Better Suited to Mourning

"If you have no intention of holding lessons, then we may as well stop. I have packing to do as it is."

"Teacher!"

Noah shouted, then flinched, apparently startled by his own voice. Kasika looked back at him with a perfectly composed face. Under that cold gaze, Noah could neither advance nor retreat; he bowed his head low for a long moment before he managed to speak.

"Let's. Let's have lessons…."

And so Noah Lambroise wept ceaselessly from both eyes for the entirety of every lesson. Seeing the perpetually smiling boy like this was unsettling, to say the least.

Does he genuinely have some sort of attachment issue?

Or, heaven forbid, could it be that he liked her? The moment that thought crossed her mind, Kasika laughed at her own absurd imagination.

There was little to prepare for the journey to the Lamplis Marquisate — no dowry to speak of, nothing of the kind. It was simply a matter of gathering the clothes on her back, and that was the end of it. She had half expected the House of Elperts to give her something at least, but she was cast out without so much as a ring or a brooch to her name.

Reaching Lamplis required an interminable stretch of carriage travel — and even then, she had to change carriages again and again, each stop depositing her in a place barer and more desolate than the last.

Muzhaor, where the Lamplis Marquisate's estate stood, was a village walled in by cliffs. The Marquis, once a territorial noble, was now a diminished aristocrat holding nothing but his title and a sliver of land — and even that, it was said, had been sold off to pay what he owed the House of Elperts.

When she finally arrived in the town after that wearying procession of carriages, no one had come out to meet her. Time and again Kasika approached coachmen to hire a ride to the Marquisate, and time and again she was refused. Only after paying considerably more than the going rate did she manage to secure a carriage bound for the estate.

Arriving at the Marquisate changed little. She knocked on the gate of the great house — which lacked even proper guards — and an elderly butler appeared. He looked her up and down and asked what her business was.

"I am Kasika Elperts."

He does not look pleased to see me.

"You're late. The priest has arrived, so let us hurry to the bedchamber."

What on earth is he talking about? As Kasika stood puzzling over it, the butler seized her arm and pulled her along.

How discourteous.

Still, Kasika went where the man led her. In the bedchamber were the priest, the maids, and the butler who had dragged her there. And the Marquis.

The Marquis Lamplis.

Her future husband lay upon the bed.

"You are late, Miss Elperts. Come this way."

So said the priest. Kasika walked forward with deliberate slowness and stopped before the bed, and the priest looked her over. The maids did the same. Cold eyes, every one of them. Eyes that rejected her.

The priest recited his customary words — blessings upon the marriage. While the meaningless syllables washed over her, Kasika studied the man on the bed. His wrinkled face was mottled with age spots. His eyes, as though veiled by a gray film, seemed unable to see what lay before them; the gaze of the old Marquis Lamplis wandered, fixed on nothing, staring blankly into empty air.

"Now, seal the marriage with a kiss."

At the priest's command, Kasika pressed her lips to the old man lying in the bed and spoke her wedding vows.

And not three hours after the vows were completed, the Marquis Lamplis died. The very priest who had administered them went on to preside over the Marquis's funeral as well.

A mourning gown instead of a wedding dress.

A black dress, a black hat, black gloves.

It suits me far better than I expected, Kasika thought.

This was what became of her. The dark, shadowed mansion; the dead Marquis; the lady left behind in her widow's weeds — Lady Lamplis, born to dress in black.

Kasika lifted her head.

The Marquisate's mansion was vast and broad and tall.

Ah, what magnificent ceilings. Absolutely not giving this up.

The House of Elperts had been swindled. The perpetrator: the late Marquis Lamplis.

The Lamplis Marquisate had been wealthier than the Elperts Earldom, but not by much. They had scraped together every coin they had, it seemed, to buy Kasika Elperts.

She was Kasika Lamplis now.

At the very least, it suited her better than Elperts did.

There was no further succession in the Lamplis line. The Marquis had scoured the branches of branches of collateral branches to find an heir — a man who had originally been a shepherd, they said. He knew nothing of high society and less about how to spend money.

The Elperts had collapsed with dignity; the Lamplis had sunk into utter ruin. The servants had been pilfering the household funds blind. Even so, in the great ceilings light burned here and there. There was still some money left, and some land. Jewels as well.

