Because I Wanted To
“I know a second divorce feels like a burden to you.”
Riena continued in a calm, even voice.
“But as long as there are no children, it won’t stand in the way of remarrying later.”
In another house it might have been a problem. This was Bertis. People would talk, of course — but talk of this sort would barely register as a blemish.
“Once the case is settled, we go our separate ways. Agreed?”
The people of Bertis were fine. The title of Duchess was something others would kill for. Still—
I don’t want to keep it for long.
She knew perfectly well how much Herman was already sacrificing on her account. So she would take his help this once, and this once only. The moment the work was done, she would leave.
“Does this clause have to be in there?”
“Yes. It’s non-negotiable.”
“……”
The flat certainty of her answer left Herman momentarily speechless. He had not won her heart yet. He had no grounds on which to hold her.
Then I’ll just have to work for it.
By any means necessary, he would turn her around. Having sworn as much to himself, Herman gave a nod.
“I accept all of it.”
Only then did Riena’s face bloom into a bright smile.
“Thank you!”
“In that case, we should look over my conditions next.”
“Yes!”
She had no idea what he might have written down, but he was not the sort of man to demand anything strange. So Riena took the paper he held out without fuss.
And then she saw what was actually on it.
Share a bedroom? Take meals together? Go for walks?
……Had she misread that?
Even the first time they married, it had never gone this far. If anything, he had insisted on separate rooms in the name of respecting each other’s privacy.
And now……
He basically wanted them glued together all day long.
Riena looked up at him, thoroughly bewildered.
“Are you serious, Your Grace?”
“About what.”
“These clauses.”
“Is there a problem?”
“N-no. Not a problem, exactly…… It’s just that we didn’t have anything like this last time.”
“We didn’t.”
“Then why—”
“Because now,” Herman muttered, glancing sidelong at the paper he had just drafted, “I want to.”
“Pardon?”
His voice had been too quiet. Riena asked him to repeat himself. No answer came. Herman swallowed whatever else he had meant to say and changed the subject.
“Once the nobility learns we’re remarrying, there will be talk. Guaranteed.”
“Well.”
Of course there would. They would gossip themselves hoarse behind closed doors.
“So I’ve been thinking of a reason we can give them — and this one seems best.”
“What reason is that?”
“That the Duke of Bertis,” he said, “could not forget his former wife.”
That he had gone so far as to drop to his knees and court her with the most ardent passion.
“……And you’re all right with that?”
The Duke of Bertis, passionately courting someone. That Duke of Bertis.
“Why wouldn’t I be.”
“W-well……”
Wouldn’t that make remarrying later a little awkward? Noble marriages were more or less business arrangements, true — but if word got out that he had chased one woman that hard……
The next Duchess is going to feel awfully uncomfortable.
The thought had barely formed when he answered it.
“If you’re worried about my reputation, don’t be.”
As if he could read exactly what was running through her mind, he laid the answer out for her.
“Let them say whatever they like.”
“……”
“That’s my problem to bear.”
And even if they did talk, none of them would ever come within shouting distance of Bertis.
“From where you’re standing, this looks like the best approach as well, doesn’t it.”
“I-it does, but……”
Duke Herman, hopelessly smitten with his ex-wife and courting her?
They’re going to love that.
It was exactly the kind of story that would send high society into a frenzy.
“They say love is what makes even the most incomprehensible behavior suddenly make sense.”
“……”
“And since none of them were going to understand us anyway,” Herman said with a faint smile, “letting them invent their own explanations isn’t such a bad idea.”
They never cared about the truth underneath. Only what they could see right in front of them mattered.
“We could even say I’ve fallen so hard I’m giving you everything I own.”
Which, going forward, was more or less the plan. Strictly speaking, it wouldn’t even be a lie.
“If there’s nothing further to add or revise, then let’s finish this.”
Before she knew it, Herman had taken up a quill and drawn a fresh sheet of parchment toward himself. Riena watched the elegant sweep of his handwriting in a daze, then finally came back to herself.
A short while later, the newly written contract fluttered down in front of her. It contained only the clauses each of them had wanted — a clean, spare document with not a scrap of excess. Riena blinked blankly at it.
In the meantime, Herman had already prepared an identical copy and was calmly signing his own.
