OY 09

“‘It was beautiful, I enjoyed listening to it.’ That would have been enough. And honestly, you’re someone who used to play piano yourself, yet when she asked what piece you wanted to hear—”

Agatha’s scolding continued endlessly, but none of it truly reached Rose.

The words passed by meaninglessly without leaving any trace.

Only Sophia’s perfect performance remained in her mind like a terrible afterimage, replaying over and over again.

* * *

In the quiet study after the guests had left, Ray habitually placed a cigarette between his lips.

As he inhaled deeply from the lit cigarette, the stiffness in his body, tightened by slight irritation, finally relaxed.

Through the pale smoke, Ray quietly thought about the source of the problem.

His wife.

That crazy woman who had actually asked the daughter of the Duke of Harland why she had not become a pianist.

People said Rose did not seem very Bolton-like.

Maybe not in appearance or personality, but in the way she thought, she was definitely from Bolton.

But she could no longer remain a Boltonian now.

The reason he had practically left his wife entirely in the care of his mother and the housekeeper for nearly a month was partly because he was genuinely busy.

But another reason was because he wanted his mother to understand the responsibility she had insisted on taking.

A reminder of the price of stubbornly insisting on this daughter-in-law.

However, even the proud matriarch of the Crawford family had apparently failed to turn this woman into a proper Orthuran lady.

What a disaster.

A long stream of smoke escaped Ray’s lips like a sigh.

There would only be more occasions in the future where he would need to bring his “wife” with him.

It was not as though he could tell her to remain silent for the rest of her life.

He had already practically locked her inside the Crawford mansion.

How much more could he possibly warn her?

His mother had even stopped inviting guests to the mansion entirely.

Yet hiding her away so desperately only made it look as though they themselves admitted there was something shameful about her, so they could not keep her locked up forever either.

Besides, the problem was not something that could be solved with warnings.

Her very existence was the problem.

The Shaking Crawfords, The Shaking Conservative Party

Ray’s eyes landed on the headline of the newspaper lying on his desk, The Daily Oakley Review.

The pathetic title made him laugh without realizing it.

The article, clearly influenced by Archibald Avery, was utterly ridiculous.

Perhaps Avery thought he was attacking him with such an article, but saying that the Conservative Party shook whenever Crawford shook only made it sound as though Ray Crawford himself was the center of the party.

The method was already cheap enough, but Avery had even aimed it poorly.

Whenever Avery revealed this kind of stupidity, it always destroyed the tiny bit of consideration Ray occasionally had about taking him seriously as an opponent.

Ray knew men like Archibald Avery well.

And because he understood them well, he deeply despised them.

The kind of people who relied on low-level tricks because they did not know how to win properly.

Idiots who did not understand that if you lacked the ability to compete properly, the dignified thing to do was simply accept defeat.

To Ray, the method of victory mattered just as much as victory itself.

That was why he hated the way Avery had chosen to attack him.

“Well now… this puts me in quite a difficult position too. I couldn’t let this sort of news reach another newspaper company, so I bought the story myself first.”

Ray could vividly picture Avery’s fake, probing expression as he pretended innocence despite setting the entire situation up himself.

“But is it really true? The former Duke Crawford… My goodness, it’s difficult even to say aloud.”

Avery had blackmailed him using his father’s mental illness.

The fact that Ray’s father, celebrated as a war hero, had actually died while suffering from mental illness.

Using the threat of exposing that story widely in newspapers, Avery had pushed the marriage proposal aimed at himself onto Ray instead.

Avery was the Minister of Internal Affairs and a famous Conservative politician, but he was older and already had children.

Elliot Davis had probably thought that flaw balanced out, to some degree, the fatal flaw that he and his daughter were from Bolton.

Perhaps Elliot still did not understand why Avery had rejected the proposal only to place an even better target—Ray Crawford—onto the table.

Still, the wealthy merchant had not missed the good fortune that fell into his hands.

Avery had always feared that Ray would grow even more powerful through marriage into a great family, so there could hardly have been a better way to restrain him.

Ray believed it would have been better if the truth about his father’s illness had simply been published.

Even now, he had not changed his mind.

It would have become gossip for people to discuss over drinks, certainly, but it would not have truly damaged him politically.

