“My mother grew them herself. I used to come and play here often as a child, but this is my first time back since returning from the convent. I’m glad that Lady Adelaide and Viscount Lavota gave me a reason to enjoy the flowers too.”
“If it’s not too forward, may I ask why you went to the convent, ugh!”
Lionel marveled at Adelaide’s accuracy in landing a kick to his shin from under the table.
“Oh, the convent…….”
“This fool of a viscount still hasn’t quite learned his manners. It must be an uncomfortable question, so please feel free to pretend you didn’t hear it.”
The tone was blunt, but Violet felt Adelaide’s consideration in it. In truth there was no such consideration, and Violet had conjured it entirely in her imagination, but once you step into the swamp of a misperception, all that remains is to be pulled in deeper without realizing it.
Violet decided that Adelaide was someone she could trust. Adelaide had no friends she kept in regular contact with, and however foul her temper might be, she had never been called loose-lipped.
“The truth is…….”
Adelaide sensed, from the look on Violet’s face as she began to speak with the air of someone who had made up her mind, that things were going properly off course.
Violet’s lover had been a man like a slender young tree. He had dark, root-colored hair, and was gentle and easily wounded, like a newly sprouted shoot.
“Romer was a postman. I loved writing letters to a cousin who lived far away, and my cousin would write back nearly every day. That gave me many chances to see Romer. At some point, I could no longer tell whether it was my cousin’s letters I was waiting for or Romer himself.”
Adelaide was on the verge of yawning. If Violet was going to tell a drawn-out story about an old love, Adelaide thought, she should have prepared coffee with a rousing effect rather than calming tea.
“Romer must have been a kind man.”
“How did you know…….”
“Your expression softened. Love, whatever kind it may be, seems to soften a person.”
Lionel listened to Violet’s story with bright, attentive eyes. He supplied the reactions Adelaide, with her nonexistent empathy, could not, and drew out the speaker’s enthusiasm with well-placed questions. Adelaide thought that like called to like.
“My father could not accept that the daughter of the Armetia family had fallen in love with a mere postman. I had even resolved to run away with Romer, but he…….”
A clear drop rolled down Violet’s cheek.
Adelaide, who had been absently crushing rose petals, quickly pressed a handkerchief to Violet’s cheek. Amy, who had packed seven handkerchiefs into Adelaide’s handbag in preparation for any eventuality, felt a quiet swell of pride.
“Lady Adelaide……!”
Violet buried her face in Adelaide’s shoulder and sobbed. Adelaide patted Violet on the back with an expression of mild irritation.
“Don’t waste good tears on a man who didn’t have the courage to run away with the woman he loved, Lady Violet.”
“That’s not it! Romer promised he would!”
“If Lady Violet had made up her mind and the other party had also found the courage, there would have been no reason to go to the convent.”
“Romer didn’t come to the meeting place…….”
“You see. He lost his nerve and ran.”
“That can’t be. I’m sure my father did something. Emma showed him all our letters. We were foolish enough to write down exactly where we would meet and where we would go.”
Adelaide prayed that the reason her shoulder was growing damp was nothing more than tears. It had been meant as a brief visit, and she hadn’t brought a change of clothes. She had no desire to go home with someone else’s snot on her.
“In any case, it’s all in the past now. Here, have a cup of tea and try to calm down, Lady Violet.”
It was purely out of wanting Violet to stop crying. Violet stayed leaning against Adelaide’s shoulder and received the cup Adelaide tipped toward her, drinking from it with just her lips stretched forward.
“Thank you, Adel.”
“That would be Lady Adelaide.”
“This is the first time I’ve ever opened up like this. If it hadn’t been for kind Adel, I wouldn’t have had the courage, and I would have kept it all locked inside until it festered.”
“Lady Adelaide, Lady Violet.”
“If I had known Adel back then, I might have made a much better choice.”
“Lady Violet, please repeat after me. Lady Adelaide.”
“Adel. Don’t be shy. We’re friends now.”
This was maddening. Adelaide turned her head in search of help. She saw Lionel and Amy smiling with warm satisfaction.
‘Those two are already a lost cause.’
Adelaide looked around. The garden the Countess Armetia had tended herself held nothing but lush grass and flowers. It was because Violet, who had grown uncomfortable with small attentions since returning from the convent, had dismissed all the maids.
‘Good grief. Has this girl never made a friend before? Since when does a person ramble on by themselves and come out of it with a friend?’
Of course, Adelaide had no friends either. She had never made one. That was precisely why her grounds for objecting to Violet’s unilateral declaration of friendship were rather thin.
“Lady Violet.”
“Please just call me Violet, Adel.”
“No, let’s keep things properly formal between us.”
“We……. Adel, yes, we, we’re a we!”
