Power, for Occasions Like This

And what, exactly, was this load of nonsense? He understood well enough what the scandalous rumor was. But it wasn't true?

The Emperor, beaming at Ian as those large eyes blinked, burst out.

"I hear you've finally got yourself a lover!"

So that was it.

The moment the words landed, the whole business made sense. Ian answered with an openly pitiful look.

"......Surely you don't believe that rumor?"

The august sovereign of the realm, and at the same time Ian's older cousin, was the only person in the country who knew everything about him.

There's no way he'd believe it.

Ian narrowed his eyes on that thought — and what do you know. The Emperor stroked his beard with shameless ease and answered.

"Oh, I believe it. No — more than believe it. If it isn't true, I'm prepared to abuse my power until it is. Isn't power meant for occasions like this?"

"Good God."

No. Power had not been granted for this. Was that something the man who held the greatest authority in the country ought to be saying?

Ian shook his head.

"It is absolutely nothing of the sort. And in the first place, isn't the Duchess of Parnel a match Your Majesty personally arranged?"

The one who had raised Olivia Florence, daughter of an obscure house, to Duchess of Parnel was none other than the Emperor himself.

When Ian pointed that out, the Emperor answered as if it were nothing.

"Then I simply reverse it. The Duke has already gone off to war. Do you think he'll come back now just because the match is broken — or that people will demand we summon him to the palace? There's no problem at all."

"Hah."

Too dumbfounded for words, Ian let out a hollow laugh. The Emperor made it sound easy, but it was not. It would mean the Emperor himself reversing an imperial command.

And even granting that the Duke of Parnel was at the front, so the two had likely never once laid eyes on each other, the Duchess of Parnel was already a married woman entered as such on the civil registers.

As for the rumors surrounding him, the National Impotent was quite enough. Ian shook his head.

"I have no desire for it."

"Ian."

At his younger cousin's successive refusals, the Emperor's face grew grave. He gazed at Ian steadily as he spoke, and as if to show the blood they shared, those blue eyes shone like a deep lake.

"What is there to marriage, really? You meet any old how, live together, and affection grows, and so does the heart. Look at me. The Empress and I were matched for no better reason than sharing a birthday, and don't we live well enough?"

In the marriage of a man who was emperor of a nation, what room could there be for personal will? The choice available to him had been exactly one. The Emperor had been eight years old. Before a child already busy enough simply getting through his own life, two documents were held out.

"Choose, Your Highness the Crown Prince."

What was written on the papers were two young girls whose names and faces he barely knew — two candidates already selected through rigorously screened conditions. There was only one seat for an empress, and so the final choice had, in the end, returned to the Crown Prince's hand.

What could a mere eight-year-old know? He chose on the sheerest impulse.

"This one has the same birthday as me. I'll take this one."

That girl was the present Empress.

The Emperor went on, looking at Ian with eyes as kindly as a father's.

"The previous Duke was simply unlucky. Most people live out their lives that uneventfully. So you, too — go and live your own life now."

Surely he would understand by now.

The Emperor was waiting for his cousin's answer, fully expecting a nod, when Ian replied, blunt and utterly insincere.

"I'm living perfectly well on my own. I can't say I feel the need."

"And so you'd rather go on living with that grotesque rumor stuck to you?!"

In the end the Emperor exploded. This handsome cousin of his — this younger cousin so dear he could have set the boy in his eye and felt no pain — was living even now under the name of the National Impotent!

"Damn it!"

Unable to hold his temper, the Emperor spat the curse at the top of his voice and kicked the empty wall.

He had spent his youth roughly on the battlefield, and when his feelings ran high, the habits of those days sometimes burst out of him.

Having driven the Emperor to that point, Ian answered with brazen composure.

"Do restrain the vulgar language."

"Quiet, you wretched brat. I should have sent this one off to war."

"Don't say things you don't mean."

"You think I don't mean it?"

"......"

This was getting a little dangerous. Going to war did not frighten him, but he would very much prefer not to come home from the front the way the Duke of Parnel had, only to find a wife whose face he had never seen.

Ian pressed his lips shut and waited for the Emperor's anger to settle. But as he sat there saying nothing, the findings of the investigation he had already ordered rose unbidden in his mind.

He opened his mouth, glaring down at the floor.

"She's a suspicious woman. I can't even fathom why she'd take such a reckless gamble."

From the moment the rumor began to spread, the ducal retainers had moved quickly to find its source. Tracing it back, they had come upon an unexpected person.

Olivia Parnel. The Duchess of Parnel herself.

In truth, at the outset of the investigation they had been certain it could never be her, which only made the result more bewildering. How ruinous was a rumor of adultery for a woman — and she had put it out herself?

