to return to the capital before my sister, who's very fond of her tailor's dresses, grows resentful."
"The Princess likes her."
Claudel sighed softly.
"I already told him."
"To Kaian?"
"The Duke said he liked that seamstress."
Her face darkened.
"He made excuses that she suited me well and that it was difficult to find people to work at Rowan."
"Oh my."
"Please don't tell him I said this."
Claudel smiled weakly as if she felt empty.
"I keep asking Your Majesty for things."
"I'm a very discreet person."
Valquiterre picked a jacaranda flower with abundant scarlet petals and placed it in Claudel's ear.
"If you call me Bark instead of Your Majesty, I'll be your faithful friend at any time."
"Yes, Your..."
She was trying to say "Your Majesty" without even realizing it, but her words trailed off.
"Bark."
Valquiterre lightly kissed the back of her hand.
---
The butler looked at Kaian with a stern expression.
"It's said that Madame Cronach has been away from her post for two days."
"That woman."
Kaian smiled grimly, showing his teeth.
"It's amazing."
It wasn't a laugh, but a habit of expression when he was threatened—it looked like the growl of a wild beast that wanted to bite.
"She was a woman in our intelligence network. It's not like I didn't think she might have planted someone of her own in the castle."
"She said she'd go out for a few hours because she had some business to attend to."
"What about the escorts at Salon Arvo?"
"She often called for a hired carriage and rode around."
"Why a hired carriage?"
"I think she let our guard down like that on purpose."
"She was planning something while biding her time at Salon Arvo."
"It's said that Madame said she'd only take one maid to do secretarial work, so no one suspected otherwise."
Madame Cronach had diligently won Kaian's favor. He wasn't going to blame her—like a crumpled piece of trash with massive burns and mangled skin—but she'd offered to be useful to him as if she wanted to prove she was worth saving.
"When I see things like this, I realize I've come a long way."
"Isn't there no way to beat a determined con artist?"
"It's comforting to hear the butler say that."
However, Kaian's eyes shone sinisterly.
"But we can't just ignore the crime of deceiving Temnes."
"We're looking for those who left the capital during that time. We've sent a pursuit team."
"What did she want?"
"Wouldn't it have been revenge?"
"Yes, I can't think of anything else."
The only person found alive in the village was Madame Cronach. Kaian had personally confirmed that everyone else had stopped breathing.
Because trouble shouldn't be left behind.
However, he'd also thought that a woman with severe burns wouldn't pose much of a threat.
The Queen had issued a gag order and he'd followed the orders of his father, the head of the Temnes family. He'd believed that one person from the exterminated village wasn't a problem and could even become a trump card in diplomatic issues related to that village in the future.
The woman was much smarter than he'd thought, so she'd hidden her teeth, retracted her claws, and obeyed him like a fool, gradually catching Kaian off guard.
Entrusting something to her had become efficient, and gradually, Kaian had found himself using Madame Cronach more and more comfortably.
Since his estate was quite far from the capital, it was a convenient means for him to maintain access to social circles and information through the salon.
Over the past ten years, she'd become one of the few confidants Kaian could trust and entrust with tasks without worrying about the outcome.
"Anyway, if she wants revenge, won't she end up coming to Rowan with a sword?"
Kaian leaned back in his chair and lifted his chin arrogantly as if he'd come to a conclusion.
"Let's lift the strengthened security measures."
"Pardon?"
"It would be better to lure her here."
He spoke calmly as if he'd reached a clear conclusion.
"Wouldn't it be too dangerous?"
"My body isn't fragile enough to be stabbed by a woman whose body isn't in perfect condition."
The butler eventually lowered his head with a very stern look on his face.
"I will do as you command."
As the office became quiet, he sighed.
"Ha."
Kaian was always busy, and after Valquiterre had come to Rowan, he'd become even more hectic. On top of that, he had a lot of work to do, so he was unusually tired.
*I want to go somewhere with Claudel and spend a few days alone.*
The sense of security given by a wife who obeyed him as if she'd give him everything was irreplaceable. But these days, their relationship wasn't as good as it used to be.
*It's my father's.*
It had seemed like things were going well until Claudel had found on his desk an item that had been taken as a remnant from the village of Plogne.
"You asked me if I was a survivor there."
This was indisputable proof that Kaian knew what had happened in Plogne Village.
"If only she hadn't said that, I wouldn't have mentioned Your Majesty's matter."
He hated anything getting out of control. He didn't just dislike it—it was closer to disgust.
He hadn't been without that side even from a young age, but it wasn't until he'd gone to war that he'd realized he was suffocating his subordinates. Because uncertainty sometimes cost lives.
Neither the man who was his sword nor the man who was his shield had any chance of returning to Rowan in the war that would never end, so they had to be buried in the cold ground.
As he'd collected the bodies of his men one by one, Kaian had become more and more controlling. If his decision-making judgment was wrong, the probability of someone losing their life increased.
The war was over, but his heightened senses couldn't easily regain peace.
No matter how meticulously Baron Colon tried to manage it, the land was bound to become lax when the owner was away. Now, he had to shoulder the burden of feeding not only the soldiers who followed him but also all his dependents on this land.
Some in the capital were dissatisfied with Kaian's emancipation of the serfs, but Kaian had other intentions. For him, giving them freedom meant taking less responsibility for them.
Although he believed taking responsibility for them would lead to more active development of the fief, he'd tried to gradually reduce the fief's obligations.
Was it incompetent to try to ease these burdens because they felt heavy? He didn't think his father, the previous Duke of Temnes, had had these concerns.
He'd been extremely sharp every day and at the peak of his vigilance as he'd prepared to govern his territory. It was as if Valquiterre had deflated it all at once.
"I didn't know it would be like this when I married a bride from an enemy family."
It was in Claudel's arms that he truly came to rest. There was no way Valquiterre would have agreed to marry her if he'd asked in advance, but there was a time when he'd thought it was a stroke of luck that he'd found a wife of his choosing.
However, it had been difficult to rely on his wife these days.
"It's not easy to please my wife."
It seemed like things had gotten more complicated because he hadn't paid much attention to things like her origins.
"I don't know when she'll bring up the matter of Plogne Village again."
Feeling frustrated, Kaian quickly headed to the castle's back garden. He planned to cool his heated head by walking along the shady forest path and pondering all kinds of information all morning.
"..."
Until he saw Valquiterre putting a flower in his wife's ear with an expression like a courting peacock with his flashy tail spread out.
---