92.
“A salon party in a glass conservatory?”
“That’s what I’m saying. They say you’ll be able to see all sorts of rare flowers brought in from distant foreign lands.”
I was instantly intrigued.
“Romi said she’s coming too. Are you really not going?”
“Even if I go, I won’t actually be able to hang out with you anyway.”
“Once people leave in the evening, we can sneak off and get together.”
I wondered if this was really the same Daena who had told me not to even acknowledge her in places where other nobles were present.
Under my blatant stare, Daena’s face flushed red, and she whipped her head away.
“Ah, if you don’t want to, then don’t!”
“All right… But I’m not sure I’ll have time.”
“Why? Are you busy? You’re on leave because you got hurt, aren’t you?”
“Since I’m on leave… I was thinking of going somewhere.”
“Where? Are you going far?”
“There’s something I need to buy.”
“Is it something you can’t buy in the imperial capital?”
“Yeah. Something so rare you can’t buy it even with money.”
Such as, say, ingredients for an antidote.
A fair amount of time had passed since Margaret gave me the information, and I had been starting to grow anxious.
Daena, who had been rolling around on my bed, openly laughed at me.
“How are you supposed to buy something like that?”
I smiled and changed the subject.
“By the way, is Romi really all right? She didn’t ask anything more about me?”
That day, I had revealed that I was Anastasia Roxanne.
There was usually a question that inevitably followed from that.
But surprisingly, Romi wasn’t very interested in that sort of thing.
“Yeah. She was so excited and chattering away that she didn’t even get to ask anything.”
“Really?”
“She seems to think you’re a member of some secret society or something.”
“Mm, well. That’s something.”
Romi had a cute side.
Though sometimes… that could put people in an awkward position.
Besides, after going through something so major, wasn’t it remarkable enough that she recovered so quickly and remained so spirited?
And when she went out, her parents were said to surround her with a double layer of guards, almost to an obsessive degree…
“Wait, so are you coming or not?”
Daena pressed me again.
“Where is it, and who’s hosting it?”
“You know Lady Mulderin, who has the Marchioness Geron as her chaperone, right? Well, the handkerchief that young lady presented at the last embroidery gathering happened to catch the eye of Her Highness the Imperial Consort, and just then, near the imperial capital…”
As if she had been waiting for it, Daena’s mouth opened, and for quite some time, a torrent of society gossip I couldn’t properly understand poured out.
‘Mm. I have no idea what she’s talking about.’
Halfway through, I gave up on listening closely and responded appropriately, then felt something digging into my back and slipped a hand behind me.
At first, I thought it was the blanket and tried tugging it flat, but it didn’t get any better.
So I half sat up and shoved my hand under the blanket outright.
“So her position became terribly awkward! After clinging to each other so happily before, now they’re practically enemies… What is it?”
Daena abruptly stopped speaking and looked at me.
What I pulled out from under the blanket was a thick, dark-brown leather notebook.
“No idea. It’s not mine.”
“It isn’t yours, but it came out of your bed?”
The moment I heard that question, I had a rough idea of who this notebook belonged to.
I pulled at the loosely tied cord and opened it.
“Oh.”
Daena pressed close to my shoulder and peered inside the notebook.
Then she smiled mischievously, as though she understood.
“This belongs to that attendant, doesn’t it?”
* * *
“Everyone, come over here!”
Before I knew it, the Holy Festival was just around the corner.
Like a merchant trying to draw in customers, I gathered people in the central hall on the first floor of the mansion.
The servants, who appeared one by one at their own leisurely pace, saw the gift boxes scattered in a heap at my feet, and their eyes abruptly came alive.
“What is all this, Baron?”
“What do you think? They’re gifts.”
At my confident answer, the coachman cleared his throat and was the first to speak.
“I’ll take that biggest one over there.”
Beside him, the cook whispered in the coachman’s ear as though sharing an astonishing secret.
“You don’t know anything. Gifts are chosen by weight, not size.”
I cut into their conversation and explained.
“You’re not choosing. I’m giving them out. I bought them all while thinking in advance about who to give each one to.”
“Aww.”
“Awwww.”
Why was their reaction like this even when I’d bought them gifts…?
Even as my expression visibly worsened in real time, they were busy saying whatever they wanted.
And Prien, who must have been on his way down just then, was watching this whole scene from the stair landing with a gentle expression.
That’s right. He wasn’t observing. He was “watching for amusement.”
He had gone so far as to take a place on the landing, drape one arm over the railing, and prop his chin on his other hand…
He even smiled brightly at me.
At this rate, he looked ready to flutter his hand and wave, so I forced my gaze away.
Then I pushed my way among the servants, who were causing a commotion with the gift boxes in their hands.
“No, not that one. I told you, that’s Julie’s. Yours is this one.”
“What? Isn’t Miss Julie’s gift much better than ours? This is suspicious.”
“Hey, no matter what, have some shame. Of course Miss Julie’s gift would be twice—no, three times better. Of course!”
“That’s right. Considering how much Miss Julie has helped the Baron in every possible way, surely you prepared an extraordinary gift for her, didn’t you?”