The Emperor's view, however, was different. He shrugged.

"You think so? I thought she was clever. How many things do you imagine a person can do, if they mean to kick aside a marriage the Emperor arranged?"

"......"

In short, she had staged all this because she did not want to be the Duchess of Parnel.

A greedy woman with absurd ambitions? Or simply the type who enjoys the public's attention?

A young lady of an obscure house had become a duchess — a tremendously successful marriage. He could not understand why she would want to throw it away.

Well. I don't need to understand.

Rumors, left alone, were bound to settle. Ian was the National Impotent. He was, from the start, a man with whom a tale of passionate love could never even take shape.

The Emperor, seeing straight through his lukewarm cousin, said,

"If you truly don't want to, then at least meet her once."

"I said I don't want to."

"Even if you don't, she'll be the one to make contact."

The words were heavy with meaning. They gave off an ominous reek, as if even the Emperor had no intention of sitting quietly while the rumor died. When Ian looked at him with open revulsion, the Emperor smiled with sunny goodwill, like a kindly uncle.

"I'll say it again. I am entirely in favor."

Is it all right for things to go this smoothly?

I sat there in a daze, thinking just that. From a ceiling built so high it seemed to have forgotten the sky hung a magnificent mural and a chandelier set with hundreds of crystals.

Right now, I was in the drawing room of the Tyrone ducal house.

Shall I turn the clock back a little? Only a moment ago, at the Aramir tea salon, Ian had — unexpectedly — nodded at once to my proposal.

"Let's do it. Marriage. I happened to be sick to death of all that, thanks to you."

I didn't bother asking what, exactly, had him so sick of it. No need to look. The people who took him for an impotent had surely been hounding him.

When I had elegantly emptied my tea, Ian rose and held out his hand.

"Then let's go at once."

Failing to catch his meaning, I blinked slowly.

"Pardon? Shall I wait to hear from you?"

"Wait to hear from me? And go where?"

"Go? Go where?"

Only then did I realize our words had tangled over a destination left unsaid. Ian sighed and spelled it out at greater length.

"You've made up your mind to marry me. What need is there to go back to the Parnel ducal house? Just come home with me."

Oh dear. And here I thought I was the decisive one.

This man was every bit as unhesitating as I was.

But not a word of what he said was wrong, so I nodded and stood. The instant I laid my fingers on the hand he offered, my heart gave a single hard beat.

It was the pleasant anticipation of an unknowable future.

And that was how I came to be sitting in the drawing room of the Tyrone ducal house. I could feel the whole mansion stirring over the sudden appearance of its lady (?).

I leaned back against the sofa at my ease and looked around the room.

A little bleak.

Once we were married, the interiors would be the first thing to touch. No need to buy art. A house with this much history and tradition would have its storerooms crammed with pieces worth showing.

Good. A mountain of work. I like it.

If I thought of living almost entirely apart from my husband, what remained before me was simply to build a life as a duchess that would not draw other people's scorn.

Time was plentiful, and resources were plentiful — and was there any unhappiness greater than a perfect mansion with nothing left to do?

In that sense, using the Duke of Tyrone to escape Parnel was a truly excellent idea.

I was a little curious what those nuisances were saying about me, vanished off to the Tyrone ducal house. But I had no wish to meet them again, so I decided to leave it a mystery forever.

I was turning over how to furnish the drawing room when Ian opened the door and came back.

"Please wait just a moment. The visit was so sudden that a room for you isn't ready."

A flicker of displeasure crossed his expressionless face. It looked like the particular humiliation of a perfectionist.

I shrugged, perfectly willing.

"Don't mind it. I can spend a night crumpled on this sofa."

Drawing-room sofa or not, it beat the half-rotted straw bed the Parnel ducal house had given me. The mansion was far warmer, besides. If I said I was sleeping here, surely they would light a fire?

Ugh. Even thinking of it again — that place was a trash heap. Damn those wretches.

No. How badly must they have tormented me, that twenty years later, meeting them again, the hatred had not thinned by a drop and came right back to life?

I won't have to see them again now.

At the thought, the tension eased, and a languid smile rose of its own accord. Ian, who had been gazing at me in silence, let out a sigh.

"I don't know how you lived at the Parnel ducal house, but as Duchess of Tyrone, you must not do that."

"Then I'll sleep a night in your bedroom. There."

He's impotent anyway, isn't he?

Then sleeping together shouldn't be a problem.

I had tossed it off lightly with that thought — and Ian, unexpectedly, went rigid as stone.

"......"

There it was again. When words failed him, he did not rage and he did not flee. He only bit down on his lip and held still.