Chapter 36
Kaella was what they called an easy woman. To Pheon, she was easier than anyone else, which also made it easy for him to turn away from her.
She never hid her thoughts from him, and in fact, she couldn’t hide them at all. Sometimes, she was so frank that it was worrisome. How absurd it was to worry about her honesty.
In the land that Pheon ruled, honest people should have been the freest of all, but he was a cowardly, foolish, and incompetent ruler, so that wasn’t the case. And so, the honest Kaella was the first to suffocate to death.
“Come on.”
Kaella, who couldn’t hide her emotions, took his hand with such joy whenever he offered it. To Pheon, that was a perfectly natural thing.
If he held out his hand, she would take it. Just as the emperor was a madman, Pheon a filthy mongrel, the sun set in the west, and Lüsenford’s winters were extraordinarily long—it was simply natural.
But Kaella—Kaella, who was walking so naturally toward the grand duchess’s bedroom where she had never once slept, Kaella, who was still the daughter of the Ostein Duke because her father had not been murdered—did not take the hand he offered right away.
She clearly hesitated. For Kaella de Shasser, there should have been no hesitation at all when taking his hand; she was supposed to grasp it immediately, yet she hesitated.
“Duchess?”
Terror was grinning somewhere, baring its teeth. They called her the precious daughter of the Ostein Duke, but in truth, knowing she had always held the emotional high ground, he had piled up his arrogance layer by layer.
There was no longer any assurance, even if he searched with eyes wide open, that she would always take the hand he offered right away and obey his words unconditionally.
So what was he supposed to do?
Instead of any answer coming into view, an endless, vague anxiety arose, along with the utterly irrational but utterly certain thought that he might lose his reason right then and there.
“Ah, I must have been mistaken.”
And it was Kaella’s voice that extinguished all those thoughts. She murmured softly and placed her hand atop his. Pheon hurriedly clasped it in return, forcibly suppressing the trembling in his own hand. She had definitely hesitated.
It couldn’t have been, yet she definitely hesitated.
“Now that I’ve recovered this much, I should go to that room, and Your Highness should use the bedroom.”
Kaella, unconsciously revealing her familiarity with the layout of Lüsenford Castle, changed the subject.
She had forgotten about it for a moment and only now remembered again, but the place where Kaella was staying was Pheon’s bedroom. He had no idea why he had placed her in his bedroom, but now it was time to return things to their proper places according to decorum.
She needed to appear flawless and impeccable in fulfilling her role as grand duchess, so that even in death, all the blame would fall on Lüsenford and not Ostein. Kaella was laying the groundwork step by step.
Not dying was a good thing, of course. Who would want to die? But she was someone who had already been through it once, so rather than seeking a quiet way out of Lüsenford, she chose the path that would reliably increase her chances of certain death.
“I’ll return today.”
“No.”
Pheon, who had grabbed her hand tightly and was marching straight to his bedroom regardless, cut her words off firmly.
“Don’t. Your body hasn’t fully recovered yet.”
“But…”
“A patient shouldn’t move rashly. What if you catch some new illness?”
“I just need to be careful with food.”
“Not just food—you have to watch out for the cold weather and the changing climate too. You need to eat even better.”
The corpse of Kaella—reduced to nothing but skin and bones, her eyes bulging wide in death—still appeared whenever he closed his eyes. Even if all the truths he currently believed were overturned and Pheon’s world completely collapsed, Kaella had to eat well and stay healthy for the rest of her life.
“Besides, as I said earlier, it’s absolutely unacceptable for Your Grace to stay in a room arbitrarily decorated by a criminal.”
Was that really against decorum? Thinking in the ever-practical Lüsenford way, Kaella gave the right answer.
“It doesn’t matter. I’m fine. Spending the castle’s funds again to change it would be a waste.”
If they had money to spare like that, they should invest more in the military. The grand duchess couldn’t waste a single penny.
Of course, all the finances were tightly controlled by the head maid and the steward, so she didn’t have any money to spend anyway. They begrudged every coin going to the grand duchess, who hadn’t brought any money with her. Lüsenford had never had proper order or discipline from the very beginning.
“Duchess.”
But as he entered the bedroom and turned to look at her, Pheon’s expression had hardened.
“That’s not a waste.”
Ah, so that was it. In cases like this, erasing the traces of a criminal wasn’t considered waste. To use the castle’s finances as the grand duchess in Lüsenford, she had to build up justification to this extent.
Kaella realized this anew, accepted it, and felt a familiar weariness. Even as the grand duchess, she had to risk her life just to renovate the shabby interior decorations of the castle—Lüsenford truly was an extraordinary place.