His mother, however, thought differently.

Agatha had refused even to eat while fiercely opposing any revelation of her husband’s illness.

So fiercely that she was willing to accept a Boltonian daughter-in-law to prevent it.

And this was the result.

“Bolton has no wheat, no oats, barely any food at all.”

The memory of Rose calmly telling such an obvious lie, boldly mocking even the daughter of the Duke of Harland under the disguise of a joke, made Ray let out another dry laugh.

In the deep silence, the cigarette slowly burned shorter and shorter.

Finally crushing it into the ashtray, Ray slowly rose from his desk and left the study.

Even while walking toward the bedroom, he still had not properly decided what exactly he intended to do or say to Rose.

He knew some sort of action was necessary, but he could not figure out what form that action should take.

He did not think he had ever felt this uncertain, even in the middle of a battlefield.

He was curious too.

What exactly went on inside that absent-minded head of hers all the time?

The woman who constantly shocked others with strange remarks and left people unable to sleep peacefully afterward—did she sleep perfectly well herself?

By the time he entered the hallway connecting his bedroom to Rose’s, most of his anger and irritation had already faded away.

Only the exhaustion caused by an unwelcome existence remained behind, like ash gathering inside an ashtray.

It was the first time he had walked this hallway since the wedding.

His slow, reluctant steps finally stopped just before reaching the Duchess’s bedroom.

A voice had slipped between his footsteps.

Singing.

Ray leaned against the wall of the corridor and quietly looked toward the source of the sound.

Toward his wife, who had intruded upon his perfect life just as unpleasantly as that song now intruded upon the silence.

Instead of lying in bed, Rose was stretched lazily across a long sofa, humming softly in Antakan.

Her pale golden hair spilled messily over the armrest.

The lyrics sounded childish, almost like a nursery rhyme. She quietly hummed a song that repeated the word “home” far too often while her fingers tapped rhythmically against her thigh.

When speaking Orthuran, her voice always sounded awkward somehow.

But when she spoke Antakan—or rather, when she sang—it sounded natural, as though her voice had finally found its proper place.

Was this what her voice really sounded like?

Suddenly, she felt unfamiliar to him.

“Come see the roses blooming in May.”

The lyrics should have sounded sweet, but instead they felt endlessly bitter.

The already small woman looked as though she might disappear at any moment.

While wondering whether this strange feeling came from Rose’s pitiful manner or from the unfamiliar sound of her voice, Ray suddenly remembered the way she had stared blankly at Sophia Greenwood playing piano.

Even soldiers who had lost their countries had not worn expressions like that.

Over nothing more than a piano.

Sometimes Rose looked toward the piano in the drawing room.

The piano his father used to play.

The piano his mother hated so much because of it.

Even though she stared at it like that, she never actually played it.

Still, sometimes she moved her fingers silently in the air alone.

Tapping tables.

Tapping the bottom of glasses.

Her fingers were rarely ever still.

That behavior, that attitude—it exhausted him.

Her sentimental obsession with meaningless things only made her flaws stand out more clearly.

That kind of personality always weakened people.

After endlessly thinking about why he could not bring himself to like the woman who had become his wife, Ray finally rubbed his face roughly with one hand.

In truth, he already knew where all this discomfort and reluctance came from.

This marriage existed because of his dead father.

And the woman he had been forced to marry reminded him of that father.

It felt like one of life’s cruel jokes.

“Sometimes… it feels like your mother dislikes me.”

His father’s voice drifted faintly from unpleasant memories.

Occasionally, before his death, his father would briefly regain his sanity.

At the time, his father had smiled weakly.

The expression Ray himself had shown back then was probably…

“You’re thinking, ‘Why does that even matter?’ Aren’t you? Is there really not a single part of you that resembles me?”

Probably an expression of contempt.

At least, judging by the way his father had laughed awkwardly afterward.

Even after his father died like that, Ray’s opinion had never changed.

His mother might have found his father pathetic, but she had not hated him.

And even if she had hated him, it had caused no real problem in their marriage.

That was what marriage was supposed to be.

Thinking about the devotion his mother showed during his father’s final days—when he no longer recognized even his own wife and children and raged like a madman—she deserved to be praised as the ideal example of a wife.