Previously
Cordelia reflects on her mother's mysterious suicide in the lake where she had first fallen in love. Meanwhile, her deadbeat father, Harper Marguerite, celebrates a gambling win at a tavern, plotting to exploit Cordelia's bride price to clear his debts.
Had there not been urgent business demanding his attention on a merchant ship across the sea, a man of his temperament would undoubtedly have made the trip.
And then he would have said something like this:
“Vincent. Are you a useless freeloader?”
“…”
“Eek! W-Wait! When my daughter gets married soon, a massive bride price is coming in! I’ll hand it all over to you!”
Perhaps seeing Vincent’s expression darken, Harper shrieked in absolute terror. As if waiting for the mention of a bride price, the subordinate beside Vincent leaned in to whisper.
“Word is Mr. Harper’s daughter has come of age. She has a longstanding betrothal to the heir of the Devillers family.”
“Devillers? Ah, didn't that family deal in tea leaves? I heard they made quite a fortune off the black tea trade.”
The Jeneca colony was a peninsula bridging Rin of the East Continent and the Empire. Starting as a small island annexed during the founding era, the entire peninsula had been integrated into imperial territory through the Rin War fifty years ago and aggressive colonial expansion. Following the establishment of the New Imperial Company, global commerce had boomed across the world, and the Devillers family had ridden that tide to amass their wealth.
To think such an affluent family would soon become in-laws with the wretched man standing before them. The situation only made sense once it was explained as an arrangement made before the children were even born. Conservative noble bloodlines with deep roots still placed immense weight on family promises, after all.
Yet was such a promise truly worth paying off a mountain of debt? Things a family might have shouldered out of sheer honor twenty years ago were now governed strictly by cold interest and calculation; the world had changed that much.
Even without knowing the details, the Devillers family was bound to find this deeply vexing. Accepting a young lady from a ruined, insignificant family as a bride was bad enough, but having such low-class relatives attached to her was worse.
Unless the Marguerite family—and that young lady—possessed some other value.
Calculations flickered swiftly through Vincent’s mind. Harper, interpreting that vacant gaze in his own way, hurried to babble with a servile expression.
“My girl took after her late mother and has a pretty face. That’s why her fiancé is utterly head over heels for her! Just one month, please give me just one month…”
“An engagement can be broken at any moment, can it not? What if—”
“Then take the wench instead! She’s good for nothing anyway.”
The grin plastered across his face made him look like a sewer rat. The gentlemen of the Raven looked at one another and fell silent.
In truth, such sights were common enough in this line of work. Whatever money and gambling were, they turned ordinary, decent people into entirely different creatures in the blink of an eye, driving them to pawn their houses, their honor, and their wives and children. Familiar as it was, Vincent could not suppress his disgust; he exhaled a bitter trail of smoke and ground out his cigarette against the brick wall. He had no desire to smell burning flesh just yet.
“Very well.”
The demon known as money grinned.
“Congratulations on your daughter’s upcoming marriage. We will settle the account on that day.”
***
Cordelia opened her eyes, dazed. The day had finally arrived to meet the Devillers couple, people she had once affectionately called her uncle and aunt. She had expected to lie awake all night, but her exhausted body had drifted off without resistance. In return, dreams had plagued her straight through, leaving her far from rested.
With a soft sigh, she hugged Jeje and rose from her bed. Even with the long-sought escape right before her eyes, she felt neither excitement nor joy.
Perhaps it would have been different if Jonathan had come to fetch her himself.
“Not that I’m upset with him, of course.”
Cordelia murmured as if making an excuse, staring into Jeje’s button eyes.
She toyed with the locket hanging around her neck, which held her fiancé’s portrait, and cracked it open. Looking upon his gentle smile gave her a faint surge of strength.
In her childhood, Jonathan had been a companion with whom she shared a lifelong vow; as she grew, he had become her sole comfort and hope, and now he was her only exit, her lighthouse. Like a shipwreck adrift upon dark waters, she felt that so long as she followed that beam of light, she could pull herself from this mire.
“Cordelia! Are you still sleeping like a pig? Get down here right this instant!”
