Chapter 13

구성하기로 했다. 구분선도 전체 템플릿을 적용한다. 문학적 장면은 스타일링을 유지하되, 서술은 박스에 묻지 않아야 한다고 판단했다. "회계학을 전공했고"는 과거형 보고서로 "Her field was accounting"으로 번역하기로 확정했다._TITLE: The Bride Enters

A passive woman. A quiet woman. A woman who knew nothing of the world above her.

Then who is the woman before my eyes?

Ian gazed steadily down at Olivia. The woman who had existed only in black and white upon a page seemed to have come alive, moving with a vividness no report could hold.

He had been watching her for some time when a glint caught him near her collarbone—a small necklace, bright as a fallen tear.

So this is the necklace.

Ian's eyes lit. The head maid's report on that very piece was the reason he had come here at all.

A clever woman. She would have spoken of buying a wedding dress only to hunt down something precious. A reasonable decision, of course.

Seen up close, though, it hardly looked like a treasure worth such care. Still looking down at Olivia, Ian parted his lips.

"Madam."

She flinched.

Even in sleep her body trembled, as if the title itself had reached her. The space between her brows twisted in something like pain. The corner of Ian's mouth crooked.

"Who in the world called you Madam? The man who gave you that necklace?"

The investigation had turned up no contact with any man. The only name that surfaced at all was Romeo Alkizer, the young son of Count Alkizer.

But Ian knew Romeo's name was already being raised as a prospective fiancé for Crown Princess Statis, and he struck the notion out without a second thought.

In the end, whoever had called her Madam remained a mystery.

A faint displeasure stirred in him, and Ian twisted his lips.

"I hope the time passes quickly."

It was a night with barely a week left until the two of them were wed.

And at last, the day came.

Haah. Two weddings in a single lifetime.

Seated in the waiting room, I pressed a hand over my trembling chest. Face to face with Ian, I hadn't truly been nervous. But once I entered the imperial palace—once the dress was on, the powder set, my hair pinned up—my heart began to boom like a great drum.

Heavens. I'm really getting married.

Obvious as it was, the fact only struck me now. I lowered my head a little, and the veil fixed with pins spilled down in a soft rush and veiled my sight.

…A second wedding.

The ceremony I had already held with James rose up before me.

It had been a lonely thing.

It scarcely deserved to be called a wedding. The groom was away at war, and the bride stood alone. The guests spared her no attention and poured out only their own talk, while the truly dreadful among them sat the whole while with distaste written plain across their faces.

Only I, barely twenty, had been bright with excitement, strung tight through every moment of it—never once realizing the wedding was nothing but a show put on for appearances.

Did I truly escape that unhappiness?

Remembering that cold, forsaken day, my hands began to shake of their own accord. I had just squeezed my eyes shut against the misery when—

How much time passed, I could not say. A low voice, ticklish as a breath, stirred against my ear.

"Olivia."

"Ah—!"

I startled so hard I fluttered like a pigeon. I jerked my gaze up and found a man staring back with eyes as round as my own, every bit as shocked.

"I-Ian."

Golden hair swept neatly back, a formal suit of purest white—he looked far more handsome than usual. He narrowed his eyes a fraction and asked,

"Are you unwell?"

The question struck something raw in me. At my wedding to James I had trembled in a waiting room just like this, and not a single person had asked after me.

Don't cry. This is no cause for tears.

I soothed myself, blinking fast to swallow them down, and dipped my head so I would not have to meet his eyes.

The veil is covering me. He won't see them gathering.

Thank heaven for that single layer. If I burst into tears without warning, he would certainly grow suspicious.

"No. I only had my eyes closed."

At my answer he asked, in that same grave voice as always,

"Surely the ornaments aren't too heavy?"

What on earth is he saying?

The sheer absurdity sucked the tears straight back in. I shot him a glare—and caught the faintest twitch at the corner of his eye.

This man.

"…Did I say that out loud?"

"Say what?"

"Your jokes are genuinely awful."

"Oh dear."

So he really had meant it as a joke. Dumbfounded, I pouted, and Ian thrust a hand out before me.

"Here."

"What is this?"

"A wedding ring."

I pried open his fist, shut tight as a clamshell, and a round ring lay in his palm. He spoke in a stiff, clipped tone.

"However modest you may be, you can hardly wear a wedding ring that has already been used."

"Ah."

It was a gift I had never thought to expect, and I only blinked. Then it occurred to me.

"Well. One of them would be off at the war."

