Eleanor's fingertips trembled. Even after barely placing the violently shaking paper down on the table, Eleanor remained silent for a while.
Then she abruptly muttered.
"Go warm her bed once."
"Pardon?"
Olivier could not believe what he was hearing. Eleanor, staring at Olivier whose expression had gone blank, spoke again as if driving in a nail.
"Go warm that madwoman's bed. It's not as if it's a difficult task for you, after all."
"What did you just say..."
His face burned bright red, and that was not enough—he felt on the verge of suffocation.
"Are you in your right mind?"
He felt as if all the blood were draining from his body. Even as he barely stood steadying himself against the desk, his mind went numb.
"You are insulting me."
"It's not as if you are in a position where losing your chastity would prevent you from marrying."
Eleanor drove it in coldly.
"If you go and sleep with her once, you should be able to delay the marriage you detest so much. Then, as this woman says, you would be satisfied, and I would be satisfied—wouldn't that settle it?"
"Have you gone senile?"
"Seeing her mention New Continent investment funds, she must not be an ordinary woman. She is surely someone among those we know, so you should meet her."
"Good heavens, Grandmother."
Olivier let out a hollow laugh. Now he was truly so dumbfounded that nothing but laughter would come.
Unable to believe it, he scrutinized his grandmother's face several times, but Eleanor's firm expression did not waver in the slightest.
"Damn it all."
Exhausted, Olivier plopped down onto the sofa. His grandmother merely gripped her handbag stubbornly. She gazed into empty space without saying much else.
Silence fell upon the study.
"I do not understand, Grandmother."
Though muttering in bewilderment, Olivier's gaze remained fixed on Eleanor throughout. Because he simply, simply could not believe it.
"Grand Duchess Eleanor d'Empierre, the great power of Ezzon's political world. When I was young, people called you the 'Guardian of Justice.' I was proud. That you, my grandmother, were the one who kept the embers of the citizen's revolution alive and established the value of great justice..."
"I am sorry to disappoint you, Olivier."
Eleanor's voice did not lose its dignity, but her neatly folded fingertips trembled faintly. Olivier, staring vacantly at his grandmother's wrinkled hand trembling weakly, leaned his back and buried himself into the sofa.
"There are degrees to disappointment, Grandmother."
Buried in the sofa, Olivier let out a long sigh and muttered weakly.
"Grandmother. Why on earth are you going this far? What is it that we lack? Our assets are already sufficient, Grandmother. There is no need to rush marriage. At twenty-three, there is still plenty of time."
"Your father died at twenty-four. Your grandfather died at twenty-five."
"That's..."
"You are this family's only bloodline. I wish for you to marry, but if you truly cannot do even that, you must at least amass more wealth. What is wrong with that?"
A sigh finally burst from Olivier's lips. It was a meaningless battle that had already been repeated countless times.
Men who died before surpassing twenty-five, the family's sole bloodline, the endless obsession with wealth.
If only he could become a child cast out by the family and live recklessly and dissolutely as he pleased, like his friends. If so, things would not have been so difficult.
Olivier knew himself well. In the end, he would be unable to defy his grandmother's command. He wanted to run away, but there was no escape, so he had merely endured somehow.
But this was different. This was madness.
"I cannot do it, Grandmother. You are telling me to sell my body? The grandson of House d'Empierre?"
"Olivier."
Deep green irises stared fixedly at Olivier. It was a gaze that laid bare the naked face of desire he had never seen before.
"I do not know why you make such a fuss about purity. It is not as though you are carefully choosing women."
"......"
"Especially when you let lewd articles rise and fall in the Ezzon newspapers every single day."
Ah, damn it. It had come back around to this. That his desperate struggles to break free had instead caught him by the ankle. Olivier's face contorted.
"Leave, Grandmother. The conversation is over."
Springing up from his seat, Olivier flung open the study door.
"Very well, I shall go."
Eleanor, who had been heading toward the doorway, slowly turned to look at her grandson. As if unwilling to even see her off, Olivier looked only out the window with a pale face.
"......Think upon the transaction with the person who gave you the letter, Olivier."
"It is not even worth considering."
Olivier squeezed his eyes shut. His Adam's apple bobbed as he forcibly suppressed his anger.
"Olivier. An age has come where the value of a noble house is determined by its assets. We are no different. Rather, it is even more dangerous now that you have postponed marriage. We stand at a crossroads."
