The drawing room of House Calendula carries a heavier air than usual today.
This is the day Leonardo comes to make his amends over the hairpin. Chloe has been sinking since morning at the thought of receiving a man she has no wish to see, and the shadow of it sits on her face.
There is something formidable about her this morning, and the servants feel it.
The butler shows Leonardo in.
[……Chloe. It’s been so long.] (Leonardo)
[Yes. Good day to you, Leonardo-sama.] (Chloe)
Her flatness unsettles him, but he bows politely and takes the chair facing hers. The maid at her side begins the tea at once, brisk and quiet. The pot tips; a thin amber thread runs into the cup. Steam climbs, and the smell of it fills the room.
She sets a cup before each of them, bows, and withdraws to the wall.
The silence holds. Chloe reaches for her tea and drinks, and there is not a trace of hurry in the gesture. Leonardo watches her, and something restless winds itself tighter in his chest. Nothing in her manner suggests any feeling for him at all.
At last he lets out a long breath.
[……Chloe. I am sorry about the other day.] (L)
It comes out low and scraped, forced up from somewhere. Chloe tilts her head.
[Oh? Whatever for?] (C)
She asks it without a flicker, and his irritation climbs. She could accept the apology and be done with it. Making him name the reason aloud is simply in poor taste.
[…………For giving you that piece of junk. Mother and my elder brother both took me to task for it.] (L)
[Ah. Is that so.] (C)
She says it as though the matter barely reaches her, and goes back to her tea. Anger comes up in him then. After everything he has just made himself say, she sits there like that — and he turns a sharp look on her.
[You—……! None of this would have happened if you had not worn the thing out in public! Why did you put that junk in front of other people? Have you no shame?] (L)
He is the one who gave her that thing, and he sets his own part aside without effort and blames Chloe instead.
He had chosen it on the understanding that no eyes but hers would ever fall on it. That she might wear it out into society never once crossed his mind. So long as nobody else saw it, even junk that shoddy meant his mother’s order had been carried out — that was the whole basis of the gift.
If she had read the room and put it away in a drawer somewhere, that would have been the end of it. Instead she wore it to a tea party, in front of a room full of noblewomen. When he was told, even Leonardo came near to fainting. Every guest there learned whose gift it was, and his standing in society went into the dirt.
All of it is his own doing. But Leonardo is a man who looks for somewhere else to put a fault, and so the whole of it becomes Chloe’s fault, and he loses his temper over it.
Chloe does not move an inch. If anything she looks blank, and asks him a question of her own.
[……Leonardo-sama. What is it that you are angry about?] (C)
[……What?] (L)
[Wearing a gift from one’s betrothed is the ordinary thing to do, is it not? Why should that make you so angry?] (C)
Her composure knocks the anger clean out of him.
[Er……?] (L)
[No……but, a thing as shoddy as that……] (L)
[To wear what one has been given is the least courtesy one owes the giver. That is what I believe. What is wrong with it?] (C)
[Er, no……that is……] (L)
She presses, calm, without giving an inch, and he flinches back. It begins to seem as though he is the strange one for being angry at all, and his voice thins out as he goes.
[What was it you came here to do today?] (C)
[What? What do you mean, what……] (L)
[The messenger from House Linden informed me beforehand that Leonardo-sama would be coming to offer an apology. What I have received instead is abuse, for reasons I cannot follow. I am at a loss as to what you came here for.] (C)
The thing she has not quite said — were you not supposed to be apologising? — reaches him, and his breath catches. He drops his head, colour rising, and mutters no and but into his collar.
[There is not one reason for me to be blamed here. I wore a gift from my betrothed, and I am complained at for it. Whichever way you look at that, the complaint is at the wrong door.] (C)
[B-but……my standing in society is in the dirt because of it.] (L)
[Oh? Why is that? How did that alone put your standing in the dirt?] (C)
[How—well, that is……] (L)
Chloe keeps pressing, in a tone that leaves him nowhere to stand.
‘If I do not make him say it himself, he will never understand what he actually did.’
He is still stumbling when she turns a look on him like a needle. She has never looked at him that way before, not once. His face tightens with something very close to fear, and he opens his mouth shaking.
[Ah……it is because I……gave you something appallingly shoddy……] (L)
[I see…… Then why did you give it to me, knowing it was shoddy?] (C)
[Th-that is…………] (L)
He can hardly say because my lover Sherry recommended it, so his eyes wander the room in search of a serviceable excuse. Chloe drinks her tea, unhurried, and waits.
He speaks again just before her cup is empty.
[……It is because a friend…… advised me to give something shoddy on purpose, to see how my betrothed would react……] (L)
‘Ohh. So that’s the line we’re taking.’
