A room deep inside the Calendula estate, filled with the light of dusk. Chloe sits alone in the chair by the window. The curtains stir in the breeze, and the golden light slanting in casts a faint glow over her porcelain skin.
In her hands is a letter. Good paper, but no wax seal and no crest — a decidedly crude thing for a noblewoman’s correspondence. She strokes it with her fingertips as though she finds it rather dear.
[……Fufu. I see, I see.] (C)
As she reads on, a faint laugh escapes her. Like an actor savouring a script the audience hasn’t been let in on, the corner of Chloe’s mouth lifts, quietly.
[Leonardo-sama has been entertaining some very amusing ideas. It seems that in the time we’ve spent apart, he’s developed quite a distinctive way of thinking……] (C)
She folds the letter carefully and looks out the window. The lights of the city are just beginning to come on. Far beyond them, in some back street, her ‘collaborator’ is at work.
[I’ve found myself a fine collaborator. Buying the shop and the land it stands on has paid for itself. ……Now then. What sort of reaction shall I give my foolish fiancé?] (C)
The murmur isn’t aimed at anyone. But there’s real anticipation in her voice, and a little poison with it.
The anger and grief she once felt toward Leonardo are gone from her now, down to the last trace. In the time they’ve spent apart, she realised that feeling anything at all about him was a waste. What lifts her spirits these days is working out how to return the humiliation he dealt her, doubled.
Some time later, another letter arrives for Chloe. She sees the Linden wax seal on it and smiles.
[Right on schedule.] (C)
It’s from her fiancé. Summarised, it says: I want to see you. There’s something I’d like to give you. At that, her red lips curve, just slightly — like a hunter who has watched the quarry walk into the snare.
[Fufu. Very well. I’ll see you, exactly as you wish. ……I do wonder what sort of thing you’ll be giving me……] (C)
Chloe goes to her desk and draws a sheet of blank notepaper toward her. The only sound in the quiet room is the scratch of a fountain pen across it.
＊
A few days later, Chloe waits in the Calendula drawing room for Leonardo to arrive. Crimson carpet, polished mahogany table, furnishings understated but tasteful. As drawing rooms go it leaves nothing to be desired, and still the air in it is somehow taut.
Chloe sits straight-backed on the sofa without reaching for the silver tea service, her eyes fixed on the door. A knock sounds.
[Forgive the interruption. The son of the Duke of Linden has arrived.] (Butler)
At the butler’s voice, Chloe grants permission: [Yes, show him in.] The door opens slowly, and Leonardo appears for the first time in a long while, dressed in fine clothes with a small parcel in his hands. He steps forward and stands before her.
[Chloe, it’s been too long. I’ve missed you.] (L)
[Yes. Since the soirée, I believe?] (C)
Chloe delivers the barb, and Leonardo raises one eyebrow a fraction without saying anything. She swallows the laugh that nearly rises in her throat and gestures for him to sit.
[And what brings you here today?] (C)
Her manner is so dutiful that Leonardo almost lets out a startled sound. The closeness that unmistakably existed between them until quite recently has vanished, as though it had been an illusion all along.
Her eyes seem to be on him without actually seeing him. Her words are somehow those of a stranger. There has always been a certain refined distance about her, it’s true. But today is clearly different. She’s building a wall — deliberately.
‘W-Why……’
Looking back, her replies to his letters had been curter than before. She’d turned down several requests to meet. But Sherry had told him she only wanted his attention, and he decided there was no sense in letting her get her way, so he left her alone.
Now the thought crosses his mind that this may have been a mistake, because the woman in front of him is impossibly distant. Her manner is dutiful, the way one treats a complete stranger rather than a fiancé. It’s here, for the first time, that Leonardo feels genuine alarm.
The urge to demand what she’s so angry about rises as far as his throat. But if he threw it at her, she’d only counter with and what makes you think that?, and the words won’t come out.
‘This is…… this is bad, isn’t it?’
