The heavy sound of the door closing echoes dully through the hall.
Lamplight wavers, and on the scarlet carpet the son of the house — Leonardo — stands rooted in place.
His mother, the Duchess of Linden, sits straight-backed in her chair with her fan resting on her knees, watching him with cold eyes. In the chair beside hers sits his elder brother, legs crossed.
[……What exactly did you think you were doing, Leonardo.] (D)
Her voice is low, and cold as a blade. Each time her fingertips tap lightly against the fan, the air in the room trembles.
[This is the hairpin you gave Lady Chloe, I’m told? ……Giving your fiancée a thing like this. What is wrong with you!] (D)
Her fury boiling over, she flings the object in her hand at Leonardo. It’s the hairpin he gave his fiancée, and it hits the floor with a dry clack, fragments scattering.
[Wh— ah…… th-that’s, this is……] (L)
The instant he sees it, the words this is bad flash through Leonardo’s mind, and cold sweat runs down his cheek.
‘What is happening…… Why does Mother have the hairpin I gave Chloe?’
Unable to believe what’s in front of him, Leonardo stares blankly at his own gift lying on the floor. There’s no mistaking it; it’s the one he gave her. Not a fragment of his heart in it, picked at random because it was cheap. He’d given it in the shallow hope that the blue glass might suggest he’d chosen it to match Chloe’s eyes.
[Look at it. Junk so flimsy it shatters from a single drop. How you managed to put something like this in front of Lady Chloe without any shame at all……] (D)
That he exposed Chloe to a piece of shoddy rubbish — junk is not too strong a word — so fragile it breaks this easily only stokes his mother’s anger further.
[N-No…… Mother, this is……] (L)
[This is…… what? What did you think you were doing, giving junk to the daughter of the great House Calendula?] (D)
Faced with his mother’s rage-filled expression, Leonardo loses his words.
This is bad — instinct tells him so, and cold fear runs up his spine. And then, foolishly, in trying to talk his way out, he plays the worst card available.
[You’re mistaken! I have no memory of giving Chloe anything of the kind!] (L)
[What? What did you say……?] (D)
What occurred to him on the spot was simply to deny the facts.
[That I would give my fiancée such a shoddy thing — it’s out of the question! I know nothing about that junk.] (L)
How the item came to be in his mother’s hands is a mystery, but if he admits it’s what he gave Chloe, a blazing scolding is guaranteed. So he’d only have to deny it — such was his shallow reasoning.
[Lady Chloe said that this was a gift from you, however……?] (D)
[That’s a lie. The truth is, Chloe has been piling up small lies for some time now, trying to attract my interest. This will be another attempt at getting my attention. To think she’d go so far as to prepare something like this…… it’s frightening……] (L)
Leonardo lowers his face, sorrowful, for all the world a pitiable man being cast as the villain by his own fiancée.
The duchess is regarding her son with open suspicion when his brother, silent until now, cuts in from the side.
[You’re the one lying. A moment ago, the instant you saw that hairpin, you were panicking as if to announce this is bad to the room. From that reaction alone, claiming you know nothing about that junk doesn’t hold. You’d stoop to something as cowardly as casting Lady Chloe as the villain to wriggle out of it? Has my brother sunk that far past shame……] (Brother)
His lie seen through, his brother scolding him not to behave so disgracefully, Leonardo has no words to answer with and bites his lip in frustration.
[What is it you’re trying to achieve? Giving her junk like that, then casting your fiancée as the villain…… I cannot fathom what you actually want. What do you imagine you’re doing? Do you understand this isn’t something that can be laughed off?] (B)
[I— no…… that is……] (L)
Under his brother’s sharp reproach, Leonardo’s voice catches. Asked for a reason, he can’t find any good words to give.
The junk — the dull, wretched street-stall hairpin — he gave because he simply had no money. Casting Chloe as the villain, he did because he didn’t want his mother angry with him.
But say either of those honestly and he’d be scolded hard enough to make the hair stand on end, by his brother as well as his mother.
‘What do I do…… How did it come to this…… I knew it. I should never have picked something that wretched……!’
Far too late, Leonardo deeply regrets what he did. Going to the stall exactly as Sherry told him, and choosing that hairpin.
And in that moment, the memory of the day comes back to him.
—
That day. After finishing their meal at the usual restaurant, he went to the market stalls, led by Sherry.
There he laid eyes on commoners’ accessories for the first time in his life, and their wretchedness made him stare.
——Nothing here but filthy things…… Commoners wear this?
Cloth spread on the ground, the goods strewn across it carelessly, all of it dirty in some way and dulled. To Leonardo, born and raised in a ducal house, none of it was anything he’d ever want to wear.
Surely giving a noblewoman something that amounted to junk was a bad idea…… He hesitated, and Sherry kept pressing him: [Hey, isn’t this one cute?]
——Cute? This……?
He didn’t say it aloud, but the moment he saw the necklace in Sherry’s hand, his cheek twitched. The decorative parts were chipped in places, there were strange stains on it, and it was rusted — by no stretch something you could hand to another person.
Above all, he didn’t even want to touch it, so he refused with, [No, if possible I’d prefer something with blue in it……]
[Blue? Why?] (S)
[Er…… it’s my fiancée’s eye colour.] (L)
[Oh, is that so. Hmm…… then how about around here?] (S)
She pointed at the pieces with blue glass set into them. Compared to the necklace they looked relatively clean, and Leonardo found himself thinking, inwardly, this will do. And the piece he chose was that hairpin.
[Leo, I’m so glad you found a good one!] (S)
[Ah, yes…… so am I.] (L)
The shopping done, Sherry hooked her arm through his in high spirits, and Leonardo couldn’t quite bring himself to enjoy it. Somewhere in him was the worry: is it really all right to give her this? Having only ever seen ornaments set with fine jewels, he understood perfectly well, in his head, that this hairpin didn’t qualify as a gift.
——No, wait…… If it’s this wretched, wouldn’t she simply not wear it?
The thought came to him suddenly.
He couldn’t imagine Chloe, of such high birth, wearing junk like this. And she might well refuse to accept it and send it back.
Accepted or refused, the claim that he had given her something would be satisfied. As long as Chloe never wore it, the fact that Leonardo gave her junk would never leak beyond the two of them.
In which case, wasn’t it fine? Having reasoned that far, Leonardo gave Chloe the hairpin without a moment’s hesitation.
Never imagining, not for an instant, that she would wear it to a tea party, under the eyes of a great many noble ladies——
Simplyrical 