It was a heart-stopping feeling of fear. Ariadne's face turned pale.
Is the spell wrong? Can you still see it? Oh no, that can't be.
In the Etruscan kingdom, a woman with a defective body was the worst bride possible.
It doesn't matter if you are the beauty of the century or the daughter of a King, your market value converges to zero.
Ariadne absolutely could not allow anyone else to find out. And shr certainly did not want anyone else to find out, especially Alfonso.
Ariadne froze for a moment, like a small wild animal encountering a human.
Alfonso, who was sitting across the table, got up with an angry expression and crossed the table in one step.
No, this couldn't be happening. She instinctively hid her left hand behind her back.
He approached her and she dodged. But in her attempt to dodge, she was blocked by the back of the sofa.
Alfonso grabbed her hand.
Alfonso's body overlapped Ariadne's, who was pressed down on the sofa, with one foot on the sofa and her hand held high.
“Your stepmother is still...!”
Having said that, he felt uncomfortable and closed his mouth. He, too, was living in the past. Ariadne's stepmother was dead. She had been dead for a long time.
Alfonso took Ariadne's hand and lifted it. Their body temperatures met.
He thought her hands were cold. It wasn't true. He didn't realize how much his hands had warmed up.
Instead, he asked in a subdued voice.
“What’s wrong with your hands?”
Ariadne, too, had realized that something was wrong.
The hand that Alfonso lifted up was her right hand, not her left.
“My hand...”
She belatedly saw her right hand, which had been caught by Alfonso. Her arms had been bruised by shrapnel as she had tried to cover her face during the carriage accident.
Actually, the carriage rolled sideways, so she may have stepped on it wrong and got bruised. Since her whole body was like that, she couldn't tell exactly why Alfonso was acting like that.
When she examined her right hand, there was a faint purple and yellow bruise running from her ring finger to her elbow.
“Carriage accident... There was a carriage accident a few days ago.”
Alfonso's expression turned grim. Ariadne added hurriedly.
“It was a minor accident...”
Alfonso's hand tightened. It was unclear whether it was because of the slight depreciation or because of the distance she was keeping.
Ariadne's expression distorted involuntarily at the pain in her hand.
"Ah."
She couldn't hold it in anymore and let out a moan. It was just a small sigh. But Alfonso, who heard that sound, immediately relaxed his grip.
But he didn't let her go right away.
Alfonso gently held her hand at the same angle as when he kissed the back of her hand, turned her wrist to the side, and carefully examined the wound.
“Do minor carriage accidents these days cause such injuries to passengers?”
The Prince, known for his quiet demeanor, and the knight on the battlefield examined the lady's wrist closely and said all he would say in a day right then and there.
“It’s a wound I got from putting my weight on something... It’s not just a scratch.”
He tried to press on the muscles on the inside of her arm but stopped because he thought it would hurt again. Instead, he said,
“Actually, it wasn’t my hand that was really hurt, it was my elbow.”
At this rate, it seemed like they were going beyond just deducing the accident scene and reconstructing it. Ariadne gave up halfway and confessed.
"...Overturning accident.”
Alfonso's eyes widened at the mention of the capsize.
“The carriage fell over.”
Alfonso's voice rose.
“How on earth do they assist their master?”
It sounded even more threatening for someone who had never raised his voice in his life. The two were still glued to the sofa.
His breathing quickened and his pulse rose, his excitement felt like it was contagious through the thin air. The man in front of her was really angry right now.
“Alfonso, don’t do that.”
Ariadne instinctively used the most familiar title to dissuade Alfonso. She tried to look him in the eye to appease him.
Her leaning forward body pressed against his shins. The lady's silk dress and the soldier's leather boots slid together silently.
“Our family did their best.”
It was a voice that was soothing, comforting, and singing.
“I think this isn’t just a simple case of management negligence, but something difficult to prevent.”
“It wasn’t just an accident?”
Alfonso's heart grew heavier and heavier.