At the same time, how foolish she had been to boldly claim that the castle needed to be expanded.
“Even if Your Grace wants to gild the walls, that wouldn’t be a waste.”
Pheon seated her in the comfortable chair prepared in front of the fireplace. Rather than sitting beside her, he bent down and knelt before her. Suddenly, Kaella found herself in the position of looking down at the large man.
Lowering his head to tally up his sins and his duties from the hem of Kaella’s velvet dress, or perhaps from the carpet, or even from the abyss of hell far below, Pheon finally lifted his head.
“Even to my untrained eye, the grand duchess’s bedroom was shameful for Your Grace to use.”
Yes. That had been wrong from the start. The authority of the long-absent grand duchess had been diminished the moment she set foot in a bedroom arbitrarily decorated by the head maid or the like. It was right to tear it all out exactly as Kaella wanted.
“I have even worse taste than Your Highness.”
There was not a shred of confidence in her small voice or her hunched shoulders. She seemed like someone who had resolved not to do anything at all.
For the daughter of the Ostein Duke, who had been surrounded by all sorts of rare and expensive items, to claim she had no taste was absurd. Was it because she had been so shocked at the first banquet? Or had she always been like that? Either way, it was Pheon’s sin.
“Then us tasteless folks can start by picking out curtains. Not just your room, but this one needs to be completely redone too.”
He tapped the back of Kaella’s hand, which lay neatly on his knee. The hands, overlapped together, slowly clenched.
*
The grand duchess had been unable to properly touch Lüsenford Castle’s finances due to the duke’s calculated neglect and the glares of the steward, head maid, and nobles.
And yet, the foolish grand duchess had dared to insist that the castle’s poor facilities needed to be improved and newly expanded.
If one lacked the ability, one shouldn’t even speak up.
For an arrogant outsider to disparage the great Lüsenford as deficient while scheming to spend money—and on top of that, to meddle with the castle’s designs, which were vital for secrecy? It was more than enough to make the proud Lüsenford nobles rise up in revolt.
Yes. Recalling how she had accelerated her own death, Kaella bowed her head. But even looking down, there were samples of tiny fabric clippings pieced together and catalogs claiming to be the ‘latest’ curtains everywhere.
‘Why did it end up like this?’
Kaella had clearly said she had no taste, so how on earth had the duke given the order? Even the steward knew that the curtains in the grand duchess’s bedroom and the duke’s bedroom were to be changed.
“Honestly, that horrific, sanity-shattering pink velvet curtain is just too much. Pink, of all things! Bright pink!”
Denise shook her head vigorously. To Kaella, pink automatically brought to mind Beatrice’s eyes.
Pheon’s were a rare purple, and the two matched so well, while hers were a plain blue. Had the head maid deliberately hung those bright pink velvet curtains to remind her of her place?
That curtain was unnecessarily heavy and laden with far too much tulle, and above all, it was perfect for creating a grotesque atmosphere alongside the dark green—and more yellowish than golden—walls.
In a word, it had perfectly contributed to making the room tacky and horrific. Kaella had never once loved that room.
“We should just rip it all out and throw it away. Curtains that horrific shouldn’t exist in this world.”
Denise trembled with rage at the thought of such a color in the grand duchess’s bedroom.
“It might be all right if the walls were jet black or pure white.”
At Cecil’s words, Denise replied in a dissatisfied tone.
“’At best,’ if we stripped off every bit of tulle and decoration. But it’s still too tacky a color. Honestly… since it’s just Your Grace and us here, I’ll say it—this room’s curtains aren’t much better. They’re that dull brown.”
“You’re right, Your Grace. And they’re so old and worn out. Are Lüsenford’s finances really that bad?”
For their precious young lady to marry into a place of poverty—it was utterly unthinkable. Worry filled Cecil’s eyes.
“It’s not so much that—His Grace the Grand Duke has never had any interest in such things to begin with.”
He seemed to choose his clothes well enough, but he was the type to think that as long as his living quarters had the bare minimum functionality, that was sufficient.
“Even so, this is too… too…”
Denise trailed off, unable to continue, and Kaella finished for her.
“Tacky taste.”
“Yes!”
Kaella knew the maids were deeply worried about it, but she said nothing more. It would only lead to lamentation to point out that mere local nobles had arbitrarily decided what was befitting for the grand ducal household.
These tasteless people, who had subconsciously dared to think of Pheon as a son, treated the authority of the grand duke’s residence as if it were no different from their own homes.
‘If Her Majesty the Empress had visited even once, none of this would have happened.’
But the emperor had confined the empress to the imperial palace, preventing her from going anywhere, so that was impossible.
