The Lady of This House

My name is Olivia Parnel. I am the lady of House Parnel, one of only three ducal houses in this country.

I was born the second daughter of House Florence, a viscountcy of no particular distinction, and I did not become Duchess of Parnel—the very symbol of this nation's military power—because I was some peerless beauty. There had been no romance in it, either.

"How is it that a creature like you was born on the same day as my son!"

I watched, sick to death of her, as my third mother-in-law flung her teaspoon with not a scrap of manners.

It was a morning that ought to have been beautiful. Four women sat around the wide table.

My first mother-in-law: an elegant piece of work. My second mother-in-law: a whining piece of work. My third mother-in-law: an ignorant piece of work.

Duke James Parnel was the son of that last one, the ignorant piece of work. And I had become his wife for no better reason than that the two of us were born on the same day.

The same day, my foot. There's five years between us.

I pursed my lips. Even now, twenty years after the wedding, His Majesty the Emperor's lukewarm little prophecy still rang clear in my ears.

"Share a birthday and you're bound to suit. I guarantee it. The Empress and I were born on the same day."

What a load of bullshit.

So the marriage had been sealed by the command of His Most August Majesty. The Emperor himself was hardly in a position to speak of compatibility. His concubines had long since overflowed the ten fingers of both hands, the fruit of taking a new one, and then another, every time the last failed to give him a son.

A son, he said. As if the Empire had never had a woman on the throne.

In fact, the heir at this very moment was the first imperial princess, Statis. She would ascend without mishap, take my dearest Academy classmate, Romeo, as her empress consort, and later be of enormous help to me in securing my place as duchess.

But I digress.

The Emperor's prophecy was a lie. Words flung out at random. James and I were never a good match.

I had turned back the years and was twenty again, which meant my husband, James, was somewhere in the spring of his twenty-fifth year.

On a battlefield that stank of blood.

And I would not see his face for the first time until ten years after that war ended.

That first meeting with James was still vivid. It was the sort of memory I could not forget, however hard I tried. The day had been the last of my first mother-in-law's funeral. I had received guest after guest, seen the coffin into the earth, and was only just settling in to rest at home when an uproar broke out.

"Aaaah!"

"Y-you mustn't—this won't do!"

"Blood! There's blood...!"

Screams, as if someone had looked on something dreadful, and the heavy pound of unfamiliar feet. I had buried my exhausted body in the sofa and was forcing myself upright when the door flew open and a man the size of a bear stepped through. Dried blood caked him from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet, so thoroughly I could not even tell the color of his hair. Only his eyes burned, a fierce and spectral blue, like witch-fire.

"You..."

That was my first meeting with my husband, James.

A first meeting like that—and was anything afterward supposed to have gone well? My husband was a man of few words, earnest only about affairs beyond the house. And yet the moment night fell, he would come into my bedroom ahead of me and already be lying there.

Men of that sort always have vigor to spare, and nowhere useful to put it. Nights with a husband to whom I had never properly spoken a single word were long, and they were hard.

Think of it as often as I like, he was the worst husband imaginable.

I had believed a grudging fondness had taken root between us at last, and yet the moment I recalled the past, rage climbed in me like hellfire. I was shaking with it, lost in those old days, when our elegant piece of work set down her teacup and opened fire.

"Daydreaming with your elders sitting right in front of you? Just as I thought. An uneducated child, and your manners are a disgrace."

Her sneer dragged me out of that long reverie. I put on an awkward smile.

"Mother."

The answer that came back was something else entirely.

"I told you to address me as the Dowager Duchess of Parnel."

She was glaring at me with eyes as flat as a flounder's. I was so dumbfounded that a hollow laugh escaped me.

Unlike the other two pieces of work, our elegant one had gone out of her way to ruin me. She did not stop at cutting me down in society. She had once swapped documents with exquisite cunning and dealt the ducal house a serious loss.

Well. A vicious nature that shrank from nothing—of course that was how she made herself the true power of the house.

The whining piece of work had borne the previous duke a daughter, and the ignorant piece of work was mother to the present duke, James. The elegant piece of work, unlike either of them, was barren. Even so, she had used vicious means to shove both wives into the back rooms, refused to hand so much as a scrap of authority on to me, and kept the real power for herself.

In the past I walked straight into those tricks with my eyes wide open...

I narrowed my gaze on purpose, sharp as I could make it. I was no longer the callow girl of twenty I had been then. I held my head straight, met her eyes, and spoke.

"Then you, Mother, will address me with all due respect as the Duchess of Parnel."

"What did you say?"

At my words, the elegant piece of work's face twisted. I could feel the other two staring at me, eyes gone round. Let them. I stiffened my neck and lifted my chin higher still.