One ring would have been delivered to James on the battlefield, so of course it couldn't be worn secondhand. Whether James would even have put it on was another question.

At that, Ian let out a small sigh.

"That isn't what I meant."

"If that isn't what you meant, then what?"

"Hah."

What? Why sigh as if I've offended you, and then say nothing?

I had sharpened my gaze and was just about to fire back when he, as if he had lost all will to explain, took my hand and slid the ring onto my finger himself. It settled onto my ring finger as though it had been made for me. A plain band, blunt and unadorned, with no pattern to speak of.

Even the ring is exactly like him.

Thinking so, I blinked down at it. The longer I looked, the more I felt that something this plain might never grow tiresome—that I could keep it for a very long time. I gave my finger a little shake and pouted.

"Why does it fit so well?"

They say a man who knows a woman's ring size is a rake. I narrowed my eyes at him. He only shrugged and answered, perfectly calm.

"Because I measured you, of course."

"My finger? When?"

"A secret."

I went on glaring at him through narrowed eyes, and still he would say no more.

He didn't sneak in while I was asleep and measure it like some pervert, did he?

Ransack my memory as I might, I had no recollection of anyone taking my size.

Which left only one possibility—that he had measured it in secret while I slept…

But the man is impotent. There's no way.

I shook my head. He simply had a good eye. I decided to leave it at that.

I studied the flat band gleaming on my finger. I had thought the gold a curious lemon shade, but looking closer I saw threads of gold and silver crossing over and over, so fine that the whole ring only appeared a pale gold.

What is this?

It was a metal of a delicacy I had never seen, not even through all my years as Duchess of Parnel. I was blinking, about to examine the ring more carefully, when the door opened and a servant came for Ian.

"Your Grace, you must receive the guests first."

"Now, of all times."

Ian frowned as if the whole affair were a nuisance. I waved him off at once, a clear order to vanish. He had been watching the ring glitter on my finger, and his lips curved, ever so faintly.

Then he caught my hand without warning.

Is he going to take the ring back?

Now that I thought of it, there was a separate moment for the rings, after the officiant had finished. I tensed for an instant; the strength had just gone out of my arm when Ian closed the distance and whispered, low, against my ear.

"Just a little longer, Olivia."

"—!"

I told him not to whisper in my ear, so why is he murmuring there again!

I sucked in a breath to snap at him, but he had already drawn several steps away. Catching the maids' sidelong glances, I pressed my lips shut and lowered my head once more.

He's teasing me. He is absolutely teasing me.

To play a trick with a face that shameless, as if nothing at all were strange.

Like James—and yet nothing like him.

I had thought them alike in their silence, in that air of being difficult to approach. Now I would have to revise the thought.

Far too mischievous to be called a man of few words!

And yet, because of him, the gloom is gone.

The mood that had sunk as I remembered my last marriage blew away like wind before Ian's jokes and needling. Carefully, I touched the teardrop necklace at my throat.

Mother.

What would she say if she could see me now, my mother who had died years ago? Tell her I was marrying a second time and she might topple over backward. She had been a thoroughly old-fashioned woman, convinced a lady ought to know nothing of the world beyond her door.

Even so, Mother. I'm holding on.

For a moment, anxiety shook through me. To marry James and live a second life as Duchess of Parnel—that was a road I had already walked.

What opened before me, now that I had broken away from that path, was an unknown road of which I knew nothing. And the familiar one, the road I had walked before, tempted me.

I already know that life through and through. Wouldn't it be easier to walk that way?

But I shook my head. I closed my hand tight around the pendant.

Because I want to be happy.

I knew it all, and so I knew this too: that life had not been a happy one.

"It is time to go in."

As if they had been waiting for me to cast off the last of my lingering regret, someone came to fetch me. I rose from my seat with a steady calm.

I knew better than anyone how a duchess ought to walk. I had already lived as one for twenty years.

And now.

The life that remained, I would live as a duchess still.

I lifted my chin and set my shoulders back. At the far end of the long white velvet, a man in ceremonial dress as pale as snow held out his hand toward me.

Toward a new life, I set my foot slowly down.

Diamond Hall was every bit as splendid and vast as its fame had promised. And filling that hall were flowers, and flowers, and still more flowers.

The flowers alone must have cost a fortune.

Had I been the woman of my previous life, my legs might have given out, or the sheer scale of it frozen me stiff before I ever left the entrance.

But I had already seen this Diamond Hall once before.

At the state wedding of my dearest friend, Romeo.

And so I could keep from glancing aside, and look straight at Ian.