“I feel like someone is always targeting me.”
Finally, Alfonso's expression is distorted.
“This. Has. This. Happened. Before?”
The mother's staccato crackle expressed how angry the Prince was.
“Who is after you?”
His blue-gray eyes looked as if they might spit fire.
“I don’t know who it is.”
Ariadne tried to hurriedly wave her hand away but was physically stopped because Alfonso held her hand tightly and would not let go.
It felt strange that her hand was blocked, but in her confusion, she didn't realize exactly what was wrong.
Alfonso was angry that someone was after her. Ariadne thought that if she could relieve the situation, his anger would subside.
“I’ll find it right away. I’ll take care of it.”
The omitted part of the sentence was, 'So don't be angry, it's scary to see you angry.' That's all she should have said.
“Do as you wish. Are you going to do it?”
Alfonso's voice dropped a tone. Now the atmosphere was truly oppressive.
Although she was comfortable playing with those who were worse than her in political circles, this atmosphere was impossible to define.
It was neither a private nor a public occasion, and it was not a place where you could dismiss him by saying, “What’s this got to do with you?” or find a weak point and drive him out, as she would with Leo III.
Ariadne's eyes filled with moisture as she was at a loss.
“Please don’t be angry.”
It was hard for her to understand why Alfonso was so angry when he stood in front of her.
She got into a carriage accident, and someone was after her, so that's a shame. Shouldn't she have had a hard time?
“I am now...!”
Just as Alfonso's voice was about to rise, the door to the reception room opened.
“Thank you for waiting so long!”
It was the representative of the Duke of Taranto who came in carrying a mountain of documents.
The papers on his chest completely covered his face and rose to the top of his head.
Atop the pile of papers was a bright yellow checkered fabric and a stuffed chick.
“This is a sample of the fabric that Princess Bianca likes. I’ll have to ask her separately if she’d like to use it to decorate her debutante ball... Huh?”
The Duke's agent belatedly sensed that the atmosphere was a bit strange. He popped his head out from behind a pile of papers.
“Is everything okay?”
The Prince and the Countess sat on opposite sides of the table, just as at the beginning.
His face seemed to have been slightly raised, but there wasn't much of a difference. But still, the atmosphere was a bit strange.
"Oh?"
The positions of Countess de Mare and Prince Alfonso had been swapped.
Originally, the Prince sat at the window seat and the Countess sat at the fireplace seat, but now they were opposite each other.
“The sun was rising, so the Prince swapped places with the lady. Oh my, how thoughtful you are.”
The Duke's agent staggered and set the papers down on a corner of the tea table.
In fact, the Countess, who realized that someone was coming in while the Prince was rushing to the Countess's chair, desperately ran to the sofa by the window, but there was no way for him to get closer to the truth.
“You could have just said so. Just close the curtains.”
The Duke's agent went to the window and drew the curtains, gently slitting the inner curtains. The sunlight streaming into the room was softly divided into two.
“Then shall we finish the meeting?”
He behaved normally until he left the Palagio Carlo.
He said he was leaving the palace to attend to business, wrote his name in the attendance book, and walked upright in his knightly attire.
But as soon as he set foot on the ground outside the palace, Elko put on a rough brown cloak.
When Elko, who was tall but had an ordinary appearance, put on the ordinary cloak that the common people wore, his one-armed and cross-eyed appearance was hidden, and he truly blended in with the crowd without any special features.
It was actually quite comfortable for him, as he was the only disabled person in the palace and was always in everyone's sight.
The place he went to, being very careful not to attract anyone's attention, was a red brick house on the outskirts of Castel Ravico.
On the outside, it looked like a very ordinary middle-class residence. The one who greeted Sir Elko on his way up to the second floor was even a balding detective.
“Come in, come in.”
The balding, strawberry-nosed detective, who looked friendly, brought Elko into the house with a generous expression, but that was it.
