Episode 1

1. EXPOSITION – ⅰ

The obituary arrived like an invitation.

As Ray Crawford quietly held the fine paper, bordered with black ribbon, and read it, a hollow laugh escaped his lips.

The slow waltz coming from the gramophone had begun to sound like an unpleasant noise.

Until he received this news, there had not been a single flaw in his day.

The same could be said of the headlines in the morning newspapers.

Conservative Party Wins 3 of 5 By-Elections, Aided by the Popularity of Foreign Secretary Crawford

Every newspaper, without exception, seemed to be telling him in one voice that, as always, he had been right.

It had been a perfect day, as always.

Until he received this obituary.

No. That wasn’t right.

The word always might have been wrong.

At some point, his days had stopped being quite so perfect.

As he retraced the moment that had brought about that change, he slowly closed and opened his eyes.

That woman.

Ever since discussions had begun about a forced marriage to a woman he hadn’t even known existed, things like this had happened from time to time, ruining his mood.

This unexpected obituary was another part of that ridiculous affair.

“What are you going to do?”

Agatha Crawford, sitting across from him, asked her son.

Her icy blue eyes gave her a cold impression, and the way her lips pressed tightly together the moment she finished her question seemed to reveal her personality as well.

“I suppose I have to go. Unofficially.”

Her son gave exactly the concise answer she had expected, without deviating an inch.

“I see……”

Her son had already returned to his calm expression, as though he had never let out that hollow laugh.

There was hardly any emotion in the way he quietly set the obituary down, as if it were nothing worth making a fuss over.

Even knowing that her son’s personality resembled hers as closely as his appearance did, Agatha sometimes found herself at a loss for words.

For the past month, Agatha had tried desperately to become detached from the fact that a foreign woman had suddenly been brought into the Crawford household as her daughter-in-law, but somehow, things always ended badly.

“Yes, of course. Even if I don’t like it, it is only proper that you go……”

Unable to help herself, she always ended up adding something like that.

Even she, the one who had pushed this marriage forward, found herself sighing from time to time. Yet her son, who had been unwilling to marry in the first place, had remained utterly calm ever since the matter had been decided.

“I was worried that he wouldn’t show me his daughter’s face until the day of the ceremony. Perhaps that would have been better. Not only do we have to hold a funeral before the wedding, but you’re going to meet your fiancée for the first time at her mother’s funeral.”

“It doesn’t seem like things can get any worse at this point.”

Agatha silently agreed with his light answer, impossible to tell whether it was a joke or not.

No matter how many funerals they held, this marriage could not possibly get any worse.

The marriage itself was already the worst thing that could happen.

Ray turned his gaze away from his mother, whose expression seemed complicated, and looked down once more at the paper bearing the obituary.

The deceased was his fiancée’s mother.

A name utterly unfamiliar to him.

It had only been two months since the marriage had first been discussed, and they had not even gone through a formal engagement.

But the dowry had already been received, and all that remained was to choose one of the proposed dates. Refusing to attend would hardly be polite.

He had never met either his fiancée or her mother, and they were practically strangers to him. Still, the woman would have become his mother-in-law had she lived another month or two.

“At least we can find out whether what Elliot Davis said is true before the wedding.”

“Has that man ever said anything useful enough to require verification? What did he say besides ‘virtuous’ and ‘beautiful’?”

His idiotic prospective father-in-law had done nothing but repeat that his daughter was “an exceptionally beautiful woman of impeccable virtue,” without even showing her to him.

Judging by his insincere and exaggerated attitude, Ray had begun to wonder whether he even knew his own daughter personally.

Even if he were describing a stranger, he would have put more effort into it.

“Even if it’s true, what difference would it make? She’d still be a Bolton woman, and her father’s origins wouldn’t change either. If she really were such a fine woman, Archibald Every would have taken her as his own wife. He wouldn’t have pushed her onto you and threatened you into marrying her.”

Ray deliberately chose not to point out that such a threat would never have worked if his mother hadn’t been involved.

They had already had one exhausting argument over the matter.

“Well, the second condition is rather important in its own way. There’s nothing wrong with being beautiful.”

Instead of telling his mother that she was the one who had yielded to such a filthy and pathetic threat, he changed the subject.

“You’re joking at a time like this.”

Despite her scolding, Ray merely gave her a polite smile.

He genuinely did want to see what kind of woman she was, if only to see her face.

There had to be a reason they were making such a fuss about keeping her hidden.

He had received a report that the woman had no significant physical defects, but still—if a woman had remained unmarried until the age of twenty-six, there had to be something wrong with her.

“I suppose I should prepare to leave for Bolton.”

He had been mentally prepared ever since the moment they began discussing the wedding date.

Prepared to accept whatever kind of worst-case woman he might meet.

“Yes…… There is no reason to delay something that has already been decided. And Tommy, would you turn off the gramophone? My head is beginning to ache.”

