The Vow of Fidelity
At least in this life, I won't be having a wedding without a husband.
The soft patter of her steps along the bridal path called up the memory of the last one. Then, she had entered the hall on her father's arm, and afterward stood with no one beside her at all, listening to the address and reciting her marriage vows alone.
This time, a great deal had changed. She had never sent an invitation bearing the name of the Grand Duchess of Tyrone to the House of Florence. Uninvited, her father would not have been let through the doors.
I won't be jerked around by my birth family again, either.
Give, and give again, and still he whimpered for more without a scrap of gratitude—that was the creature who called himself her father. In her previous life she had understood it far too late. Before she had even found her footing as Duchess of Parnell, he had come to her with his hand out.
"Give me a little something for your youngest sister's wedding."
So she folded away every last shred of pride, begged the most impossible people, scraped together money she did not have and money she did, and handed it over. And the man had said this:
"Oh? As luck would have it, there's a house that'll take her for fifty thousand derks. Worked out nicely, didn't it?"
He kept her money and sold her sister on top of it. Whatever affection she had left for him snapped clean off. She severed ties with her family after that, but every coin she had already passed them became a weakness, and it hounded her for years.
Not in this life. Never.
To look straight at the bottom of a man and still let him fool her again would make her the greatest idiot under heaven.
When I see an opening, I'll bring my youngest sister out of there myself.
She bit down hard on her lip at the thought. And that was when it happened.
"What are you thinking about?"
A shiver traced her spine. That low voice, which she could hear again and again and never grow used to, brushed her ear, and she came sharply back to herself. The bridal path that had seemed as if it might go on forever was already at an end, and she was standing at Ian's side. The archbishop, solemn-faced, was unspooling his address upon their marriage.
She studied the wrinkled face as he recited, then whispered carefully to Ian.
"Nothing. Only that I was wondering if this is what a wedding is."
"Liar. You aren't thinking of another man, are you?"
"Of course not."
In truth, she flinched. She had been thinking of James while she looked at him. After that, she had thought of the father who set her blood boiling.
But I can hardly say I was remembering a husband from a previous life.
Even to her own ears it sounded mad, so she gave an awkward little smile. Ian, who had been gazing at her face without a word, crooked his mouth.
"It's rare for anyone to let their thoughts wander with me standing right in front of them."
It was an insufferable thing to say, and yet she had no choice but to grant it. Hair gleaming like pure gold, a smooth and lovely brow no one could bare without confidence, a straight nose, and lips cut clean and even. A man like a work of art, shaped with all of a god's care, was looking at her.
A face that could bewitch you even knowing he's the National Impotent.
She had been studying Ian's face the way one studies a painting, without quite meaning to, when the voice at her ear turned, unlike his usual tone, rather fierce.
"If you chose me because there is a lover you can never have, give him up this instant."
"What?"
What kind of nonsense is this now?
She was so dumbstruck her lips parted on nothing—and that was the moment.
"Bride and groom. The vow of fidelity."
She needed to say there was no lover, no such thing, but the archbishop's address chose that exact instant to end.
The vow of fidelity?
They didn't make me do anything like this at the last wedding.
She had gone stiff as stone, not knowing what she was meant to do, when Ian's arm came around her waist. Thick fingers lifted, just slightly, the veil that hid her face. As his blurred features sharpened, his expression came perfectly clear.
He's smiling?
The man who did not know how to smile was smiling. It did not glitter like sunlight. It felt savage, like a beast growling low in its throat. He whispered to her one syllable at a time, each one cut sharp, as if he meant her to hear every word.
His mouth came down over hers. Her eyes flew wide, and she froze.
Wait—what is this situation?
Naturally, no one answered.
The wedding was received with the highest praise.
"It really is Diamond Hall. There was a reason for all that fame."
Interior fashion in the capital had been leaning, of late, toward the clean and the modern, but set face to face with Diamond Hall at the very height of splendor, one could not help but stare with an open mouth.
"And His Grace the Grand Duke is simply magnificent."
"Ah, of all men, I truly thought His Grace would never marry—that he would remain the eternal lover of every woman in the Empire."
"Josh, you aren't actually crying, are you?"
He was so handsome that quite a few young ladies admired him in secret even under the name of the National Impotent. Perhaps mindful of them, the Grand Duke and Grand Duchess of Tyrone did not come out into the hall to offer their greetings once the ceremony was done. With the Emperor and the Empress themselves in attendance, however, no one was bold enough to remark on it.
"Oh my, gifts as well."