The middle-aged detective carefully drew the curtains inside the house and asked in a voice thick with irritation and a foreign accent.
“You’re not being followed, are you?”
“What do you see people as?”
“What do you mean by that? They see me as a retard who can’t even kill a woman.”
The middle-aged detective picked up his pipe, filled it with a cigarette, and lit it. He did not offer it to the other man.
“I haven’t heard back from you yet, so I’m sure you’re very disappointed up there.”
“Who is responsible for the failure?”
Even Sir Elko's voice was laced with annoyance.
“It’s hard to naturally kill someone who has become poisoned after failing to kill her. If only you hadn’t touched her like an idiot, you could have taken care of her in one go! Do you know how much the security in that house was raised after the first failure?”
As if he had nothing to say, the detective just sucked on the poor bear's paw.
At first glance, the middle-aged monk looked like any other common lower-ranking priest in San Carlo, but upon closer inspection, something was off.
His priestly raiment was different from that worn by the Etruscans in terms of the way the belt was tied and the material of the lining, and above all, this was the time when a lower-ranking priest in the Etruscan kingdom was expected to be assigned to a chapel and perform his assigned duties.
There were no lower-ranking clergy in the Etruscan Holy See who could afford to sit idle during the day, whether helping to prepare for Mass, cultivating the monastery's lands, or practicing silence in their cells.
“...What do we do now?”
The detective spat out words between his teeth, the cigarette smoke escaping as a bonus.
“What responsibility will you take if that woman approaches Prince Alfonso again?”
Sir Elko shuddered. If Ariadne de Mare had ever spoken to the Prince, there would be no question of responsibility.
His head was about to be blown off. No one should have wished for Ariadne de Mare's life more desperately than Sir Elko himself.
“I need to think about it.”
“Should you think about it? It feels really good, doesn’t it?”
“Who caused this to happen now!”
Sir Elko finally couldn't stand it anymore and let out his tantrum.
“Have you prepared ‘that thing’?”
When the middle-aged detective did not answer, he urged him again.
“That thing you said I needed.”
Is the spell wrong? Can you still see it? Oh no, that can't be.
In the Etruscan kingdom, a woman with a defective body was the worst bride possible.
It doesn't matter if you are the beauty of the century or the daughter of a King, your market value converges to zero.
Ariadne absolutely could not allow anyone else to find out. And shr certainly did not want anyone else to find out, especially Alfonso.
Ariadne froze for a moment, like a small wild animal encountering a human.
Alfonso, who was sitting across the table, got up with an angry expression and crossed the table in one step.
No, this couldn't be happening. She instinctively hid her left hand behind her back.
He approached her and she dodged. But in her attempt to dodge, she was blocked by the back of the sofa.
Alfonso grabbed her hand.
Alfonso's body overlapped Ariadne's, who was pressed down on the sofa, with one foot on the sofa and her hand held high.
“Your stepmother is still...!”
Having said that, he felt uncomfortable and closed his mouth. He, too, was living in the past. Ariadne's stepmother was dead. She had been dead for a long time.
Alfonso took Ariadne's hand and lifted it. Their body temperatures met.
He thought her hands were cold. It wasn't true. He didn't realize how much his hands had warmed up.
Instead, he asked in a subdued voice.
“What’s wrong with your hands?”
Ariadne, too, had realized that something was wrong.
The hand that Alfonso lifted up was her right hand, not her left.
“My hand...”
She belatedly saw her right hand, which had been caught by Alfonso. Her arms had been bruised by shrapnel as she had tried to cover her face during the carriage accident.
Actually, the carriage rolled sideways, so she may have stepped on it wrong and got bruised. Since her whole body was like that, she couldn't tell exactly why Alfonso was acting like that.
When she examined her right hand, there was a faint purple and yellow bruise running from her ring finger to her elbow.
“Carriage accident... There was a carriage accident a few days ago.”
Alfonso's expression turned grim. Ariadne added hurriedly.
“It was a minor accident...”