Eleanor looked at her grandson with subdued eyes. He had been a child with a fiery temper since youth, but in the end, he was a good grandson who would ultimately break that stubbornness if it was his grandmother speaking. This time would be no different.
"New Continent investment requires a great deal of money, but it will surely bear equivalent fruit. So whether you marry or bring in New Continent investment funds, I want you to give me one of the two."
Having spoken to this extent, that child's pride would surely finally say he would marry.
For a moment, it was pressure laden with such calculation. Leaving her grandson to swallow his anger, Eleanor quietly departed the apartment.
* * *
Olivier, we love you, but Countess Eleanor is absolutely unbearable.
Let's meet at Katarina Bisset's party.
Armand says he truly hopes you meet a lover that day.
Bisset's parties are quite wild.
- Yours fondly, Monceau
In the emptied living room, only the card Monceau had left behind lay conspicuously. Olivier couldn't help but let out a hollow laugh. Ridiculous. They barge in as they please and...
He threw the card into the fireplace and turned around, when this time a maid approached him with an embarrassed face.
"Um, young master, the food..."
Just how much had Monceau slipped into Henri's pocket? Even if Henri had taken the bare minimum commission for the errand, this was too excessive.
Looking at the magnificent feast, as if they had moved the entire Restaurant Dubois here, he was on the verge of a dry laugh.
"What shall we do with all this expensive and abundant food? It would easily serve twenty people."
"Throw it away."
Leaving behind a brief command, Olivier grabbed a wine bottle and headed to the terrace. The cold night air against his face made him feel he could at least breathe again.
Ding, ding, ding...
The sound of bells signaling midnight rang out. Olivier slowly lit a cigar and looked down upon the clamorous Ezzon night.
Carriages busily passing along the avenue to the right of the apartment, the shouts burst out by those staggering drunk, the sound of singing from the alley across the way.
Someone was crying, someone was laughing loudly.
Sometimes, when he looked down upon the Ezzon night like this, he felt a strange mood. For some time now, he had felt abruptly, strangely isolated, as if he alone...
In the distant days of youth that he could scarcely even remember, when this kind of helpless feeling came over him, he would walk the streets alone, or visit museums or theaters.
What if he had gone to the grand theater tonight? The whole world would no doubt have remembered only the actress scandal and stared at his face every single moment. Even the actress on stage, at that.
It was too late now to clear up his grandmother's misunderstanding. He had fabricated and built up the way the world looked at Olivier d'Empierre, never knowing it would in turn become a noose tightening around his own neck.
It was true that he had ruined everything with his own hands. Yet the fact that he could not stop now added to his self-loathing.
When had been the last time he enjoyed a theater performance without any calculation?
Without even setting foot near the opera house, he had donated enormous sponsorship funds; without attending the salon's exhibitions, he had bought and sold paintings.
The moment it approached under the name Olivier d'Empierre, the art he loved all became nauseating money and rotted away.
The fable of the foolish man whose every touch turned things to gold—happy at first but later unable to eat or drink—came to mind as well.
Damn. If only he had drunk some alcohol. He resented his friends who had completely fled. Though he laughed hollowly remembering those crazy bastards shouting "Olivier has no parents!" as if it were some great blessing.
If his grandmother had heard, she would have gone pale and slapped those scoundrels' cheeks repeatedly.
But they were quite honest, weren't they?
Truthfully, he had liked those friends. He had no other friends anyway.
He liked the unbridled words that brazenly invaded Olivier, whom no one crossed the line with, sometimes even committing impiety without hesitation.
He was comfortable with those blockheads who cursed him as a beast without shame yet held their ground. Those who could cast aside noble duty, family glory, arranged marriages.
Olivier could not properly do either. Building a respectable household outwardly while filling other desires behind it felt unclean, yet he could not openly throw away the family name and live recklessly like his friends.
He found an escape by wrapping himself in the packaging of debauchery. The fake d'Empierre was free and faithful to his desires. The only problem was that even the love without substance was fake.
"......Damn it all."
Just as Monceau said, this was a perverted sexual desire. He gripped the long neck of the wine bottle and poured the remaining wine down his throat.
He wanted to pour out this unpleasant feeling somewhere. Olivier took out Mademoiselle R's card that he had stashed in the study and began to scribble a reply.
Cold, bleak moonlight slanted over the nib of the fountain pen moving briskly across the paper.