The people of Lüsenford didn’t know Kline well, which only made them idolize it more—and because they didn’t know, they treated the grand duke according to their own level. What had started as treating him more preciously, with unwavering loyalty, had somewhere along the way become ‘this is good enough.’
And so, Kaella—who had felt the emperor’s majesty and the empire’s prosperity with her whole body in Ostein and Kline—felt not just bewilderment, but humiliation.
But what could she do? There was nothing she could do. And so the grand duke’s authority had sunk to that level, leaving the grand duchess’s authority nonexistent and buried as is.
‘…I should stop thinking.’
Kaella hurriedly rifled through the scattered curtain fabric samples.
Whether she had gone mad, or she had died and was dreaming this, or whether it was reality—the sins the people of Lüsenford had committed weren’t theirs now. Or rather, they ‘hadn’t’ committed them yet. She couldn’t hold them accountable for sins they hadn’t even committed.
But the head maid and the nobles had sinned from the very first day she arrived in Lüsenford.
‘My thoughts…’
They wouldn’t stop.
“This one.”
Then she would work. The results might not be great, but Kaella threw herself into it anyway.
“Deep blue velvet. We can rip out those old curtains and use them as insulating covers in the stables or blankets for the children in the castle.”
It was common sense to change the castle curtains with the seasons, but since Lüsenford’s winters were disproportionately long, they needed winter curtains first.
Blue for winter—what about spring? Kaella’s gaze landed on a purple fabric that resembled the color of Pheon’s eyes. Was it too heavy? She had no idea.
“Your Grace, what about Your Highness’s bedroom then?”
Denise’s eyes gleamed with a hint of madness as she inwardly swore to rip down that garish bright pink velvet and all its tulle.
“…Well? Wouldn’t this dark green be nice?”
“It’s too plain! It’s the new bride’s room!”
“Winter can’t be helped.”
“Then at least light green for spring. Please, Your Grace.”
Kaella only smiled, unable to give an easy answer.
Bright light green, sedate olive, and dignified emerald mingled into dark green—they were all beautiful. Simply tying them back with golden curtain ties or letting them drape down would completely transform the dreary bedroom atmosphere.
But was that really all right? How could they change the curtains multiple times like that? Couldn’t they just change the grand duke’s bedroom curtains? The grand duchess’s bedroom curtains were new; changing them would invite accusations of waste.
Her bedroom was just a temporary stop before she left anyway. She had already grown somewhat accustomed to the hideous interior decorations.
No—it was the hideous, painful life itself that she had grown accustomed to. So, couldn’t she just avoid doing anything that could be criticized? What on earth could she do properly?
In the end, Kaella changed only the curtains in the grand duke’s bedroom. Removing the faded, dull brown curtains and replacing them with stately, antique deep blue made the room feel so much more alive.
Kaella had intended to withdraw from the grand duke’s bedroom now. Lingering longer would be rude, and she feared being pointed at for changing the curtains in the room where the grand duchess stayed. Having to fear even that was the Lüsenford she had known.
“Much better. As expected, Your Grace’s taste is exceptional. What about your bedroom?”
Pheon turned to Kaella after looking around his own room. She couldn’t help but be conscious of the steward standing behind her.
“Wouldn’t it make more sense to change Your Highness’s bedroom first, before mine?”
There was no such thing as a grand duchess in Lüsenford. Kaella always had to put others ahead of herself.
And in the end, she had been branded the emperor’s spy anyway. Habits were perhaps even more terrifying than death. Pheon glanced once at the deftly responding Kaella and the steward behind her, then turned on his heel and left his bedroom.
‘Eh?’
Pheon’s expression seemed to have hardened. Having caught even that fleeting change in his face, Kaella hurriedly gathered her dress skirts and followed after him.
Pheon headed to the grand duchess’s bedroom at a steady pace—not too fast, not too slow—and the moment he saw the unchanged bright pink velvet curtains, he yanked them down.
“Your Highness?”
Unable to withstand the power of a strong man, the heavy curtains came crashing down entirely. The sharp ripping sounds rang out clearly. The next set of curtains met the same merciless fate.
“Your Highness!”
The steward’s horrified shout was buried under the falling curtains. Tearing down such thick, heavy velvet with one hand was impossible even for the strongest of men, yet the grand duke accomplished it with calm composure and turned to Kaella.
“I figured it would be hard for you to remove them, so I just did it myself. It’s cold now, isn’t it?”
In Lüsenford, curtains to block out the chill were essential. A biting cold seeped into the room immediately from the now-bare windows.
“Stay in my bedroom until the new curtains are hung.”
With a thoroughly refreshed expression, Pheon turned to Kaella and the steward as he spoke.
