Previously
Dolores attends Madame Rouare's imperial banquet, deftly brushing off the mistress's condescending remarks and publicly putting her greedy cousin Angelica in her place. Slipping away to find Resurreccion, Dolores searches the Emerald Room and inadvertently steps onto the balcony adjacent to the Ruby Room.
Dolores was forced to keep listening to the sounds of two people lost in an adulterous kiss.
Eventually Adrian parted his lips first and murmured some senseless nonsense.
“Ah, so cute, and you speak so sweetly….”
“Mm, isn't Sister well-spoken too?”
“Well-spoken? How? She merely acts according to etiquette. Like a doll, completely boring.”
“Is that why you called her Dolly…?”
“Haha, you caught me.”
Those abhorrent words echoed against Dolores's eardrums.
The hand that had muffled her mouth curled into a fist, trembling violently.
Boring like a doll?
Whenever she asked about politics, who was it that told her, ‘Dolly doesn't need to think about anything’?
‘Who was the one who muzzled my mouth!’
Answer me—who made it impossible to breathe for over twenty years?!
Who pointed a finger at me in front of everyone and called me ‘defective goods’…!
Then came the sound of Angelica sniffling with sickening pretense once more.
“Sniff. But… Your Highness will soon marry Sister.”
“Ah, my angel. Don't cry.”
“I… ought to let Your Highness go now, but….”
“Don't say such things!”
A flurry of movement rustled as the two embraced tightly.
Then came a voice sweet enough to drip honey.
“The only one I love is you, Angelica.”
And the lovers' sounds as they flailed in their star-crossed romance went on for a very long time.
Resurreccion went beyond despising banquets—he loathed them.
It was the result of drawing so many stares since childhood due to an appearance unlike ordinary imperials.
Even now, when those gazes held sticky desire, he found them no more welcoming.
“Your Highness, Your Highness!”
“Haaah….”
And he deeply regretted bringing his adjutant, Viscount Edwin Shelley, to this affair.
A fellow who chattered like a skylark should have been locked in a cage and left behind.
Edwin Shelley asked, dark eyes shining.
“Are you not going to see Lady Rochester?”
“Just how many times are you going to ask that?”
“This makes fifteen. So, are you not going to see her?”
Even after hearing ‘Howard Street’?
Edwin's eyes asked the question for him.
Howard Street, visible even from the imperial palace's balcony, was crowded with factories and merchant guilds.
And the Grand Duke secretly operated a venture at number 483 without informing the imperial family.
It was the Sub Rosa merchant guild, handling all manner of noble corruption and illicit goods.
True to the meaning of its name, it kept secrets utterly airtight, making it known through whispers to those with dirty laundry to air.
…Of course, it charged exorbitant prices.
Resurreccion glared at Edwin, looking thoroughly displeased.
Yet it was the expression of someone who hated that his adjutant was right.
“Tsk.”
“Oh! You're going to see her?”
“Yes. I'll meet her and wring out where she heard such nonsense. Dig through a few lounges and she'll turn up, I suppose.”
“Please just don't kick down any doors…. By the way, Lady Rochester! I'd love to see her in person too!”
Edwin's eyes sparkled like stars with admiration.
Though both were nobles, a marquisate swam in entirely different waters from the Shelley viscounty. He was in no position to view her up close on a whim.
Resurreccion, however, was simply appalled by his adjutant's fawning.
“You can just look at the newspaper illustrations. She's in the society column all the time.”
“How can a drawing compare to the real thing?! Ha, this is why you have no marriage prospects.”
Edwin grumbled, looking up at the unbothered Resurreccion.
If Adrian was dazzling, golden sunlight, Resurreccion was a man like a dark midnight forest.
The kind of man one could not help but stare at, fully aware of the unknown danger lurking within.
Yet Resurreccion had never once shown interest in women.
He was abstinent to the point that while on the battlefield, he never indulged in the diversions soldiers took part in.
“I have zero interest in marriage talks. Am I out of my mind?”
“You really don't feel drawn to any of those ladies? Not a single one?”
When they're so lovely, really? Is your eyesight failing?
Resurreccion ground his teeth at Edwin, who pelted him with such insolent silent questions.
All around them, women dressed like splendid birds were everywhere.
They curled the corners of their eyes artificially and burst into delicate, trilling laughter.
Watching women who had to act that way merely to survive made his stomach turn.
