Chapter 3

“Oh, no wonder you were speaking so skillfully with the Antakan ambassador earlier. I have an enemy in Antaka myself, you know. What was your mother’s maiden name?”

Someone asked her in a friendly tone.

“Dutois.”

Rose responded to the man’s attempt to show off his knowledge with a formal smile and the usual polite acknowledgments.

Her mother had been Antakan, but it was difficult to call her a noblewoman.

Her maternal grandfather had been the third son of a minor Antakan nobleman, so he had received neither a title nor an inheritance, nor had he been able to pass either on to his children. What he had passed down, however, was a pride as ambiguous as his position.

Her mother, who resembled her grandfather…

No.

She couldn’t.

Rose ruthlessly cut off the thoughts that had begun to wander wherever they pleased.

She did not want to think about her mother. Especially not in a place like this, where everyone was so busy watching to see what mistake she might make.

“Oh, then how did your mother ever come to live in a place like Bolton?”

Questions like these, which seemed innocent enough, and remarks that treated living in Bolton as though it were equivalent to deliberately choosing the bottom of society, no longer surprised her.

When she had first arrived, she had been shocked to realize that their contempt for Bolton was far more excessive than she had imagined, but after hearing remarks like this every day, she had begun to get used to them.

“I hear there was another massive strike in Bolton recently. Women even participated in such an antisocial collective action! I had heard that Boltonian women did all sorts of strange things, but… in Orotura, such a thing is simply unthinkable. How could they! I simply cannot imagine it.”

“My goodness, don’t be disappointed.”

Rose smiled without difficulty.

“Oroturans already have so much to be proud of. There’s no need for them to be as imaginative as Boltonians, too.”

The fact that she had to use such a long sentence when a simple ‘I suppose that’s because your imagination is rather impoverished’ would have sufficed was driving her mad with frustration.

For a country where machinery was developing to such an extraordinary degree, it certainly had an incredibly inefficient way of communicating.

Ray Crawford was now staring pointedly at her.

Perhaps he was telling her to shut up.

Rose smiled at her husband and continued speaking as though nothing had happened.

“And what about Her Majesty Queen Catherine? I heard you had an audience with her a few days ago. Please tell me about her. I’m always curious, since I don’t get to see her very often.”

Whenever Rose wanted to change the subject, bringing up Orotura’s monarch worked without fail.

Oroturans found her fascinating—and sometimes pitiful—because she came from a country without a king, and they would eagerly launch into lengthy speeches about their monarch.

Their arrogance in interpreting her simple curiosity as admiration tinged with envy was quite remarkable.

“Her Majesty is remarkably vigorous for her age. The monarchs of this country have always been so, but she is truly quite extraordinary…”

Listening to what was perhaps the most boring story in the world, Rose looked toward the pianist playing in the corner of the hall.

The pianist’s hands gradually slowed as the nocturne neared its end.

The piece the pianist had chosen was famous, and deservedly so. It was beautiful, and the performance was flawless.

The aftertaste of the wine she had casually swallowed earlier was bitter.

We have found no particular reason to publish any of Miss Davis’s compositions.

Remembering the contents of the short, dreary letter she had received before her marriage, Rose clenched and unclenched her fist for no particular reason, feeling as though her wrist ached.

Suddenly, all of this seemed meaningless.

Was a marriage that felt like a lie really so important in a life that held so little meaning?

Was this country, which looked down on her, really so important?

Just as the publishers had said, there was nothing particularly special about her.

And if that was the case, then all the more reason she had no need to cling to her pride or value herself.

She was nothing.

No one.

In this vast world.

The moment she realized once again the very thing her mother had tried so desperately to make her understand before she died, Rose’s smile deepened.

Orotura was a country where the sun rose late.

Ray Crawford, having finished preparing to leave the house, descended to the main hall on the first floor of the mansion. He received the butler’s greeting while gazing at the still-bluish morning sky beyond the windows.

He wanted to think of it as an ordinary morning.

The same scenery he saw every day.

The same servants he saw every day.

The same morning as always.

But…

“Mrs. Crawford?”

He managed to force the words out despite the discomfort of saying them, as though he were chewing on sand.

The butler looked rather surprised that Ray was asking after his wife so early in the morning.

Understandably so.

Unless absolutely necessary, Ray neither mentioned her nor sought her out.

The husband and wife had astonishingly little contact with each other.