Everything he squeezed out of all that thinking amounts to a friend put me up to it — the blame handed to a man who does not exist. It is so ridiculous that Chloe has to hold the laugh down by force.
[Well…… is that so. And? Did you obtain a satisfactory result?] (C)
[What? Ah, yes……yes, I suppose……] (L)
[How fortunate for you. Then there is no problem at all, is there?] (C)
[Ah……yes. I suppose there is not.] (L)
She very nearly carries him off entirely. Then he comes back to himself with a jolt and starts shouting.
[Of course there is!] (L)
[My reputation is as low as it can possibly go because of this! That is an enormous problem!] (L)
[How difficult for you. Did your friend not advise you what to do if your reputation suffered?] (C)
[What……? No, that is……] (L)
[It was that friend who advised you to test me. Surely you ought to be asking him about what has come of it as well?] (C)
Leonardo mumbles again and takes his eyes off her. The lie he spread out himself no longer joins at the seams, and it shows in his face.
‘Hold on…… was he always this much of an idiot?’
At the time of the engagement he had struck her as a perfectly ordinary young man, well-mannered, carrying the usual stock of sense. Now he has sunk to a stupidity society could not match if it tried. Had he behaved like this at their first meeting there would have been no engagement at all, and her father would have refused outright. That is how bad he has become.
‘Is this the invisible hand of the otome game at work, the narrative force? Or is it Sherry? Or was this always who he was, hidden well until now? He thought nothing of sending no gown before a soirée, so the cracks have been showing all along. I just was not looking.’
Whatever the answer, the road ahead hardly bears thinking about, and Chloe lets out a long sigh.
[……Oh? Now that I think of it…… the Duchess of Linden told me that Leonardo-sama “had been cheated by a bad merchant and palmed off with shoddy goods”. But you have just told me you were not cheated at all. You gave me shoddy goods of your own will, on a friend’s advice. The two accounts differ a great deal…… which of them is correct?] (C)
He plainly had no idea his mother had told her anything of the sort.
[Wh—!?] (L)
He goes rigid in the chair. Chloe watches it and can only marvel that the two of them never thought to compare their stories.
[Why are you bringing this up now!? If Mother told you that, you could have said so at the start!] (L)
[Oh? Why?] (C)
[Why—because then I could have……] (L)
[You meant to fall in with the Duchess of Linden’s account and lie to me? I am appalled…… That you can say a thing so dishonest to my face, and openly……] (C)
The contempt is undisguised on her face, and something cold runs down his back. He has never seen her let it show like this.
[No……no, it is not a lie……] (L)
[What is not? A moment ago you said you gave me that hairpin to test me, on a friend’s advice. From the way you said it, I do not believe that part was a lie. In which case the reason the Duchess gave me is the lie. Is that not so?] (C)
There is not a degree of warmth anywhere in her voice, and his breath catches. He tries to answer and nothing comes; his throat has shut. He had been certain his betrothed was in love with him. There is no affection in her now, none at all, and he has no idea what to do with that.
[……If you have no intention of apologising sincerely, you should not have come at all. It is a waste of time. Please go home.] (C)
[Wait—Chloe……!] (L)
She says it flatly and rises, and he reaches for her before he can think.
[Do not touch me.] (C)
[…………!?] (L)
His hand is struck away, coldly. She has never refused him like that, and the shock of it freezes him where he stands.
[……Leonardo-sama, you have changed. When we were first engaged you were not a man who behaved with this kind of dishonesty. I wonder what changed you…… Or were you always this way?] (C)
She lets the shadow of Sherry fall across it, and his face stiffens exactly as she expects. So he is aware of it after all — of how much of what he now says and does has come from Sherry, without his ever noticing it happen.
[Chloe……] (L)
[……Our guest is leaving. See him out.] (C)
She walks straight out of the room and leaves him calling after her. A Calendula servant whose face does not move at all tells him, evenly, where the door is.
[This way, sir.] (Servant)
Leonardo goes out of the house as though swept, and turns back towards where Chloe went, again and again, unable to hold the worry down. Until today he had believed, without ever examining it, that she loved him and that nothing could therefore go wrong. For the first time it occurs to him that he may have been mistaken.
‘This is bad. I went too far……’
The alarm sounds in his head. Cold sweat comes up all over him, and with it a chill.
He knows quite well how he has been treating her lately — carelessly, rudely, on the strength of a confidence with nothing underneath it. For a while she refused to see him and let his letters go unanswered, and he took even that lightly: she only wanted his attention. He must never be the one to bend first. That was Sherry’s advice, and he had it written on his heart.
Now, far too late, the weight settles on his chest. Every part of how he handled her may have been wrong.
‘If the engagement were dissolved…… no. If it were broken with the fault on my side……’
The moment the thought crosses him, the panic takes hold, and he begins to shake from head to his toes.