‘And among them, Dolores Rochester makes me sickest of all.’
Whenever that crafted smile crossed her face, a bitter taste filled his mouth, stoking irritation.
Every single time, ever since they were first introduced in childhood.
Resurreccion shook off the noisy Edwin and set out. The place Dolores Rochester would be was obvious.
‘She'll be in one of the lounges. If not there—’
He paused.
‘Did Adrian even show his face at the banquet today?’
No, Adrian had slipped away at some point as well.
Resurreccion ruffled his hair in exasperation.
“Ha. That idiot.”
Surely he wasn't in the Ruby Room when his fiancée was gearing up to torpedo their engagement?
‘When he'll be needing the support of Marquis Rochester. Brilliant work.’
He genuinely did not care to know.
What business was it of his which woman his elder brother was playing out a tragic romance with today?
Yet judging by the voices leaking through the crack of the Ruby Room door, there was no mistaking it.
“Haaah….”
No wonder Dolores Rochester had snapped and begged a grand duke to marry her.
Just then, he caught sight of the Emerald Room door standing slightly ajar.
“…?”
The Grand Duke's expression slowly warped. The sounds coming from the Ruby Room made him even more suspicious.
“Who is in there?”
Anger sharpened his voice.
Who dared? Sneaking into the room Mother had so favored—
“Ugh?”
The moment he pushed open the door, the chill April night wind rushed in.
The room's terrace doors stood wide open.
And atop that white terrace railing stood a woman.
“…Lady Rochester?”
“Grand Duke.”
Despite Resurreccion's uncharacteristic fluster, Dolores looked down at him with utter composure.
Each time the wind blew, pale bare feet peeked out from the hem of her gown atop the railing.
The moment he saw it, Resurreccion rushed toward her in sheer horror.
“Dolores. What are you doing? Get down this inst—!”
“I will say it once more, Grand Duke.”
Dolores gently shifted her heels beyond the outer edge of the railing.
Only her years of dance training kept her balance; the slightest misstep would send her plunging straight into the gardens below.
“Marry me.”
“Forget it, just get down right now!”
“I will not step down until you give me your answer.”
“Have you truly lost your m—!”
A crash shook the air.
A terrifying explosion detonated in the distance at that very moment.
“What?!”
Flames surged into the sky over the city visible beyond the palace gardens.
Far off though it was, he could tell at once where those rolling flames were rising.
Howard Street.
The very place Dolores had slipped him a hint about.
Dolores lightly raised both arms.
The orange flames beginning to spread through the streets burned bright as a river in hell.
Her long chestnut hair rippled against the night sky, making her look like someone risen from the dead.
“There is a large flour mill on Howard Street. And flour explodes quite easily with the smallest spark.”
“Dolores…!”
“So, did you protect number 483 properly, as I advised? It must have been right beside that mill.”
Resurreccion gritted his teeth at Dolores's question.
All the confidential materials of the Sub Rosa merchant guild were kept in the building at number 483.
Even while scorning Dolores, he had felt uneasy enough to move recent confidential documents and funds to another building, but….
‘She knew there would be a fire?’
Did she truly know what he was doing as well?
Was this a joke, or a dream?
Yet that face, which had always worn a doll-like smile, was obscured by the backlighting, impossible to read.
“…Resurreccion.”
Dolores had not envisioned speaking like this either.
No matter how vexing Resurreccion was, she had imagined striking a dignified bargain.
For she had vowed that in this life, she would not struggle so pathetically.
Because this time, she wanted to live as an elegant Dolores, not an empress driven mad by a husband and concubines.
“Please help me, Resurreccion.”
Yet in this single moment, she decided to make one final desperate gamble in this life.
“Then, just this once, I will stake everything to help you…!”
“Dolores!”
“Far sooner than you ever dreamed!”
In her first life, this man had undeniably desired the Aleister Fief.
Retracing his actions left no doubt.
He had merely taken his time handling it, for reasons unknown.
Resurreccion looked up at Dolores with an appalled expression.
He had never known Dolores Rochester, stripped of her smile, could be such an overwhelming presence.
Yet he wouldn't be himself if he simply yielded.
“And if I still refuse?”
The chilling April night wind blew again. Acrid ash from afar left a stinging taste in the mouth.
And Dolores replied slowly.
“Then I suppose I must die.”
Without hesitation, she shifted one foot entirely past the railing.