“She is taking a walk in the garden.”

“At this hour?”

Ray quietly repeated the butler’s words.

It was seven in the morning.

“She has been out there for quite some time, sir.”

What an absurd woman.

Ray was not so careless as to openly display his displeasure with his wife in front of the servants. He could not, however, stop the criticisms of her from forming automatically in his mind.

“She seems to have something troubling her.”

The butler lowered his voice and reported this carefully.

Ray did not agree with him at all, but merely nodded.

An article had appeared in the newspaper the previous day saying that the woman’s father had been going around meeting all sorts of city officials under the pretext of conducting business.

The butler, who had surely read the newspaper, seemed to assume that was the reason for her early-morning walk.

That was what was troubling her?

Her?

As if.

It was not a particularly convincing assumption.

In Ray’s judgment, the woman called Rose Davis was rather shameless, just like her father.

He could still clearly remember the expression on her face in the embassy’s gallery room a few days ago.

All sorts of worthless people had been running their mouths simply because he had made such a low-class marriage.

He had left them alone because it was ridiculous to react to every word uttered by pathetic people with too much time on their hands.

But shouldn’t the woman have reacted at least a little?

Even after witnessing the scene that had occurred because of her very existence, the woman had simply stood there and looked at him without saying much of anything.

In other words, that woman was…

How should he put it?

Far too composed.

There was no sign of the guilt she ought to have felt.

Nor any shame.

Always that doll-like, expressionless face.

“I’ll go out.”

He did not particularly want to, but today there was something he wanted to confirm with the woman.

Ray Crawford went out into the garden, trying to forget the sensation of humiliation he had experienced for the first time in his life—the unwelcome feeling his wife kept reminding him of whenever he had almost managed to forget it.

“I suppose there’s no need to be imaginative as well.”

Yet despite all his efforts, the moment he remembered the woman saying those words in that sing-song voice, so absurdly gentle that it did not even sound like sarcasm, he was instantly dumbfounded all over again.

He had thought that after witnessing what people had been saying about her husband because of her existence, perhaps she would at least keep her mouth shut that evening.

Once again, he had expected far too much.

The woman would be perfectly quiet and well-behaved, only to occasionally say something completely inappropriate.

Was she in her right mind?

Changing the subject from the Bolton strike to this country’s monarch had gone beyond being audacious.

It was dangerous.

In that brief conversation, the King of Orotura had been placed on the same level as a strike in Bolton.

Whenever she got bored, the woman brought up this country’s king in exactly that manner.

As though the king were nothing more than a light topic of conversation over drinks.

Fortunately, Oroturans seemed not to notice. They assumed that the woman was simply fascinated by and envious of the existence of a monarch.

She had to be.

But still…

A woman born in a country without a king, and raised there all her life…

“Do you really think we’ll be better off just because we win the war? Do you? Do you think we’ll last?”

He remembered something his father had once muttered from his sickbed.

At the time, Ray had not understood his father, who had been so anxious as though the monarchy might collapse at any moment.

But now, it could hardly be said that his concerns had been an overreaction.

The King of Planto had been hanged on the executioner’s scaffold even after winning the war.

That woman kept reminding Ray of things he did not want to remember.

Annoyingly so.

With irritation rising all the way to his throat, Ray stopped walking.

The woman was sitting on a bench with her head bowed.

There was surely nothing on the ground to look at, yet her face and gaze were directed completely downward.

She was a small woman to begin with, and sitting like that made her look as though she might collapse at any moment.

Was she crying?

Ray took a cigarette from inside his clothes, placed it between his lips, and looked at Rose indifferently.

Well, even a woman who did not particularly care that her husband was being subjected to all sorts of talk because of her might still be upset about her father or her own reputation.

In truth, just looking at her, it would not have been strange if she cried at any moment.

She looked like someone who cried easily.

Even if that were not the case, Ray thought it was about time she cried.

He was well aware that Oroturans treated her as though she were an animal locked inside a zoo, or an actor in a circus.

They occasionally made barbed remarks even when Ray or his mother were watching, so they must have been even worse when no one was around.

But…

Her blank, seemingly thoughtless expression was irritating enough, but seeing her cry would be even more unpleasant.

And comforting her would be a bother.

Just as he was wondering whether to turn around and leave, Rose lifted her head.

Then she yawned.

Big.

And long.