Episode 4

The yawn she let out without even covering her mouth had passed, leaving behind nothing but an expression of boredom.

Watching the woman even slump back against the bench as though she had never been born with such a thing as dignity in the first place, Ray let out a small scoff and stopped himself from lighting the cigarette he was about to smoke.

Right. As if that could be.

Did they teach people in Bolton that it was all right to behave differently when someone was watching and when no one was? At this rate, she looked ready to lie down flat on the bench.

Perhaps she had heard the sound of his approaching footsteps, because Rose turned her face toward him. Ray did not miss the fleeting look of annoyance that crossed her face.

Just as he found her bothersome, it seemed that his wife was hardly pleased by his presence either.

What a splendid pair.

Hiding his self-deprecation, Ray stood beside the bench and removed the cigarette from his mouth.

“You look like you desperately need one.”

At his words, the green eyes that had been faintly clouded with drowsiness quickly filled with suspicion.

“…If I say I do, are you going to give me one?”

Her gaze landed precisely on the cigarette in his hand.

She was a woman who did not even know how to say no out of politeness.

For a whole month, they must have poured their hearts and souls into teaching her at the Crawford mansion how to use all sorts of polite falsehoods—the kind also called affectation or manners—and yet she was still like this. It made him feel sorry for his mother and the housekeeper all over again.

“I’m not enough of a rogue to hand a lady something I’ve had in my mouth.”

Although this woman looked as though she would gladly take it even if it had been between his lips, regardless of what sort of woman she was, there was no need for him to sink to her level.

Rose’s expression became listless again, as though she had never expected anything.

Ray changed his mind and put the cigarette away. It was a small gesture of consideration for a woman who seemed to be having a terrible time giving up smoking.

When he extended one arm, the woman silently relied on it and rose from the bench.

“I suppose I’ve been outside for too long.”

Perhaps because of her voice, or perhaps because of the strong Antakan accent woven into her speech, her words sometimes sounded almost like a song. There was a subtle sense of rhythm to them.

Instead of answering, Ray gestured toward the wrinkled hem of her skirt.

With a small sigh, the woman straightened her clothes with an unenthusiastic wave of her hand.

“Even when no one is watching, you always take such care to be polite, Duke.”

The woman’s quiet voice drifted through the sound of their footsteps on the grass.

“There is me, and there is you. That alone is reason enough to be polite. And…”

She was still saying such impossibly innocent things. At this point, he was genuinely curious what she had been doing during that month at the Crawford mansion.

“It would be troublesome if you thought no one was watching.”

There was no weight at all in Rose’s hand resting on his arm.

It was always like this. As though she would never rely on anyone, the woman merely laid her hand there like an ornament and walked under her own power.

Did she not realize that only made her look more awkward and uneasy?

Ray could feel her body stiffen whenever his arm or hand came into contact with her.

The more she did so, the more she looked like someone sitting in a place that was not meant for her.

“Even in the streets of Bolton, people took your picture. There are eyes everywhere. Even inside this Crawford mansion where we live. By now, you can probably guess why I advised you to quit smoking.”

The photograph that had been splashed across the Orturan newspaper two weeks ago, showing her eating fruit on the street, had been taken in Bolton.

Since it had been taken before she had even married him, there was only one answer.

Archibald Avery.

That shameless man had prepared it in advance and deliberately released it now. And it meant that he would continue doing such things in the future to keep Ray in check.

Perhaps Interior Minister Archibald Avery considered Ray, a fellow member of the same party, his lifelong rival. He seemed more interested in tormenting Ray than in taking care of the nation’s internal affairs.

He certainly enjoyed playing games with the newspaper he owned.

“I didn’t know the reporters in Orturan had so much free time back then.”

Ray looked down at her, wondering if she was being sarcastic, but there was no expression to be read on the woman’s face.

“Now that I know a little more about Orturan, I’ll be more careful.”

It was true that her special position as a politician’s wife and the mistress of a ducal household made her life somewhat more difficult, but this woman seemed particularly exhausted by the country of Orturan itself.

If not for the fact that she could become the subject of newspaper articles, her life now should have been far better than living in the countryside of Bolton.

Her father might have been wealthy, but he did not seem like the sort of man who spent much money on his daughter.