Alfonso's hand tightened. It was unclear whether it was because of the slight depreciation or because of the distance she was keeping.
Ariadne's expression distorted involuntarily at the pain in her hand.
"Ah."
She couldn't hold it in anymore and let out a moan. It was just a small sigh. But Alfonso, who heard that sound, immediately relaxed his grip.
But he didn't let her go right away.
Alfonso gently held her hand at the same angle as when he kissed the back of her hand, turned her wrist to the side, and carefully examined the wound.
“Do minor carriage accidents these days cause such injuries to passengers?”
The Prince, known for his quiet demeanor, and the knight on the battlefield examined the lady's wrist closely and said all he would say in a day right then and there.
“It’s a wound I got from putting my weight on something... It’s not just a scratch.”
He tried to press on the muscles on the inside of her arm but stopped because he thought it would hurt again. Instead, he said,
“Actually, it wasn’t my hand that was really hurt, it was my elbow.”
At this rate, it seemed like they were going beyond just deducing the accident scene and reconstructing it. Ariadne gave up halfway and confessed.
"...Overturning accident.”
Alfonso's eyes widened at the mention of the capsize.
“The carriage fell over.”
Alfonso's voice rose.
“How on earth do they assist their master?”
It sounded even more threatening for someone who had never raised his voice in his life. The two were still glued to the sofa.
His breathing quickened and his pulse rose, his excitement felt like it was contagious through the thin air. The man in front of her was really angry right now.
“Alfonso, don’t do that.”
Ariadne instinctively used the most familiar title to dissuade Alfonso. She tried to look him in the eye to appease him.
Her leaning forward body pressed against his shins. The lady's silk dress and the soldier's leather boots slid together silently.
“Our family did their best.”
It was a voice that was soothing, comforting, and singing.
“I think this isn’t just a simple case of management negligence, but something difficult to prevent.”
“It wasn’t just an accident?”
Alfonso's heart grew heavier and heavier.
“I feel like someone is always targeting me.”
Finally, Alfonso's expression is distorted.
“This. Has. This. Happened. Before?”
The mother's staccato crackle expressed how angry the Prince was.
“Who is after you?”
His blue-gray eyes looked as if they might spit fire.
“I don’t know who it is.”
Ariadne tried to hurriedly wave her hand away but was physically stopped because Alfonso held her hand tightly and would not let go.
It felt strange that her hand was blocked, but in her confusion, she didn't realize exactly what was wrong.
Alfonso was angry that someone was after her. Ariadne thought that if she could relieve the situation, his anger would subside.
“I’ll find it right away. I’ll take care of it.”
The omitted part of the sentence was, 'So don't be angry, it's scary to see you angry.' That's all she should have said.
“Do as you wish. Are you going to do it?”
Alfonso's voice dropped a tone. Now the atmosphere was truly oppressive.
Although she was comfortable playing with those who were worse than her in political circles, this atmosphere was impossible to define.
It was neither a private nor a public occasion, and it was not a place where you could dismiss him by saying, “What’s this got to do with you?” or find a weak point and drive him out, as she would with Leo III.
Ariadne's eyes filled with moisture as she was at a loss.
“Please don’t be angry.”
It was hard for her to understand why Alfonso was so angry when he stood in front of her.
She got into a carriage accident, and someone was after her, so that's a shame. Shouldn't she have had a hard time?
“I am now...!”
Just as Alfonso's voice was about to rise, the door to the reception room opened.
“Thank you for waiting so long!”
It was the representative of the Duke of Taranto who came in carrying a mountain of documents.
The papers on his chest completely covered his face and rose to the top of his head.
Atop the pile of papers was a bright yellow checkered fabric and a stuffed chick.
“This is a sample of the fabric that Princess Bianca likes. I’ll have to ask her separately if she’d like to use it to decorate her debutante ball... Huh?”
The Duke's agent belatedly sensed that the atmosphere was a bit strange. He popped his head out from behind a pile of papers.