Startled by her aunt’s voice blaring like an alarm, Cordelia sprang up so fast she stepped on her skirt and nearly sprawled across the floor. Rubbing her stinging knees, she hurried down to the drawing room.
There, slouched against a table littered with cold food and half-emptied liquor bottles from a heavy morning of drinking, her aunt sat puffing relentlessly on a cigarette.
Living in constant dread of giving her family an excuse to fault her, Cordelia had grown adept at pretending to be an inanimate object, but she particularly loathed secondhand smoke. Perhaps it was because she had inherited her mother’s delicate respiratory system. As she held her breath only to burst into violent, dry coughs, her aunt blew smoke straight into her pale face and cackled.
“Useless little wretch.”
It was just ordinary routine, but even after hearing them countless times, certain words still cut to the bone and sent a pang through her chest. It was like having pride or old wounds she didn't even know she possessed prodded with casual malice.
Secretly pressing a hand to her aching chest, Cordelia tried her best to reply with mild meekness.
“You called for me?”
“Yes. You have to go see your future in-laws, so get dressed.”
Inside the presentable garment bag her aunt nudged with her foot lay a dress her mother had worn as a maiden. It was the very dress Cordelia had searched for so desperately, the one her father had pawned off for liquor money.
As Cordelia stood struck dumb, her aunt sneered.
“Your father brought that home last night. Still acts like a father once in a while, it seems.”
Cordelia swiftly scooped it up, clutching it tight against her chest as if she might swallow it whole, and bowed her head repeatedly.
“Th-Thank you, Aunt.”
“Put it on and earn your keep. Don’t get on their bad side, act modest, and do what you do best.”
“What I… do best?”
“Yes. Feigning innocence like a meek little lamb, then putting on unbearable airs of haughtiness all of a sudden. Uneducated as you are, you take after your mother in all the worst ways.”
Even mortal enemies refrained from defaming the dead, but this household never missed a chance to revile Cordelia’s deceased family. Only after grinding her teeth until the insides of her cheeks were raw did her aunt finally bring the tirade to an end.
“You make sure you do this right and marry into that family. Understood? If you get kicked out, I’ll sell you off to the highest bidder anywhere I please.”
Cordelia simply nodded in silence. Threats like this were second nature to her aunt.
When she slipped into her mother’s dress as told, an overwhelming emotion brought her to the verge of tears at how perfectly it fit, as if tailored just for her. Had her mother looked like this at her age? Given the way her father often scowled and spat on the floor whenever he walked past her, Cordelia certainly resembled her mother. Tracing her mother’s features as they grew increasingly faint in her memory, Cordelia shook her head.
Her mother was always on her mind, yet paradoxically, she constantly strove not to dwell on her. Tracing those memories back too far always ran the risk of dredging up that final, dreadful scene.
As Cordelia sank into sullen gloom, her aunt, who had been chattering away to please herself, spoke in a haughty voice.
“Let’s go. Time to inspect the house you’ll be living in.”
“Pardon?”
Cordelia was thrown into genuine panic, her words faltering unbidden.
“Y-You’re coming with me, Aunt?”
“What? Did you plan on traipsing off to your fiancé’s estate alone, like an unchaperoned spinster?”
Cordelia froze in stunned disbelief at the screech, which carried all the outrage of someone hearing the most uncivilized notion on earth. A chaperone’s duty was for a noble lady to watch over young maidens during their debut in high society, guiding their conduct and keeping them respectable.
Her aunt, acting as her chaperone? It would have been far less absurd to have Graybill, the aging horse in the stables, serve as her chaperone instead. Cordelia fought to conceal her reluctant dismay.
“Grown or not, how could I possibly leave you on your own when you’ve barely set foot in society? Who knows what flaws they’ll find to hold against you? I hear their family’s been getting more arrogant by the day, practically strutting about with their noses in the air. Just how much money have they made to act so high and mighty? I’ll have to see for myself. Besides, we need to discuss the wedding expenses and your dowry. These matters must be settled between the elders of the families, after all.”
Seeing the naked vanity and greed gleaming in her aunt’s eyes as she spoke as though discharging a sacred duty, Cordelia wanted nothing more than to bite her tongue off. Unaware that her silent niece’s face was turning paler by the second, her aunt continued to prattle on.