After the Marquis died, the maids and servants tidying his affairs had made off with the jewels, but Kasika caught them just before the sale and dismissed every one of them. Among them had been the butler who had served for decades.

People who knew the place inside and out would have been valuable, but to a marquisate in decline they were little better than nothing. Having thrown them all out, Kasika placed a job advertisement in the capital's newspaper: two maids and one butler. That much would be sufficient.

Ideally a butler wishing to retire and work somewhere quiet in the countryside — and, on the off chance, she even added "couples welcome." For the other maid, she wanted someone young. She expected no replies at all, yet a fair number of letters arrived. Perhaps because she had set the wages generously.

After a few interviews, Kasika hired a married couple to serve as butler and maid, and a young girl who had only just turned sixteen. The girl, who introduced herself as an orphan, wept openly, saying no one would take her on because of her age. Something in those tears reminded Kasika vaguely of another child she had once known, but the memory slipped away before she could hold on to it.

And so it went, for nine years and four months.

Kasika was twenty-nine now, and the man — six years her junior — would have been about twenty-three.

"You don't remember, I see. When we first met, there were indeed six years between us, but my birthday came the very next week, so we became five years apart. It was a gift for turning eleven, you see — hiring me a private tutor."

Noah Lambroise had come calling at the Lamplis Marquisate.

That face from her memories — so insufferably adorable it bordered on offensive — had grown up into something so striking she scarcely recognized it.

"I see. So you are twenty-four now."

"Yes, Lady Lamplis."

"And what did you say you came here for? I must have misheard you."

"You heard me perfectly."

Noah said,

"Count Elperts has killed a man."

"And?"

"And? He is my only uncle, madam."

She couldn't even recall whether that uncle was twenty or twenty-one now. Old enough to have come of age regardless. But he had killed someone?

"Whom did he kill?"

"Well, you likely wouldn't know him. Someone named… Kadin, I believe."

Noah let the name trail off. Honestly, Kasika still considered it none of her concern, so she answered with an indifferent face, "I don't know him." Which happened to be the truth.

"In any case, that is how it stands. Naturally, having killed a man, he was taken into custody."

"How dreadful."

"A young and frail constitution, I'm afraid — surviving a prison would not have been easy. A month or two at most, I should think?"

"…Are you saying he is dead?"

At her question, Noah regarded her quietly for a moment before answering, "Yes."

"You might have led with that."

"Ah — my apologies. It hardly seemed as though you had any attachment to the House of Elperts. As the body of a condemned criminal, he was given no grave; I'm told he was simply burned, along with the other convicts. A noble's remains are not ordinarily handled so, but then, Count Elperts was scarcely a noble in any real sense. The world has changed too much for an empty title to carry any weight."

Nearly a decade rotting in a countryside near the border — how would Kasika have the faintest idea how the world had changed?

"Besides, madam, when the previous count died, you didn't send so much as a single letter. That is why the young Count Elperts suffered so terribly from want of affection. Our house did extend him patronage on account of his connection to you, Lady Lamplis, but…"

No noble exists who lives on another noble's patronage. It had not been patronage at all — it had been a loan with strings attached.

In plain terms: debt. And the young Count Elperts, in all likelihood, had understood none of it. Cesare Elperts had never taught the boy such things, having coddled him rotten instead.

"Raised with far too soft a hand — the boy had no manners whatsoever. He got into no end of trouble. Nothing at all like you, madam."

There it is.

"What exactly is it you're trying to say?"

"The Count Elperts's debts."

Yes. This. The real reason for his visit, after nearly ten years.

"Someone must pay them, must he not?"

An obvious thing to say — except that Lamplis was not wealthy. There was precisely enough money left to live out her days quietly, shut away in this forgotten corner doing nothing, paying the butler and maids their monthly wages, and denying herself any luxury. Exactly that much, and not a coin more.

"The patronage extended to Count Elperts all these years was, in truth, a wager on his future. Surely you understand that patronage between nobles is a fiction? It was simply money lent out — under the banner of investment. What remained of it, at any rate, after his extravagance had its way."