Far from wanting his attention, she may have lost all interest in him whatsoever — the thought creeps up his spine like a cold hand.
[Leonardo-sama……?] (C)
[Ah…… forgive me! Today I’ve brought you…… a gift. When I found it, I thought it would suit you.] (L)
Snapping back at her dubious look, Leonardo hesitantly holds out the small parcel in his hands. A thin white paper box, its corners slightly crushed, a pale blue ribbon tied around it as a token gesture. He presents it to her with great ceremony.
[My. This is…… for me.] (C)
Looking at a box no noble would be seen carrying, Chloe’s lashes flicker. She takes it and opens it gently.
Inside lies a small brass hairpin. Onto flower-shaped metalwork, a rough piece of blue glass has been set. Held up to the light it gives off a faint shine, but that shine is nowhere near a jewel’s.
Chloe lifts the hairpin with her fingertips. There’s a light sound, a small click from the clasp.
‘Cruder than I imagined…… They’ve made a token effort at glass in the colour of my eyes, at least……’
Chloe has never been to a market stall, so she’d pictured something like the accessories sold at stalls in her previous life — cheap, certainly, but reasonably pretty in their way.
What Leonardo has given her is a long way from that. Faded, and somehow worn out. It couldn’t be called lovely by any stretch of flattery, and Chloe gazes at it in silence.
‘The nerve of him…… Handing a thing like this to his fiancée without a trace of embarrassment.’
That the son of a ducal house would offer, as a gift, something visibly cheap and old at a single glance…… Chloe can’t help being appalled at what goes on in his head.
In the end, as far as he’s concerned, cheap and worn out is good enough for Chloe. That’s what it amounts to. And having it confirmed for her again doesn’t wound her anymore. ‘Ah, of course,’ and nothing further. What wins out is a kind of satisfaction at finally knowing her exact worth to him.
‘Well…… I imagine he’s counting on my never breathing a word of this to anyone……’
For a proud noblewoman, being given cheap jewellery of the sort commoners wear by her own fiancé is a humiliation she couldn’t bear to have others know about, so she’d keep quiet. That must be what Leonardo is banking on. That Chloe will surely never tell a soul.
He must understand it himself, too — that it would be a disgrace if the world learned he’d given his fiancée something this cheap. He’d be a young lord with no better eye than that, and his reputation in society would hit the ground. Among nobles, a gift also means the discernment of the giver, and the choosing of something befitting the one who receives it.
‘……Yes, that’s it. It’s a gift, after all. It would be rude of me not to wear it……’
Leonardo chose it because he thought it would suit her. A faded old hairpin bought at a street stall — suitable, he decided, for the daughter of a ducal house. He gave it to her knowing full well how thoughtless and impertinent an act that is. In which case it would be rude of her not to answer in kind, and the corner of Chloe’s mouth lifts.
[……Thank you very much. Your sentiment, Leonardo-sama, makes me very happy indeed.] (C)
She says it with a smile and layers of meaning folded underneath. Something unfathomable in it makes Leonardo flinch.
[Ah, yes…… I’m glad it pleases you.] (L)
Her reaction is, broadly speaking, what Leonardo expected. He’d assumed it would go one of two ways: she’d be angry — what is this — or she’d accept it without a word of complaint. Obedient, docile Chloe would surely do the latter, was his reckoning…… and yet something about it feels strangely off.
——Was she ever the sort of woman who smiles like that, with something hidden behind it……?
Despite the unease somewhere in his chest, he’s satisfied to have handed the gift over and doesn’t think about it any further. Never dreaming that this is the beginning of his own ruin.
Several days later, Chloe appears at a certain tea party with her silver hair adorned by a faded, cheap hairpin, drawing every eye in the room and causing an uproar.
That the story of this astonishing tea party would tear through society in no time at all, and become the spark that drove House Linden into a corner — of that, Leonardo as yet has no idea whatsoever……
Simplyrical 