Autumn light falls softly across the marble terrace. Bathed in that golden sun, the ladies wear gowns of fine silk with jewels at their throats and in their hair. Delicate vine patterns rise along the rims of the white porcelain tea service, and amber tea steams in the cups.
Today is the tea party of a certain marchioness. A woman of considerable renown in society, she draws the ladies of the great houses to her in numbers.
And the elegant quiet of that afternoon is broken by a single set of footsteps.
The attending maids move at once, and every eye turns to the entrance of the hall. What appears, accompanied by the light rustle of silk, is the heiress of House Calendula: Chloe.
The lemon-yellow gown she wears shimmers in the light, lustrous enough to steal the gaze of anyone who sees it. Fine silk lavished with pale lace, luxury spared in no detail. And yet — one jarring note unsettles all that perfection.
Her hair.
Chloe’s silver hair is beautiful enough to draw the eye on its own. But what adorns it is a hairpin so plain it looks almost out of place. Nothing anyone could flatter into being suitable for the daughter of a great house. It looks like something a commoner would wear.
[……Is that, surely not……] (Lady)
[A taste for antiques…… perhaps?] (Lady)
[No, that looks more like…… something from a market stall……] (Lady)
No one can raise her voice to ask outright. The murmur of doubt and astonishment simply spreads, quietly, like ripples.
Paying none of it any attention, Chloe takes her seat with perfect composure. There’s a smile about her eyes, and her expression is dignified and noble.
Before long the hostess, the marchioness, ventures a careful greeting.
[Welcome, Lady Chloe. It’s a true honour to have you at my tea party.] (M)
[The honour is mine. Thank you for the invitation, Marchioness.] (C)
[……Although, Lady Chloe. Today you’re wearing…… a rather unusual hairpin, aren’t you.] (M)
Words chosen so they might be a question or might be a compliment. But Chloe, as though she has been waiting for exactly this, arranges her face into sorrow.
[Ah…… so it isn’t normal after all.] (C)
At that single quiet line, the air in the room changes.
Every one of them loses her words and glances instinctively at the woman beside her. The gentle chime of cups meeting saucers, so pleasant a moment ago, can’t be heard at all. The gathering is in uproar.
They all want to press her on it, and they all swallow the words, knowing it would be discourteous to do so with Chloe of all people. At length the marchioness reads the room and asks, carefully:
[Forgive me…… I ask knowing it’s impertinent, but that ornament…… is it perhaps from your fiancé?] (M)
Chloe’s fingertips go still for an instant.
In the brief pause before an answer comes, an invisible tension runs through the ladies.
The rumour that her fiancé Leonardo treats Chloe with neglect is already circulating in society. And if the shabby, worn-out trinket a noblewoman is wearing turns out to be a gift from that fiancé, then the rumour is true.
Into that atmosphere, with the faintest sadness on her face, Chloe answers.
[Yes…… It’s a gift from him.] (C)
That alone conveys everything.
This gift is proof that her fiancé holds her in contempt. It’s an object with an unmistakable intent behind it: the son of House Linden thinks little of the heiress of House Calendula.
The moment they grasp the meaning, tension shoots through the assembled ladies.
[My…… how could……] (Lady)
Someone lets the words out as though they’ve been wrung from her. But Chloe, as if she anticipated even that reaction, has already turned her gaze into the distance.
[It’s the first ornament my fiancé has ever given me…… I could hardly not wear it.] (C)
[What? The first gift……?] (Lady)
That sets the room in an uproar all over again.
[The first — but you’ve been engaged for years now, haven’t you?] (Lady)
[And in all that time, not one piece of jewellery…… For a noble, that simply isn’t possible.] (Lady)
[Then could the rumour about no gown for the soirée be true as well……?] (Lady)
Perhaps from sheer bewilderment, the ladies’ whispers are louder than they realise. Loud enough to reach Chloe’s ears.
Chloe lets the faintest smile show at their words.
What happened at that tea party swept through society in no time.
Standing before all those splendid ladies, wearing something shabby and declaring openly that it came from her fiancé, Chloe carried herself with a dignity shaded by a certain loneliness — and it invited sympathy for precisely that reason.
With a single hairpin, Chloe planted in them a certainty that Leonardo committed a discourtesy. That was her aim.
‘For a noble, rumour is what kills you, so obviously you take care not to do anything outside common sense. What an idiot he is……’
If the business with the gown had chastened him into changing his ways, Chloe would never have gone this far. Instead of mending anything, Leonardo grew bolder, and of all things sent her a street-stall hairpin, an article for commoners. Doing that without embarrassment, without a flicker of hesitation, without turning a hair — the nerve it takes is beyond her comprehension now.
Because her collaborator warned her in advance, she was able to prepare. Had she taken delivery of it unwarned, the sheer absurdity might have driven her to fly into a rage and curse him out. And then he’d have gone around saying, “I gave Chloe a present and apparently she didn’t like it — she screamed at me,” and painted her as a selfish woman. Being insulted with a thing like that and then having malicious rumours spread about her is out of the question.
She isn’t angry because the thing was cheap, or because it’s what commoners use. If it were something Leonardo had chosen for her with his heart in it, she’d have been delighted with it however cheap, however common. But there isn’t a fragment of his heart in that gift. If anything is in it, it’s the feeling that Chloe is beneath his concern.
Leonardo doesn’t send his beloved Sherry anything that cheap. According to the report, everything he gives Sherry is expensive and bought at shops the nobility patronise. There isn’t a single trace of him choosing her gifts at a commoners’ store.
To him, Chloe is a person it’s perfectly acceptable to send worn-out cheap goods. She understands that now, painfully.
And she couldn’t stay silent under an insult of that magnitude. Silence would only embolden him and make him look down on her further.
There is not one reason on earth for her to be looked down on by a man like that. And he ought to learn precisely how his conduct is regarded in society. Let him find out how foolish an act it is to make a fool of Chloe.
She was wondering how he’d respond once he learned his reputation had hit the ground — and then, rather than Leonardo, his mother arrived to apologise.
[Lady Chloe…… I offer my deepest apologies for my son’s conduct.] (D)
Leonardo’s mother, the Duchess of Linden, gaunt to the point of being pitiable, bows her head low before Chloe.
Simplyrical 