A Mad Lady’s Confession - Chapter 13

Since everyone was laughing, Eleanor laughed along.

It was one of the capital’s young noble ladies’ nastier habits, a game they played among themselves. They would single out one girl with little influence in society and take turns making her the butt of the joke.

It was one of the classic methods. With just a few roundabout remarks, they could make someone feel humiliated.

Of course, at first they watched her reactions. Not because they were afraid of Eleanor, but because, one way or another, “Nielsen” now came after her name.

They were wary for a moment, seeing she was prettier than the rumors. But they couldn’t feel any dignity or refinement from her at all.

They tensed up, wondering if she might rush at them like she did two years ago. Instead, she was only a little slow, and she even looked docile to the point of seeming foolish.

So they began their prank, as if today’s dessert was set right in front of them. Underneath it all was their twisted resentment that the Matthias Nielsen they admired and adored had been taken by a woman who was, at best, a nobody in high society, and a madwoman at that.

The young ladies met each other’s eyes without speaking. There was no need to say, Let’s make a fool of her. A look was enough.

But there was no way Eleanor would know this kind of capital style way of speaking.

When they said her hair looked like the color of a pig’s, Eleanor felt a little shy. How cute and lovely the pink of a baby pig was.

Hearing such high praise from people she had met for the first time today made her embarrassed, yet genuinely happy. She wanted to return the compliment.

“Thank you for the compliment. Baby pigs are such a pretty pink, I like them too. I’ve seen your hair color before as well. Do you know a city called Stentna? It’s where I stayed to recuperate, and your hair color looks exactly like the color of the back legs of the cows raised on the pasture there!”

“….”

The cows raised on the open pastures in Stentna were well fed and grew well, and their dark brown coats were glossy. Especially on their back legs, the sheen was particularly striking.

Eleanor looked at the young lady as if she truly found it pretty. In an instant, the young lady who now possessed “cow back leg colored hair” drank her tea with an uneasy expression.

“Even though you spent time in such a rural place, you’re quite sophisticated, madam?”

So you came back from being stuck in the countryside, and yet.

That was the hidden meaning, but again, Eleanor interpreted it in her own way.

“I’m embarrassed, but I usually dress a little better than this. Today, I wore what His Grace the Duke picked out for me.”

Strictly speaking, she wore the dress the duke had ordered the butler to buy because he found it unbearable to look at dresses he worried she might wear out and embarrass the Nielsen name.

But the young ladies also understood Eleanor’s words in their own way.

So the couple’s affection was exceptional, to the point that he personally chose a dress for his new wife, not long after their marriage. And since it was the Duke of Nielsen’s eye for taste, they shouldn’t think of dismissing it.

The muggy summer breeze brushed over the table. The young ladies all took a drink to soothe their parched throats.

***

“Have you heard there’s an epidemic going around the capital lately?”

At the voice, Matthias lifted his eyes from the documents and looked at the man sitting across from him.

His close friend and Chief of Police, Horton, frowned gravely.

“They say it’s an eye ailment. People are reporting swelling around the eyelids, weeping skin around the eyes, and stinging or burning pain. But do you know what all the patients have in common?”

“What is it?”

“Apparently, they’re the flower-like, lovely, tender-hearted young ladies of Belgar.”

“….”

Matthias’s face crumpled, as if to say, Here we go again.

“The onset was after your wedding, I presume?”

Young ladies who lost the object of their unrequited love soak their pillowcases with grief every night, that kind of….

“Don’t talk nonsense, Horton.”

“It’s not nonsense. And I heard this, too. They say that even if ‘that’ Duke of Nielsen got married, he still hasn’t forgotten the young ladies of Lemren. Is that so?”

Instead of answering, Matthias snorted and lowered his gaze back to the documents.

Another woman.

Well. One woman kept coming to mind. Again and again, since that night.

The woman who’d begged him to teach her had, after several climaxes, drained the teacher’s very soul and fallen asleep alone. Because of that, he had to abandon the bed he had just warmed and move to another.

