If He Knew It Came from Me
Bang—!
Even as the door slammed violently shut, he did not take hold of me. Not even by accident, the way he had only a moment ago.
"Your Highness?"
Out in the corridor Levin stood with a teapot in his hands, staring at me in open bewilderment.
"Princess Isabel?"
The escort knights who had been waiting ahead, and the maid Lina with them, rose in the same startled confusion and hurried toward me.
"Why are you out already?"
Levin and Lina both knew well enough that things between the two of us were hardly warm. Even so, however poorly we got along, a visit usually kept us in the same room for two hours at the least.
"I know."
Today, though, I had come out far earlier than usual, and Lina studied me as if she meant to demand what on earth had happened in there. She seemed certain something must have befallen me in that short while.
"Let's go."
I shrugged and smiled as though I hadn't the faintest idea. Then I turned my gaze on Levin, who stood beside me in an awkward half-hover, watching.
"Levin, is that tea for His Grace?"
He hastily set the teapot down on an empty shelf nearby.
"I was preparing it for the both of you."
"I see."
"You're leaving now?"
"Yes. I'm sorry. I won't be able to have the tea."
I said it with a smile—sorry I couldn't drink what he had gone to the trouble of preparing—and Levin waved his hands in flustered protest, begging me not to say such a thing.
"Oh, and the next time I come, have desserts ready that aren't sweet."
"Desserts that aren't sweet?"
The request must have struck him as coming out of nowhere. Levin's expression went strange.
"But Your Highness, you always…"
I looked at him as if to ask what he was making a fuss about, and whatever he had been about to say died on his tongue.
"No. Never mind."
"All right. We'll be going, then. Come on."
"Yes!"
Lina and the knights bowed to the ducal staff and fell in behind me.
"You don't have to come."
"As His Grace's aide, seeing you off is only proper."
Levin followed anyway. I walked a long while in silence, then stopped before the carriage.
"Travel safely, then."
"Levin."
"Yes, Your Highness."
"…"
"Your Highness?"
I hesitated, then carefully opened my mouth.
"Once you've seen me off, prepare a luncheon for His Grace."
"A luncheon?"
"Yes, luncheon. You said earlier he still hasn't had breakfast."
People's hearts were strange things. What was there to like so much about a man who stayed stiff with me and never once offered a smile?
"Working on an empty stomach will wear him out."
"…"
"You'd look after him even if I didn't say so. Still—take good care of him."
He would only ever wound me, and yet here I was, spending effort behind his back that he would never even notice.
Levin stared at me blankly for a moment, as if the words had moved him, then ventured a suggestion.
"Given the hour, perhaps the two of you might dine together?"
I shook my head, making the refusal plain.
"Levin, you're talking nonsense. You know why we don't meet at mealtimes."
The reason I made a point of coming only at those awkward hours between lunch and dinner, and of eating nothing but dessert.
"He'd only bring it all back up anyway."
A meal with me turned his stomach. He could hardly eat.
Not long after we were engaged, the two of us had taken a meal together. I had been so nervous I couldn't tell whether the food was going into my mouth or up my nose, and he only went on eating in silence, never once offering me a word. When it was over I stepped out for a moment, and on the way back I happened to overhear Alpheus talking with Levin. Levin asked how the meal had been. He answered that he wanted to spit every bite of it out, right then. The shock of those words was such that I never arranged another meal with him again.
"Your Highness, about that time—"
"No. It's all right."
Levin kept trying to explain, but I refused him. Hearing an explanation would not make that day unhappen.
It had been a terrible shock, back then. The day after I saw him like that, I had even taken to my bed, reeling at the thought that this, then, was what an engagement was. But hear enough cruel words and a kind of immunity seems to form. These days I could let all but the worst of them pass me by.
"I understand."
Levin bowed his head in farewell. I slowly lifted mine and looked toward the office where Alpheus would be.
"Oh—and when you bring the luncheon in, leave out the part about it being my instruction."
"…"
"If he knew it came from me, he would spit it out no matter how good it was for him, no matter how rare."
The window of the office was shut fast—just like the space between us.
"Did something happen to Her Highness? Why is she leaving so soon?"
The moment that strangely off farewell was done, Levin went straight into the office and put the question to Alpheus.
"Your Grace?"
"…"
"Say something, at least. Her Highness was truly strange today, I'm telling you."
Alpheus, however, showed no intention of answering. He only kept his attention fixed on the documents, silent.
"Good heavens. She left all of her favorite desserts, too."
Levin clicked his tongue at the plates still heaped with sweets.
"She really did leave a great deal. Leaving so early, and now this—nothing's wrong, is it?"
