A Mad Lady’s Confession - Chapter 12

Eleanor knew Matthias Nielsen.

Ah, of course, was there anyone in the capital, Belgar, who didn’t know him? But Eleanor knew him in a slightly different way. She had known him for quite a long time.

“Look at that man.”

“….”

“Isn’t he incredible? Wow… I overheard the maids talking, and apparently that man is Lemren’s blessing.”

The whispering words barely registered in her ears.

Del, you’re always so dramatic. But in that moment, Eleanor couldn’t bring herself to jab her with those words.

Lemren’s blessing.

Could there be anyone that phrase suited better than him? If this was what a blessing looked like, then God truly was kind. Even if He was’n kind to Del and Eleanor.

That was the beginning.

Even without going all the way back to the moment they first met, it wasn’t hard for her to recall the moments when she felt drawn to him.

He was always in places where people’s eyes gathered. If luck was on her side, she sometimes even passed close by him at a ballroom.

She held all of those moments in her memory as if she were carving them into herself, down to the air, the temperature, even the scent. Of course, Matthias probably didn’t know her at all.

She never dared to wish she could stand at his side, or that she could be with him.

Her circumstances were far from favorable, for one thing. More than anything, Eleanor knew from experience how those kinds of feelings could wear a person down until there was nothing left.

It was enough to watch from a distance.

If not for that summer when she was eighteen, Eleanor would almost certainly still be living that way.

If not for what happened that summer.

“Why did you do that?”

In Eleanor Brynhill’s not very long life, those were the words she heard the most. Why on earth did that?

Even she didn’t know. She couldn’t understand why something like that had to happen.

But one thing was certain. That event tore Eleanor’s heart apart.

When she thought of what followed, she could understand something Jules, the elderly maid, once said: ‘Everything has its good and bad sides, like two sides of a coin.’

Because only after that heartbreaking thing did she gain a reprieve of 365 days.

Time to live as herself in this ‘world where one can only go mad’. Time to be with Matthias Nielsen.

In a year, just as he said, Eleanor would leave Matthias Nielsen cleanly. She wasn’t afraid of that day, and she didn’t hesitate.

She had already made up her mind.

***

A household’s mistress receives several invitations in a single day. The higher a family’s standing in noble society, the busier its mistress is bound to be.

Depending on who attended which party, banquet, or tea gathering, they could measure one another’s place without saying a word.

For that reason, the noble ladies of Belgar had waited a long time for the mistress of the Nielsen household.

They yearned to become close with the Nielsens, whose immense wealth and honor rivaled the imperial family, and whose nobility stood out as much as their long history.

They also held the hope that perhaps, by the time their children grew, ties could be formed.

So more than anyone, they watched to see who would become the Nielsen household’s mistress.

And yet, even after the long awaited seat of the Nielsen mistress was finally filled, not a single person wanted to invite Eleanor.

People still doubted her. Was it really true that Eleanor Brynhill had become a Nielsen?

What if Eleanor soon did something crazy again and got driven out of the Nielsen household? And what if, after that, they ended up offending the new mistress who took the seat?

So they were engaged in a quiet battle of reading the room. Even so, in times like this, there were always those whose curiosity was stronger than their caution. For example, the young ladies who were like the flowers of the capital’s social scene.

“….”

The only thing dripping on the tea table was not the condensation sliding down the lemonade glasses. Seeing the silence hanging around the table, Eleanor spoke first.

“…Um, thank you so much for inviting me, young lady. It’s nice to meet all of you.”

Under the shade, at a neatly set table, Eleanor lifted her glass with her lace gloved hand and carefully wet her throat.

It was a terrible comparison, but she felt like a parrot in a cage. The moment she opened her mouth, everyone stared at her as if she were fascinating.

Today’s tea gathering began with an invitation from the second young lady of Count Wilhelmina’s house.

Five young ladies were invited in total, including Eleanor. Aside from her, all four were unmarried.

In terms of rank, it was a little awkward for a married woman to be invited to a table of young ladies, but in truth their ages were all similar.

It was the first invitation she had received. Eleanor already knew this from what her sister told her. She also knew that whether she accepted or declined, she had to send a reply.

But the problem was whether she was allowed to accept it, whether she even had the right.

“Do you want to go?”

So that night, she asked the duke when he returned home. Eleanor thought he would oppose it, but instead, he asked her that.

Did she want to go?

…She did. In the year she’d been given, Eleanor wanted to experience and learn everything.

Someday far in the future, she wanted memories she could talk about, memories where she could say she’d done things like this and met people like that. Her earlier memories were unpleasant and uncomfortable to someone else, and for her they were only sad. Just once, she wanted to have good memories.

“Then go.”

“….”

“And make sure you’re back before midnight.”

When she remembered the man’s broad shoulders as he added it like a joke, her face suddenly grew hot. Since that night, it happened often.

“Are you sensitive to the heat?”

“Pardon?”

“Your face turned red.”

Ah…. Eleanor fanned herself and looked at the young lady who spoke to her.

Perhaps the round of observation was over. The young ladies were now picking up the glasses in front of them. They took turns making the usual, formal introductions.

“But if you’re the same age as me, didn’t we have our debutantes in the same year? Why don’t I remember you at all?”

When one of them, with deep wheat colored hair, narrowed her eyes and asked, Lady Wilhelmina, sitting beside her, whispered, “You know, back then….”

“Ah…!”

The two of them glanced at Eleanor and giggled. When the other two at the table asked what it was, they whispered among themselves and giggled again.

Ahem, Lady Wilhelmina cleared her throat and changed the subject.

“You look quite ‘normal,’ more than the rumors. No, more than I expected, madam.”

“Is that so? Thank you. I paid a lot of attention to what I wore today,” Eleanor answered with a delighted smile. In truth, she couldn’t even count how much she agonized before going out.

She hadn’t realized it before, but recently she’d come to see that her sense of aesthetics was somewhat unusual. And it was because of Matthias.

“Surely that isn’t all you have for dresses?”

They were a few outfits she’d gotten by altering some of the dresses her sister wore when she was a young lady, and Eleanor liked them quite a lot.

When she was little, she always envied the dresses her sister wore, which she’d peeked at in secret. But Matthias wore an expression as if he’d seen something dreadful.

That very afternoon, he had several ready made dresses bought and brought back. Of course, to Eleanor’s eye, they didn’t look particularly pretty.

In any case, thanks to Matthias’s advice, it felt worthwhile to have paid attention and dressed carefully.

When Eleanor smiled as if truly pleased, the young ladies exchanged looks, a little flustered. A young lady with long, thick brown curls changed the subject.

“By the way, Duchess, your hair color is so lovely.”

“Ah, thank you.”

When Eleanor shyly smiled and lightly touched the ends of her hair, the brown haired young lady continued, “It’s exactly the color of the pigs we raise on our country estate, hoho.”

The other young ladies snickered as they laughed.