The eyes of others, the envy and contempt contained within them, were nothing when compared to what the Crawfords possessed.

Depending on how one chose to look at them, even such gazes could become decorations.

“Why don’t you try putting yourself in her shoes? She lived a quiet life, you know. How overwhelming do you think this must be for her?”

Ray remembered the words his younger sister Beth had given him in reproach. Like the young girl she was, his sister had found it quite easy to pity her brother’s wife, who had married into a foreign country.

Ray thought differently from his bright-eyed younger sister.

If she couldn’t handle it, shouldn’t she have never started in the first place? If she had decided to marry a Crawford, she should have been prepared to endure at least this much.

Judging from the woman’s perpetually vacant expression, it seemed obvious that she had agreed to this marriage without any thought, plan, or determination whatsoever. Without any preparation at all.

His mother, who had held the prejudice that Bolton women would be fiery, had said that Rose was more ‘obedient’ than expected and therefore better than she had feared. But Ray wondered whether it could really be called ‘obedience.’

The woman simply had no thoughts at all.

No sensible person would decide to marry a Crawford with a head that empty.

Ray had always thought so. There was something wrong with this woman.

“I didn’t think living in a foreign country would be particularly difficult, but it seems you’re having some trouble with it.”

He had not meant anything particularly significant by the remark, but the woman suddenly stopped walking.

“You’ve lived abroad too, I suppose, Duke? Let me guess. Antaka or Planto, right?”

She was exactly right.

“Yes… It probably wasn’t very difficult for you. The only thing that makes Antaka and Planto different from Orturan would be the language.”

Perhaps taking his continued silence as confirmation, the woman began walking again.

“Duke Crawford. I don’t think I’m living in a foreign country.”

There was still no weight at all in her hand on his arm. Even though they walked side by side, the distance between them remained vast. Just as vast as the titles by which they addressed each other.

“I think I’ve moved a century into the past. The thing that doesn’t get through isn’t the language.”

“I see.”

She was rather good at saying that their ideas were as hopelessly outdated as those of a hundred years ago.

“I’ve heard that Bolton never had a chance to establish anything called tradition. It must be unfamiliar.”

The woman, who came from a country that overthrew its political system whenever it got bored, merely nodded once without enthusiasm at his words.

As though such a remark posed no attack whatsoever. No, to begin with, it was questionable whether she was even listening to him.

Ray began to doubt the version of himself from a month ago who had thought he could control this marriage.

At the time, he had believed that although the woman he was marrying was somewhat lacking in status, she would compensate for the considerable difference in their positions by cooperating with the Crawfords as submissively as possible, so he had not been particularly worried.

But…

Ray looked down at the woman’s still expressionless face, as though it had been bleached white, and thought.

There was something about this woman that made even her cooperation fail to feel like cooperation.

“…What did you talk about with the Antakan ambassador at the embassy party?”

That was why he had come looking for her so early in the morning.

“The Antakan ambassador? We only exchanged greetings…”

Her voice answered as lifelessly as her face.

“He even sent a letter saying that you absolutely had to be brought to lunch today.”

Of course, he had no intention of bringing Rose.

He merely wanted to find out what they had talked about while he was absent that had prompted the ambassador to send such a letter.

“We really didn’t talk about much. He complimented me on my Antakan, so I only told him that my mother was Antakan.”

Perhaps she had read his continued suspicion, because the woman let out a small scoff. But it lasted only a moment.

“If I had said something strange, it would probably have been in the newspaper already… Why don’t you check the newspaper?”

She returned to her expressionless face and simply looked up at him calmly.

She said it in an extremely polite tone, as though she had carefully fabricated words that could be either sarcasm or mockery.

At last, Ray realized what it was about the woman that irritated him so much.

There was no will whatsoever in her cooperation—or her obedience.

Her attitude was rather like that of an owner who tossed a few treats at some noisy dogs simply because dealing with them was bothersome.

Ray finally realized that, to her, all of Orturan—and even the Crawfords—were nothing more than dogs barking at her.

It was absurd.

It was exactly the same attitude Ray himself used when he casually ignored those who talked this or that about him.

Which meant that, to this woman, he was on the same level as those pathetic idiots.