“Is everything okay?”
The Prince and the Countess sat on opposite sides of the table, just as at the beginning.
His face seemed to have been slightly raised, but there wasn't much of a difference. But still, the atmosphere was a bit strange.
"Oh?"
The positions of Countess de Mare and Prince Alfonso had been swapped.
Originally, the Prince sat at the window seat and the Countess sat at the fireplace seat, but now they were opposite each other.
“The sun was rising, so the Prince swapped places with the lady. Oh my, how thoughtful you are.”
The Duke's agent staggered and set the papers down on a corner of the tea table.
In fact, the Countess, who realized that someone was coming in while the Prince was rushing to the Countess's chair, desperately ran to the sofa by the window, but there was no way for him to get closer to the truth.
“You could have just said so. Just close the curtains.”
The Duke's agent went to the window and drew the curtains, gently slitting the inner curtains. The sunlight streaming into the room was softly divided into two.
“Then shall we finish the meeting?”
***
He behaved normally until he left the Palagio Carlo.
He said he was leaving the palace to attend to business, wrote his name in the attendance book, and walked upright in his knightly attire.
But as soon as he set foot on the ground outside the palace, Elko put on a rough brown cloak.
When Elko, who was tall but had an ordinary appearance, put on the ordinary cloak that the common people wore, his one-armed and cross-eyed appearance was hidden, and he truly blended in with the crowd without any special features.
It was actually quite comfortable for him, as he was the only disabled person in the palace and was always in everyone's sight.
The place he went to, being very careful not to attract anyone's attention, was a red brick house on the outskirts of Castel Ravico.
On the outside, it looked like a very ordinary middle-class residence. The one who greeted Sir Elko on his way up to the second floor was even a balding detective.
“Come in, come in.”
The balding, strawberry-nosed detective, who looked friendly, brought Elko into the house with a generous expression, but that was it.
The middle-aged detective carefully drew the curtains inside the house and asked in a voice thick with irritation and a foreign accent.
“You’re not being followed, are you?”
“What do you see people as?”
“What do you mean by that? They see me as a retard who can’t even kill a woman.”
The middle-aged detective picked up his pipe, filled it with a cigarette, and lit it. He did not offer it to the other man.
“I haven’t heard back from you yet, so I’m sure you’re very disappointed up there.”
“Who is responsible for the failure?”
Even Sir Elko's voice was laced with annoyance.
“It’s hard to naturally kill someone who has become poisoned after failing to kill her. If only you hadn’t touched her like an idiot, you could have taken care of her in one go! Do you know how much the security in that house was raised after the first failure?”
As if he had nothing to say, the detective just sucked on the poor bear's paw.
At first glance, the middle-aged monk looked like any other common lower-ranking priest in San Carlo, but upon closer inspection, something was off.
His priestly raiment was different from that worn by the Etruscans in terms of the way the belt was tied and the material of the lining, and above all, this was the time when a lower-ranking priest in the Etruscan kingdom was expected to be assigned to a chapel and perform his assigned duties.
There were no lower-ranking clergy in the Etruscan Holy See who could afford to sit idle during the day, whether helping to prepare for Mass, cultivating the monastery's lands, or practicing silence in their cells.
“...What do we do now?”
The detective spat out words between his teeth, the cigarette smoke escaping as a bonus.
“What responsibility will you take if that woman approaches Prince Alfonso again?”
Sir Elko shuddered. If Ariadne de Mare had ever spoken to the Prince, there would be no question of responsibility.
His head was about to be blown off. No one should have wished for Ariadne de Mare's life more desperately than Sir Elko himself.
“I need to think about it.”
“Should you think about it? It feels really good, doesn’t it?”
“Who caused this to happen now!”
Sir Elko finally couldn't stand it anymore and let out his tantrum.
“Have you prepared ‘that thing’?”
When the middle-aged detective did not answer, he urged him again.
“That thing you said I needed.”
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