In truth, Isabel was not fond of dessert in the way the people of the ducal house imagined. She could not even bring herself to attempt a conversation with Alpheus, and yet the hours still had to be gotten through; dessert was simply the easiest thing at hand, and until now she had eaten it for no reason but to pass the time. Levin, of course, had no way of knowing that, and could only fret over how much remained.
"Honestly. Would you say something?"
For all of Levin's prodding, Alpheus did not so much as blink. His eyes stayed on the papers.
"Your Grace~!"
"Levin. You're noisy."
Still sorting the documents, he snapped the single rebuke at the aide who would not stop chattering, and fixed his gaze on the papers once more.
She really had seemed strange. Levin had lived at Alpheus's side for a long time, and in those years he had met Princess Isabel often enough. He could not help wondering at behavior he had never once seen from her.
"She didn't so much as touch the dessert before leaving early, and then she suddenly tells me to prepare desserts that aren't sweet… There isn't just one strange thing about today."
The pen that had been moving across the documents stopped.
"What do you mean by that?"
"Pardon? By what?"
"Desserts that aren't sweet?"
"Ah."
Levin nodded as he answered.
"She suddenly asked me to prepare desserts that aren't sweet from now on."
From what Levin had heard out of the imperial palace, Princess Isabel preferred sweets so sugary they all but melted the moment they touched the tongue. For years, then, the ducal house had been turning out confections for her that were sweet upon sweet.
"Isn't it strange? Her Highness loves sweet things. That's why I've been telling the head cook all this time to make them sweeter on purpose."
"…"
"Hmm. Has her taste changed? I'll have to speak to the cook ahead of time from now on. Did Her Highness happen to say anything in particular to you, Your Grace?"
At that, Alpheus parted his lips as if he meant to speak, then pressed them tightly shut again.
The words he had said to Isabel only a little while ago had come back to him all at once.
Did she ask for the change because of that? The thought flickered through him, but he soon shook his head, forcing it aside as an idle fancy.
"If you've cleared it all away, get out."
He shot a glare at Levin, who had been needling his nerves from the moment he walked in, and told him to leave.
Levin stared at the same bloodless, tearless, cold Alpheus he always was—and then, all at once, his eyes lit.
"Haah."
He heaved an exaggerated sigh. At the irritating display, Alpheus's brow twitched.
"What a shame. And after you hounded the kitchen from first thing this morning to produce those desserts."
Alpheus flinched, and the pen slipped from his hand.
Clatter— Lost in his surprise, it rolled across the desk.
"When—when did I ever do such a thing? I absolutely did not."
"Why not? You, who never touch anything sweet, and yet the moment Her Highness is due you go down to the kitchen at dawn to inspect the desserts—"
"When did I ever. Stop inventing things that never happened."
Alpheus cut him off at once, his brow drawn tight.
Oh, is that so? Levin's eyes said it plainly as he regarded Alpheus with a peculiar look—then, as if a fine idea had struck him, he held out the desserts he had gathered in a corner to be cleared away.
"Then why won't you eat them?"
As if the words had stung, Alpheus shot up from his desk and reached for the plate.
"Give it here."
"Heavens. You're actually going to eat it?"
"Yes. Hand it over."
Startled, Levin snatched the desserts safely out of reach and shook his head.
"The first time you met Her Highness, you ate the dessert that came after the meal and told me yourself—what kind of dessert is this sweet, you said. You felt as if you were going to be sick."
"…"
"And when you got back, didn't you even come down with indigestion?"
On the day he first met the princess, Alpheus had eaten every last bit of the dessert served after the meal. It had disagreed with him badly, and he had told Levin he wanted to empty his stomach of all of it.
And because of that, how badly Her Highness has misunderstood. Tsk. Having overheard by chance, she had taken it to mean he wanted to be sick because of her. For all the iron in that face, Alpheus was wretchedly weak to sweets, to dessert, to anything rich.
"You suffered for it terribly then, and you mean to eat this again? This morning, too—you picked one up without thinking, said it sat too heavy on your stomach, and skipped breakfast entirely, didn't you?"
"That was…"
"I am the exceedingly clever aide of a duke, so I remember every last thing from the past. Allow me to clear away this poison of a dessert at once."
Alpheus pressed his lips shut, looking thoroughly embarrassed. Levin clicked his tongue at the sight of him.
"You'll be miserable on an empty stomach. I'll bring luncheon, at least."
"Levin, where exactly do I have the time to eat?"
"Princess Isabel asked me to."
At those words, the scowl knotted across Alpheus's face shifted into blank bewilderment.
"She even scolded me, saying I absolutely had to look after you."
And then something like magic happened. Alpheus, who until a moment ago had been carrying on about having no time to eat, went quiet.