Clearly things had been resolved. And yet—
I can’t shake the feeling I’ve somehow been talked into something……
At the same hour, somewhere deep in the woods, a pair of fleeing footsteps began to pick up speed.
Yosef Colin had barely slipped out of the capital ahead of the search parties, and for the past several hours he had been running with nowhere to go.
Damn it, damn it……!
If they caught him, the torture would start at once. Or worse — that person might simply kill him first.
Yosef shoved through a thicket of thorns, jaw clenched tight. If he was going to escape, he had to reach some distant foreign land — an island where no one would ever find him.
I-I need a ship. Any ship. Pay the fare and get as far away as I can — before the search parties find me……
A soft rustle of leaves.
“!”
Yosef spun around in a panic. His pupils darted, scanning the trees, and contracted sharply.
In the next instant—
“Ghk—!”
A hand clamped over his mouth.
“Hhk!”
His throat closed under crushing pressure.
“……”
A moment later, his limp body hit the forest floor.
The next morning, Riena scrubbed a tired hand over her face. Perhaps it was the restless state of her nerves — she had barely closed her eyes all night. She straightened her clothes as best she could and went down to the dining room.
“There you are.”
Herman was already seated, waiting for her. The moment she registered who it was, Riena startled and looked up at the wall clock.
Nine in the morning. By now he ought to have been deep in meetings.
“Why are you still here?”
“I skipped them myself — work.”
The word pulled an automatic question from her.
“The counterfeit banknotes?”
“That’s right.”
Herman rose and drew out the chair opposite for her.
“It’ll keep until you’ve eaten. Better that way.”
“This was found in Yosef Colin’s private study.”
After a brief breakfast, they relocated to the study. Herman held out the documents he had received the day before.
“……Ha.”
Faced with a full record of her old friend’s crimes, Riena let out a short, hollow laugh the moment she looked at it. Of course. Among people who did terrible things, no one ever stopped at just one.
“Is the search still underway?”
“It’s in progress now. We need to catch him before they do.”
They?
Riena looked up at the unfamiliar reference. Herman’s expression had grown a shade heavier.
“You’ve already guessed as much, I’m sure — a crime of this scale was never the work of one man acting alone.”
Someone had helped him. That much was certain.
“……A high-ranking noble?”
The only people capable of enabling something like this were nobles — and not just any nobles. A house with serious power.
“The Kratz ducal family.”
Herman gave her the answer without hesitation.
“……I’m sorry — where?”
For a moment Riena was certain she had misheard. Herman continued as though he had expected exactly that reaction.
“Looking at the overall flow of funds, a substantial portion was funneled into House Kratz. What remained went to their vassal houses.”
“……”
“And it wasn’t only money. They purchased high-value works of art and passed those along as well.”
Sculptures, paintings — art was an excellent vehicle for tax evasion. But the counterfeit banknotes were not even the worst of it.
“A portion of the funds Yosef Colin diverted also flowed into the slave markets.”
“!”
Riena nearly dropped the papers in her hands.
“Th-the slave markets—”
“He went as far as a person can go within the bounds of illegal enterprise.”
One of the things the kingdom forbade most strictly was the slave trade — the buying and selling of human beings. And he had taken part in that kind of atrocity.
If I had been implicated too……
It would not have stopped at prison. She might have had to worry about summary execution.
The thought sent a cold shiver racing across her shoulders.
“We have to catch him.”
She wanted no part of a crime like that — and no association with the people who had committed it.
“Naturally.”
Herman’s voice was even.
“We’re tracking Yosef Colin as we speak. Taking him first is the priority, and I intend to do everything in my power to see it done.”
“I’ll do everything I can as well.”
The Duchess of Kratz and her daughter had been fixtures at the center of high society even before Riena’s divorce. There was every chance she might turn up some useful lead in those circles.
“As it happens, there is one thing I need you to do.”
Riena’s head came up at once, her eyes fierce with the demand to be told.
Herman crossed one long leg over the other.
“Once we remarry, you’ll be circulating in society far more often.”
Everything currently hanging in her dressing room had been last year’s fashion. And since he meant to announce the remarriage soon anyway—
“We’re going out. Right now.”
The Duke had pursued her so desperately he had fallen to his knees. Today, they would make that rumor true.