A Mad Lady’s Confession - Chapter 30

Matthias engaged in many duels throughout his life. They took various forms.

Sometimes it was a simple game of chess with a light wager. Sometimes it was a sparring match with practice swords for warm-up. At times, he stepped onto the field of a true duel where real blades clashed and blood was shed.

The purpose, the weapons, and the opponents all differed, but two things had always remained the same. Every one of them ended in his victory, and every opponent had been a man.

He had never seen a fight between a man and a woman. Like most noble couples in Römern, his parents, the former duke and duchess, had maintained a suitably formal relationship. They never fought. It would have been a loss of face and dignity.

So this, too, was a first. Arguing with a lady and being unable to sleep until this hour.

This isn’t like me. It doesn’t suit a gentleman’s dignity. I should politely apologize to the lady. That would have been the judgment he’d normally make, yet now he couldn’t even approach that line of thought.

As he stared darkly at the rain pouring down as if the sky itself had split open, he turned the woman’s words over and over in his mind.

If it were just words, that would have been one thing.

The look in her eyes when she told him to eat alone, the sensation of her hand when she took the book from him. Even the shape of her lips when she spoke about a face men would like and about remarriage.

Those things surfaced together, and that was why the neatly ordered structure of his thoughts had been thrown into disarray. He simply couldn’t understand the woman.

It had been that way from the start. She clearly seemed to like him, yet she behaved as if she would leave without hesitation after a year, as if she were waiting only for that time to come. That contradiction kept drawing his attention back to her.

A woman who held no attachment to him.

In truth, wasn’t that exactly the type he had always wanted? A wife in name only, with no interest, affection, or lingering feelings toward him.

And yet….

“….”

As if it had read his thoughts, the rain lashed violently against the world outside.

***

At the sound of a sharp click of the tongue, his straight brows drew together for a brief moment.

Whenever something displeased him, the emperor had a habit of making that sound. By any measure, it was an unrefined and vulgar habit. Matthias composed his expression out of habit so as not to show his discomfort.

A single sheet of paper was tossed from the emperor’s hand onto the table.

“So, there’s no body, only severed tails, is that what you’re saying?”

Matthias stiffened into a proper posture and spoke.

“For now, that is the case.”

“Then in the end, you’re just stepping on tails that have been cut off.”

“If we keep stepping on what we can see, eventually one of them will still be attached to the body.”

The emperor lifted his eyes and stared at the man who answered so calmly.

“If you’ve been granted the granary lands of Vogelman and tax reductions in Gammelstad, there should be something to match that. I don’t know what kind of trouble you cleaned up for the crown prince, but whatever it was, what you received is excessive.”

It seemed the emperor did not connect Eleanor Brynhill at all with whatever aftermath of the crown prince’s incident.

If he were told that those excessive rewards were in fact the price paid for handing over the position of Duchess of Nielsen for one year, how would he react?

Rather than bringing it up, Matthias silently endured the unpleasant words. The emperor was a man who held grudges.

“You must know that the reason I entrusted this matter not to the Imperial Guard but to a duke is because I expect results. I also told the crown prince to handle it, but how could I trust him?”

“I apologize for failing to meet Your Majesty’s expectations. Even if you choose to withdraw your command, I have nothing to say.”

Though it was dressed up nicely, what he truly meant was that if the work displeased him, he could simply choose not to assign it in the first place.

The emperor looked at the tall man standing neatly before him with a displeased expression.

Matthias Nielsen was not someone even the emperor could control at will. The legitimate eldest son of the Nielsen family, its head, a duke, the lord of Gammelstad, the empire’s foremost trade port, and the governor of the coastal regions guarding the maritime borders. In Römern, where the accumulation of private wealth was permitted, he was likely the man who enjoyed the greatest fortune.

Even setting aside all of that, the man standing in his decorated uniform carried an innate pressure simply by being there.

His height, a head taller than the emperor, and his broad shoulders fit perfectly into the sharply tailored uniform. Above his distinctly masculine Adam’s apple was a face that could not help but draw admiration.

His neatly styled blond hair, along with his masculine yet refined nose and lips, naturally called to mind the word ‘beautiful’ even for the emperor, whose sense of aesthetics usually reserved that word only for women.

They said the emperor was chosen by heaven, and there was a legend that the von Bernstorff family ruling present-day Römern had received the blessing of the sun god, yet at times the emperor found himself wondering if that legend had been mixed up with the reputation of the Nielsen family.