“Oops, I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Wow, I wonder how amazing it is. I should ask Miss Julie to show me later!”
“……”
Unable to hide my wavering gaze, I swallowed hard.
The servants’ gazes all slid back to me at once.
Then, every last one of them grinned.
“We were joking.”
“Baron, did you fall for it?”
“We were just teasing!”
“……”
I clenched my fist.
Normally, you’re all busy pretending not to know me and passing me by like you don’t see me, so since when did you become interested enough in me to even tease me?
I know too!
That all of you had nowhere to go, and that even four years ago, when everyone left, you had no choice but to stay…
“In any case, we’re glad.”
“It gives us strength, I suppose.”
“That’s right.”
“And we feel relieved.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
At my puzzled question, everyone shrugged and smiled.
“Because you seem well these days.”
Me? Are they talking about me?
“You even prepared something like this for us.”
“You’ve become brighter.”
Have I?
“In any case, Baron, please cut back on drinking a little now.”
“You should live a long, long life.”
“You do know how strange it is to hear well-wishes like that at your age, don’t you?”
I instinctively protested.
“I just like alcohol. I’m a connoisseur…!”
It was then.
Jaka, who had come down at some point without my noticing, was prowling around the gift boxes.
Then, when our eyes met, Jaka raised one eyebrow and asked,
“Where’s mine?”
It was a very confident attitude.
But there was only one thing I could say to him.
“There isn’t one?”
Jaka asked back with an expression I had never seen before.
“……What?”
I shrugged, then quickly slipped out of the hall as if fleeing.
Behind me, the servants’ voices rang out in a jumble.
“We’ll put them to good use!”
“Thank you for the gifts, Baron!”
“But you know you still have to pay our wages on time, right?”
“Why would you say something like that now?”
“And please stop climbing onto the roof from now on!”
“That’s true!”
I pretended not to hear them as I went up to the second floor, but even so, I grinned.
* * *
‘Where’s mine?’
‘There isn’t one?’
Unable to recover from the unexpected shock, Jaka had to stand there motionless for a while.
For quite some time, even after the servants had each tossed him a remark that might have been comfort or might have been teasing, then scattered.
At some point, Julie seemed to have clicked her tongue as she passed by, too.
‘What was that?’
It had hit him harder than he had expected.
It was true that he had always been starved for special treatment, but…….
To be foolishly pleased that he hadn’t been lumped together with the other attendants and treated the same as them…….
Jaka frowned.
Certainly, if she had handed them out to everyone together right here, that would have been unpleasant in its own way.
Especially while that obnoxious silver-haired man was looking down at them from the stair landing.
“…….”
He himself must not have received a commemorative gift for the Holy Festival either, but that eyesore of a priest had long since gone back to his room without a fuss.
‘I don’t believe it.’
Jaka smiled crookedly, then followed after Anastasia, who had left the scene with a rarely seen, brazenly nonchalant expression.
But.
‘She’s not here.’
Had Anastasia not gone up to her own room?
In front of the empty room, Jaka scowled at this second strange turn of events.
Next, he headed to the storage room Asha had been going in and out of strangely often these days.
Asha wasn’t here either.
She was clearly hiding something here from Julie’s eyes, but since he could guess what it was, he didn’t bother trying to find out.
‘Since she seemed to be diligently buying up all sorts of antidote ingredients.’
On his way back down the corridor, he looked out the window.
He could see the garden entrance, half-hidden by the edge of the building.
The sweltering sunlight stabbed at his eyes.
There was no way she would have been bustling about diligently from early morning.
And so Jaka began looking for Asha here and there around the not-even-very-large mansion.
Even the servants he ran into from time to time all played dumb today, saying, “I’m not really sure where she is.”
In any case, if it hadn’t been for Asha, they were people he had never even had a proper conversation with.
Jaka came to a brief stop on the garden path, where there wasn’t a sign of anyone and the scent of summer grass filled the air.
His master, who was always so easy to predict because she was standing right there wherever he went, was strangely nowhere to be found today.
He didn’t want to think about it, but.
‘……Did she go to that pretty-faced bastard’s room?’
If he couldn’t get hold of her even inside this mansion no bigger than the palm of his hand…….
It was just as Jaka, in oddly lowered spirits, opened the door to his room.
He saw the tips of someone’s feet swaying.
His gaze rose.
Someone was sprawled leisurely on the sofa set to one side of his room, her chin propped on the backrest.
She looked as though she was gladly enjoying the faint breeze drifting in through the wide-open window.
The fine wisps of hair around her forehead fluttered softly.
Just then, the slipper dangling from the toes sticking out past the sofa dropped with a thud.
The woman, who had turned her gaze toward the slipper, only then noticed him and smiled brightly, her eyes curving.
“Oh? You’re back?”
“…….”
In the end, the place where Jaka found Anastasia Roxanne was his own room.
Jaka could not explain in any words the emotion that suddenly came over him in that moment.
Only that the sunlight, which had kept his nerves on edge the whole way here, now felt merely warm.