Violet threw her arms around Adelaide’s neck. Just as Amy had claimed, Violet’s waist was slender enough to encircle with one arm.
Adelaide had not expected the seemingly fragile Violet to throw herself forward with such force, and by reflex reached out for something to hold, and to her misfortune ended up with her arms wrapped around Violet’s waist.
“Lady Violet, I can’t, breathe, please, let, go,”
“I always wanted a friend. There were ladies I used to see before going to the convent, but they weren’t people I felt safe enough to share my secret about Romer with, so I had to suffer through it alone……. Adel, why did we only meet each other so late?”
Adelaide gave up and waited for Violet to let go on her own. She had tried to resist many times before, but the only thing she had gained from those attempts was the bitter taste of defeat, the knowledge that she could not overcome the curse by her own will. So she surrendered quickly.
“Um, Adel?”
“What is it, Lady Violet?”
“Something feels strange about your waist.”
“Perhaps because Lady Violet is slightly unhinged?”
“What? No, your waist, it’s soft, Adel.”
Violet felt around her own waist. The rigid corset met her hands at once. She reached around Adelaide’s waist again. Soft and yielding.
“Lady Violet, please stop feeling up our lady.”
Lionel, who had been still until now, shot to his feet and pulled Adelaide away as though she were a radish being yanked from the ground. Adelaide looked down at her feet, which were now slightly off the ground, and drove her heel into Lionel’s shin.
“Ugh, my lady, that hurt…….”
“Are you trying to show off your strength to me?”
“No! You looked uncomfortable, my lady.”
“I’ve been uncomfortable since a while ago. You sat there quiet as a mouse then. Don’t touch people without reason.”
“Did it bother you?”
Lionel made a forlorn face. Adelaide pressed her knuckles into his cheek. It was the most she could do to push back against the curse.
Lionel broke into a smile almost immediately, apparently unbothered by having a fist ground into his cheek.
“Don’t smile. I’ll get attached.”
“Getting attached is a good thing. I’m already very attached to you, my lady.”
Violet had the fleeting impression that the smiling Viscount Lavota had shot her a look that was anything but warm. Since Lionel was kind, polite, and above all a stranger, she dismissed it as a simple mistake on her part.
“I don’t want to interrupt such a lovely couple, but Adel, just a moment. Viscount Lavota, there’s something we need to discuss among ourselves. Would you mind giving us a little privacy?”
“So long as you don’t feel up our lady again.”
“Viscount, close friends touch each other sometimes.”
“I haven’t lived very long, but I don’t recall ever seeing friends do that, my lady.”
“You wouldn’t know, being a man, but among women, it’s not unusual to hug each other as a sign of closeness, or give a light kiss on the cheek, or even, ba, bathe together.”
Violet’s heart fluttered and her words stumbled as she imagined someday growing close enough to Adelaide to share the bath she had long dreamed of having with a true friend.
“Bathe together?”
“Only when you’re very young. Lady Violet, bathing together is not going to happen.”
“What about a kiss on the cheek?”
“Lady Violet, just say what you wanted to say.”
Violet glanced at Lionel, who showed no sign of budging, and stepped closer to Adelaide.
Adelaide was taller than Violet, so Violet had to rise slightly onto her toes to whisper in her ear.
“Adel, did you perhaps forget to put on your corset?”
Adelaide let out a loud snort.
“I left it off on purpose.”
“What? But Viscount Lavota is right here……. Adel, they say bold women are popular these days, but this is too bold!”
Lionel, who had missed the subject of the sentence, caught only that Adelaide wasn’t wearing something, and that the something she wasn’t wearing was the sort of thing too embarrassing to mention in front of a man. His face went red.
“W, wait a moment!”
“What?”
Lionel took a couple of steps back first. Adelaide was still too close. He calmly retreated five more steps, then fanned himself with his hand and said,
“I’ll go take a look around the garden, my lady. There must be things that only make sense between women, and I think I was being rather oblivious.”
Violet smiled with an air of smug satisfaction, as though she had known it would come to this.
“Please do, Viscount Lavota. If you walk a little way out, you’ll find Johnson. Ask him to show you around.”
Lionel gave something between a nod and not a nod and hurried away. Adelaide frowned.
She doubted whether he could conduct himself properly at the imperial palace if he was like this.
She had no particular concern for Lionel’s embarrassment, but his social standing was being vouched for by the Berthier ducal house.
“Adel, you must be very fond of your betrothed. He only said he’d take a little walk around the garden, and you can’t take your eyes off him.”
“Lady Violet. He is not my betrothed.”
Violet took Adelaide’s firmness for the bashfulness of a young lover.
“Yes, of course, Viscount Lavota is not Adel’s betrothed. In any case, I’ve finally managed to have Adel all to myself, just as I planned.”