Whenever he faced Matthias Nielsen, the emperor sometimes felt something akin to jealousy toward the younger man. A sense that if they cast aside rank and status and confronted each other purely as men, he would never win. Like the instinctive retreat one feels when faced with a vastly superior male.

At times, he found himself curious. What kind of life a man like that lived?

“Is marriage good?”

At the sudden question, a flicker of disturbance crossed the expression of the man who had seemed as emotionless as carved marble. Somehow pleased by that reaction, the corners of the emperor’s bearded lips stretched.

“I heard it’s your first marriage. I don’t hear much about your women, Duke. Outside Belgar, you must have had some fun in Gammelstad?”

“….”

Disrespectfully, Matthias found the emperor somewhat pathetic.

The emperor had lost his authority because of ‘The Paper,’ and though he raged about it, he still treated other people’s gossip as entertainment. Matthias restrained his words to hide the disgust rising within him.

“Looking at you now, you seem like a newlywed groom. I was like that at my first marriage as well. When I married the former empress, your eldest aunt. Back then, I also felt excitement.”

Recalling those innocent days with a distant tone, the emperor had already kept two mistresses at that time.

“I haven’t even been able to receive reports for over an hour like this. I want to lie in bed with the empress as soon as possible.”

Matthias wanted to cover his ears. Suddenly, he recalled a woman who had once checked if her ears were bleeding after digging at them because of Lady Jules’s shouting.

At that moment, he felt a similar impulse.

“We’ll be able to see her at the first summer event, won’t we?”

For a moment, he felt a flicker of alarm. The first official social event of the imperial court was customarily attended by married couples, and his official wife, Eleanor Brynhill, had once harmed someone connected to the imperial family.

The emperor was the type who listened even to the smallest rumor circulating in Römern, so there was no way he wouldn’t know that the woman at the center of ‘that incident’ had become the Duchess of Nielsen. If by any chance….

“You should know, I have no interest in women’s affairs.”

As if he had read Matthias’s thoughts, the emperor spoke first.

“Whether they claw at each other’s hair or gossip behind each other’s backs, what does it matter to me? At most, it’s just what women do, isn’t it?”

After saying that, the emperor let out a coarse laugh.

Even as the emperor’s nonsense dragged on, Matthias listened with the sensation that his ears might bleed, then quietly withdrew.

Following behind the chamberlain, he walked along the long corridor lined with a red carpet, trying to shake off the heavy feeling sinking inside him.

The current emperor lacked composure and was frivolous. He was extremely greedy, yet he put on all kinds of transparent pretenses to hide it. The nobles of Römern saw through it, yet pretended not to, knew it, yet acted as if they didn’t, all of them playing along with that hypocrisy.

This was why he hated coming to the capital.

Unless it was a period he was required to attend out of duty, there was only one reason he remained holed up in his territory of Gammelstad. It wasn’t because he had secretly hidden a lover like the gossip in ‘The Paper’ suggested, but because he was sick of everything about the capital, Belgar.

The former Duke of Nielsen, the very image of noble dignity, his father Filn Nielsen, had also once voiced a complaint about the current emperor.

The present emperor had a twin brother, and though they looked alike, they had been completely different since childhood. If only that man had become emperor. Matthias recalled his father’s quiet, bitter remark spoken in the study while he assisted with family matters.

But what was the use of thinking about it? Nothing could be changed, and he himself, while feeling deep fatigue toward noble society, lived more like a noble than anyone else.

People said that since Matthias had been born with so many advantages as if by fortune, he should feel pride in return, but that was a different matter.

Was it too much to hope that the major forces shaping Römern would be a little more sane? At the very least, to wish they would show something worthy of respect?

The reason Matthias, despite possessing wealth, honor, and that admirable body, did not live like a degenerate was partly due to his fastidious nature and high aesthetic standards, but more than anything, it was because he had established his own code.

At the very least, not to live like the other senseless nobles of Römern.

Lost in thought, his steps suddenly came to a halt.

The hem of a dress embroidered with gold thread caught his eye. When he lifted his gaze, a familiar face appeared beside the chamberlain, who had already stepped aside.

“…Your Highness.”

“Would you care to talk for a moment?”

Daphne looked at him with a perfectly drawn smile.