For several days after that, he acted relaxed and unbothered in front of the woman who blushed, but when he was alone, he felt strangely restless.

It made no sense. Restless? Why would I be.

Horton finished the rest of his tea and continued, “They say you should treat your lawful wife well. Well, there were all sorts of rumors, but you’ll get through them just fine….”

“Rumors?”

When Matthias asked, narrowing his eyes, Horton went ‘ah’ and slapped his own mouth. Even at that thoughtless gesture, Matthias didn’t drop the question.

Rumors. Of course, he knew his wife was tangled up in countless rumors. Those rumors were part of why that incident two years ago could swell to that extent.

Matthias had heard a few things in passing, but so much of it was hard to separate from the truth. In the first place, he wasn’t particularly interested in that incident.

“What rumor do you know, Horton?”

“Ah… it’s nothing. It’s just….”

“It seems the Chief of Police has a lot of time on his hands. You’re taking your time getting to the point.”

“…Fine. It’s just one of those rumors floating around. That Lady Eleanor… supposedly had another man she secretly admired. That kind of gossip. I mean, it’s all in the past, right?”

Even as he said it, Horton made a fuss.

Matthias felt nothing in particular. Whoever the woman liked in the past was none of his concern.

He wasn’t the kind of man who fixated on someone’s past, and besides, she wasn’t someone worth worrying over.

More than anything, he knew.

Eleanor, that woman, admired him.

From her gaze, her gestures, her scent, even her breathing, Matthias could sense it keenly. Eleanor Brynhill was in love with him, and she did not even try to hide it.

He gave a small snort and picked up the documents again.

“That really is an absurd rumor.”

He meant it.

After exchanging a brief discussion with Horton about paperwork, he left the gentlemen’s club at once.

With the whiskey he’d had, he walked the streets to clear his head. Holding an ivory-handled walking cane in his right hand, he strolled slowly along the late afternoon shopping district.

He tried not to think about her, even for that short while, but the woman took over his mind again with that pale, clear face.

For the year they’d spent together, he planned to pay her as little attention as possible. But the more he faced her, the more he heard rumors about her, the more he thought of her.

He had already heard about what happened two years ago.

At the time, the Crown Prince, Klaus, was involved with a count’s daughter named Giela Dusseldorf. There were even rumors that she would soon become the Crown Princess through an engagement.

It was the day Giela Dusseldorf’s closest friend hosted a small tea gathering for her.

On her way home late at night, amid a torrential downpour, Giela Dusseldorf-

[…stated that she could not remember the assailant.]

[According to the imperial physician, it appears she committed an act she cannot recall due to a state of mental confusion….]

Because it involved a young lady who was expected to become the Crown Princess, and because the matter was so serious, all the public ever learned was that there had been an “attack.”

But through his connections at the Metropolitan Police, Matthias knew what that “attack” entailed, from a single paragraph in the case report he obtained.

“….”

It didn’t add up. The woman he saw with his own eyes, and the woman in the rumors.

He scoffed at himself. How much do you even know about her?

Even so, something didn’t sit right. That faint sense of unfamiliarity he felt every time he saw her stirred his thoughts again.

He kept walking without a destination. Then, in front of a shop window, his steps came to a halt.

“I might be lacking in other things, but I think my eye for choosing dresses is pretty good.”

Yesterday morning, the woman wore a navy dress with a strange brooch. Something his sense of aesthetics simply couldn’t understand.

“Honestly, don’t you think I know more about women’s dresses?”

She kept saying she would learn, she would do well, she was lacking, until her mouth was sore, yet she had a peculiar confidence when it came to clothing.

On impulse, his eyes settled on a summer dress beyond the window.

He pictured the woman who still came to meet him, sleepy-eyed, every other day or so, whenever he returned before midnight. Saying she would fulfill a wife’s duty.

“…It wouldn’t be bad.”

Since it was only a year, he might as well try living it a little better.

After lingering in front of the window for quite some time, he stepped into the dress shop.