At the great lady’s command, a servant moved, and the excessively sentimental music abruptly stopped.

Feeling as though his head had suddenly cleared, Ray Crawford finally lifted his tea and took a sip.

His willingness to prepare did not mean resignation or defeat.

Ray simply recognized things quickly—things he could change, and things he could not.

He had won a war. How much trouble could a woman like this possibly be?

Ray Crawford had never lost on a single battlefield in his entire life.

The process might unfold somewhat differently from what he expected, but the result would be the same.

As it always was.

Bolton was a republic.

A country without a king.

There were several neighboring countries of Orturan that had become republics, but that had only happened recently.

Bolton, on the other hand, had been without a king for far longer.

For the first time in his life, Ray Crawford set foot on the soil of a country without a monarch.

“There’s nothing particularly different about it. Spencer, do you suppose the people of Bolton have tails too?”

Ray asked his aide as he looked around at the mourners gathered inside a rural church in Bolton.

“I couldn’t say, sir, but I imagine the older generations would have thought so.”

His aide, Paul Spencer, dutifully answered even his superior’s question about a tale that belonged in the old mocking fables told by elderly people long ago.

As the old fables suggested, the people of Orturan did not dislike Bolton simply because they were the sort who recoiled at words like republic or democracy.

It was because of their complicated history, filled with countless disputes, and the differences in their temperaments and dispositions—differences greater than heaven and earth.

The people of Orturan looked down upon everything about the Boltons: their excessively frank way of speaking, their fiery tempers ruled by emotion, their appetite for turning everything under the sun into food.

“Well, perhaps.”

Ray let out a quiet laugh to himself, amused by something known only to his peculiar sense of humor.

When Elliot Davis, who had been speaking with the bishop for some time, approached them, however, Ray wiped the smile from his face as though it had never been there.

“Ah, Minister. Minister.”

“I am not visiting in my capacity as a minister, so that makes me uncomfortable. Please call me Duke Crawford.”

Ray shook his head, placing his index finger against his lips as Elliot showed excessive deference to a man twenty years his junior.

“My condolences. May your wife rest peacefully in the arms of God.”

“Thank you, Minister—no, Duke Crawford.”

“I would also like to offer my condolences to your daughter personally. That is, if she really is my fiancée.”

Perhaps he sensed something amiss despite Ray’s polite expression and tone, because Elliot looked troubled and glanced pointlessly around the church.

Ray already knew that the woman who was supposed to become his fiancée was not inside.

Standing far away in an inconspicuous spot, he had spent the entire service watching the back of the woman standing beside Elliot.

The woman wearing a hat adorned with a black satin ribbon disappeared into the crowd the moment the service ended.

“She was very close to her mother, so she’s taking it quite hard. She’s not herself today. I sent the obituary as was proper, of course, but I’m afraid meeting today might be……”

“I’ll wait.”

Ray naturally cut him off.

“I’ve already crossed the border. What is a little waiting?”

“……Then please wait just a moment. I’ll go and find her.”

Ray maintained his formal smile until the man bowed and hurried away.

His secretary, Spencer, couldn’t help sneaking a glance at his employer.

The corners of Ray’s lips were always positioned with almost ruler-like precision.

A smile raised only slightly—just enough that it wasn’t a straight line.

His employer was not a man who smiled sparingly.

But it was rare for those smiles to be sincere.

“Since it looks like it’ll take a while, I should step outside for a moment.”

What he meant by stepping outside was that he needed to smoke.

Ray casually stopped the secretary, who instinctively began to follow him.

“No. I’ll go alone. There’s no need for us to miss each other.”

A cemetery stretched out behind the church.

Rows of gray gravestones gave the place a dreary air, though the thick trees growing all around them did their best to conceal it.

Looking for somewhere deserted, Ray approached a large tree beside the cemetery.

A strong, sweet scent stung his nose.

An unfamiliar fragrance……

Ray stared almost entranced at the purple fruits giving off that sweet scent.

Then his attention was stolen by a black skirt hem protruding from beside the trunk, fluttering with the wind.

Almost without thinking, he walked around the back of the tree.

There, he saw a woman in a black dress, crouched against the tree.

The hat resting on her head bore the same black ribbon he had watched throughout the service.

The familiar black satin ribbon fluttered in the wind.

And Ray knew.

She was his fiancée.

The woman who would become his wife.

Had she slipped out here to cry?

Just as he wondered whether he would have to offer comfort—a skill he possessed in no great abundance—the woman moved.

Her pale green eyes lifted to identify the intruder and met his.

White smoke rose from her colorless lips along with her breath.

The sweet scent of the nameless fruit and the smell of tobacco mingled chaotically in the air.

Ray looked down at the slender stick dangling precariously between the woman’s fingers.

He couldn’t help but laugh.

His fiancée was certainly a woman of impeccable virtue.

Certainly.