The Empress had arranged nearly the whole of the ceremony herself, so what the House of Tyrone had prepared amounted, in truth, to return gifts and cards of thanks—neither too much nor too little, precisely the right measure.
"What taste. At a time like this, people usually flaunt their wealth and earn nothing but spite for it."
"You think the Grand Duchess did it? It was probably someone under her."
"I suppose so."
In any case, the wedding ended in triumph. There had been a few incidents—Viscount Florence, the bride's own father, turned away at the door; the House of Parnell, her former in-laws, declining to attend—but it was a marriage that received the blessings of many. Of course, behind their smiles, people whispered.
"They still haven't shown their faces. They must have gone home."
"If they've gone home... the wedding night?"
"But the Grand Duke is impotent."
"And yet that kiss earlier was terribly passionate. Would a truly impotent man kiss her like that?"
"So the scandal was a lie? Does that even make sense? Any normal man would have denied it."
"Exactly."
They wondered whether Ian Tyrone, the Grand Duke who had borne the humiliating nickname of the National Impotent, would or would not consummate the marriage, but the wondering ended as wondering. No one, after all, could look into the couple's bedchamber.
And now Olivia Florence—no, Olivia Tyrone—had been given the chance to confirm what all those people were so curious to know.
What is this?!
She had learned the thing countless people in this country were dying to know, and she was not pleased in the slightest. At present, she was thoroughly at a loss.
The man who had pressed that long, clinging kiss on her in the name of a vow of fidelity—before every guest, and with even the archbishop and the Emperor looking on—took her hand with a perfectly shameless face, as if none of it had happened, and drew her along.
"Let's go back."
At the center of Diamond Hall, behind a wide and lavish curtain, a door opened onto a retiring room, and through that passage one could slip out of the hall without meeting a soul. Led along by the hand, she asked, "Aren't we supposed to greet the guests?"
It had been the same in her previous life. Even with her husband, James, nowhere in that hall, she had been made to greet the guests one by one, all by herself. However gilded and hollow the House of Parnell might have been, the number of guests had been staggering, and she remembered taking to her bed ill once the greetings were done.
But if we don't, people will talk. This is already my second marriage.
She frowned at the thought, but Ian's answer was calm past all belief.
"His Majesty the Emperor enjoys meeting people. He'll see to that."
"You've been far too familiar with His Majesty from the very start."
Is the Emperor of our Empire some neighborhood uncle? Your subordinate? This is outright neglect!
He was so unruffled that a patriotism she had not known she possessed rose up of its own accord. At her words, Ian stopped. Then he glanced at her and pouted.
"That's hardly something to say for a person who, at our very first meeting, told me outright she was glad I had no parents."
She choked.
"Wh-who? That awful person..."
Who else could it be? It was her.
Did I really say it that bluntly?
She had been so pressed in her heart then that the words seemed simply to have burst out of her. Even so, there were things a person might say, and things a person must not. Realizing it too late, she bowed her head and apologized.
"I-I'm sorry. I was rude."
"Not at all."
Ian did not blink once as he stared straight through her, as if he meant to hold all of her inside his eyes. After he had looked at her for a long while, his lips crooked, ever so slightly.
"I do, in fact, think it's fortunate that they're dead."
"What?"
What did he say?
She had not caught it properly. She lifted her head to look at him, but he had already set off again in those long strides, and she hurried after him once more. And then—wait?
"Hold on, Ian. This isn't the way to the carriage house."
To leave the hall and return to the House of Tyrone, one had to cross the garden to reach the carriage house. The way Ian was going was a long corridor with no end in sight. He answered without breaking stride.
"No, it isn't. Tonight we'll be staying at the imperial palace."
"What?"
She doubted her own ears. Stay the night?
At the imperial palace?!
Unless one was of the imperial blood, spending even a single night in the palace was so rare that a house would count it an honor for generations. Save for a state wedding or an imperial coronation, when every provincial noble and every foreign envoy came to the capital, the palace was almost never opened in this way.
And we're to spend our first night in the palace? Is that even possible?
By her measure it was absurd, but Ian himself could not have been calmer.
"His Majesty granted us a room. It was also His Majesty who told us to go in first."
"Wow. His Majesty must truly cherish you."
"I wonder. Is that the only meaning?"
If not that, then what meaning was there?
Is he asking me to look after you? Telling me not to cast aside a younger cousin he holds so dear, the way James did?
Thought of that way, it sounded plausible enough. She had just nodded, satisfied with her own conclusion, when Ian let out a small sigh.
"At this pace we'll be at it all day. Excuse me."
"Eek!"
This man!
You think saying it is enough?! Give a person time to brace herself!