"I am the lady of this house now. My husband is away at the war, which means I am also the one exercising every authority of His Grace the Duke. And here you are, Mother, demanding respect for yourself while showing not the slightest respect to me, the acting head of this house. You are throwing a tantrum."

"Wh-what...?"

Faced with an argument that left not a single gap, the elegant piece of work froze, her lips working and no sound coming out.

Nothing to say, is there? I wouldn't have anything to say either.

I'd turned those words over in my head hundreds of times.

Who would have thought that turning back time would hand me the chance to say what I never could?

Ah. That feels wonderful.

Just look at her, lips flapping and nothing to show for it. I was thinking exactly that, my mouth twisting into a smile, when the ignorant piece of work cut into our conversation.

"Your husband? And why are you calling our son your husband?"

James's own mother. She was also the mother-in-law who lived the longest, and tormented me the longest.

James always took no one's side but his mother's. I truly thought I'd collapse of high blood pressure and die.

A husband, I learned then, is a man who stands on someone else's side. I felt the truth of that word for the first time. I was the one who nearly died holding this ducal house together while he was gone, and still he took no side but hers.

That future hasn't come yet. No sense working myself up over a memory. Haa.

Facing the ignorant piece of work brought James back to mind, and the anger surged again, but a few breaths were enough to settle it. Then, perfectly unruffled, I took a deliberate swipe at her temper. After twenty years of dealing with her, I knew exactly which words made her bristle.

"Because he is my husband. Isn't that obvious?"

"You—you filthy little wretch!"

The ignorant piece of work had been a maid, and conceiving James had overturned her whole life, so her obsession with him ran deep. At the slightest excuse she sang the same song: my son, my son.

Her raw nerve was the moment I called James my husband. Sure enough, she stamped her feet in a fury. At that, the whining piece of work—hunched small, picking at her food—spoke up.

"My ears are ringing. I can't eat a single bite. Could you please just be quiet...? Every time this happens, I can't help thinking it's because you all hate me..."

On and on it went, mumbled in a voice no bigger than a mosquito's.

Right. If I were twenty, I would have endured it. Had I truly been twenty, I would have held my tongue.

But only the shell of me was twenty. Forty sat inside. The whining piece of work was forty herself just now, the youngest of the three mothers-in-law. The same age as me, and still whining like that. Irritation climbed straight up my throat.

I shot her a look and said,

"Then go up to your room and eat alone. You're not a child. Can you not manage a word unless you're whining?"

"What?"

At that, the whining piece of work's face went deathly pale, then set hard as stone. Watching me beat them back one by one without yielding a single word, the elegant piece of work finally opened her mouth.

"...You have truly gone mad."

Mad, for the crime of a few sentences. I laughed under my breath.

"I haven't gone mad. I'm perfectly fine. These were things that had to be said someday."

In my first life I had been too green to press any of it. Not this time. I declared it so that none of them could mistake me.

Our pieces of work, of course, were not persuaded. The ignorant one even brought her fist down on the table.

"What does a country bumpkin, ignorant all her life, know about a ducal house's finances, that you dare call yourself acting head? Do you imagine work like that is something the likes of you can do?"

"You never even gave me the chance to try."

I glared at the elegant piece of work. At this moment, every last coin of the ducal finances was in that woman's hands. Wresting the accounts from her had taken me a full five years, and our quarrel had gone on right up until the day she died.

"Do you know what I studied at the Academy? Accounting. Accounting. I spent my days clicking an abacus, learning exactly how a fortune is managed!"

Even now, as I asserted myself with everything I had, she looked down on me with that elegant expression. Peel the look back, though, and I already knew what was underneath: contempt, and a mind busy inventing ways to torment me.

I met her eyes and spoke.

"I guarantee I can do it better than you, Mother. So hand over the authority of the finances. Now."

Control of the purse was no small matter, and the whining piece of work and the ignorant piece of work both knew it. Naturally, they shut their mouths and looked to the elegant one. It was the first time the order of rank among the three had been laid so bare.

She had been staring at me in silence, her expression unchanged. Slowly, her lips parted.

"Nonsense."

Yes. I knew you wouldn't allow it.

I had never expected otherwise, so the refusal did not so much as graze me. I shrugged.

"Then again, it isn't a matter that requires your permission, Mother."

Whether she allowed it or not, I was the highest person in this ducal house. I called the butler, who was watching us with anxious eyes.

"Butler!"

"...Yes, my lady."

He bowed and came forward to the table. A loyal man, who would still be serving as butler of House Parnel twenty years from now. Still locked in a staring match with the elegant piece of work, I gave him the order in a bright voice.

"From now on, bring every document of the ducal house to my room. And prepare a spacious chamber where I can conduct the business of the house."

"Butler!"

At last the mask fell from the elegant piece of work's face. Her cheeks quivered as she glared at me with terrible eyes.

"Just you try taking them. I will not sit still!"

Yes. There it is. This is your true color.