Amy scrambled out of Adelaide’s arms. Adelaide gestured vaguely for the steward to lead the way.
‘I’m finished. Even the steward knows now. The old man will find out soon too. My cause of death will be recorded as an inability to survive the shame.’
Steward Benjamin worked hard to keep the corners of his mouth from rising. He had heard the strange rumors circulating through the estate recently, but had assumed, as one usually does, that they were exaggerated.
‘His Grace will be pleased to hear this.’
Adelaide’s reputation would lead Duke Berthier to postpone one particular decision. It was the first variable brought about by a small change.
Duke Berthier was not alone in the study. Lionel had been watching the door with the wariness of a puppy awaiting punishment, and when Adelaide stepped inside, he broke into a smile. Duke Berthier did not miss the change in Lionel’s expression.
“You called for me.”
“That manner of speaking.”
“As I’ve said many times, my manner of speaking is.”
“Your nature.”
“I was going to say I learned it from you, Your Grace.”
“It’s your nature.”
“And where did that nature come from? Might it not have been passed down from you, Your Grace?”
Benjamin worried about Duke Berthier’s blood pressure. The father and daughter, who had no idea how to communicate with each other, were always itching to tear into one another the moment they met.
When Adelaide was out of sight, Duke Berthier worried about her, and when she was in sight, he played it cool without a trace of that worry.
“Your Grace, please breathe. Take a deep breath, yes, that’s it. You haven’t forgotten to imagine yourself in a quiet forest, have you?”
Duke Berthier took a deep breath and recovered his composure. It held, right up until Adelaide’s scoff swept it away in an instant.
“Adelaide Charlotte Berthier!”
“I’m not deaf. Steward, I’m starting to have doubts about His Grace’s health. They say elderly people whose hearing is going don’t realize only they can’t hear themselves and raise their voices anywhere they please.”
“Adelaide!”
“Your Grace, the forest, remember? Imagine my lady’s voice is birdsong. Nothing more than a light, chirping bird.”
While the father and daughter exchanged sharp words, Lionel edged his way over to Adelaide’s side.
“Oh! Who’s there?”
“My lady, please have one.”
What Lionel held out was a piece of candy. Not one Adelaide had given him; it looked like a maid with more sympathy than most had slipped it to him in secret. It was a cheap, sticky thing, sweetened with a low-grade substitute instead of real sugar.
“I don’t eat things like that. Have it yourself.”
Her words said otherwise, but Adelaide put the candy in her mouth. Lionel’s face broke into a wide grin.
Duke Berthier barely managed to calm himself with the imaginary forest and birdsong.
“Ahem, ahem. The two of you seem to get along quite well.”
“Steward, it seems His Grace is going blind on top of going deaf.”
“As always, she has no idea how to take a compliment.”
“Oh my, was that a compliment? I never imagined being told I get along well with an orphan of unknown origins could be a compliment. You and the steward get along splendidly too, Your Grace.”
The sudden mention caught Benjamin off guard and he let out a dry cough. Duke Berthier was on close terms with his longtime steward and did not take Adelaide’s words as an insult, but he was not generous enough to pretend he didn’t understand her intent.
“That is precisely why you have yet to secure even a simple engagement.”
“The reason I haven’t gotten engaged is that you keep bringing me empty husks, Your Grace.”
“Empty husks! They were all well-regarded young men from distinguished families!”
“Ah, so that’s why every one of them walked in acting like he was already the duke the moment he laid eyes on me? You weren’t looking for a husband for me at all. You were looking for an heir to the duchy!”
“If you had just conducted yourself properly, I would have handed over the title long ago!”
“And what would I do with a duchy? Spend my whole life managing other people’s feelings and fretting over my reputation.”
Duke Berthier grabbed the back of his neck. Benjamin smoothed his back with practiced ease. Duke Berthier grabbing the back of his neck was no longer a surprising sight in the Berthier estate.
“That is exactly why I brought him here! To make him the duke in your place!”
“Who said anything like that!”
“Who else but you, Your Grace, would come up with such a mad idea!”
“Lionel is the son of the man who saved my life! That is why I brought him here!”
“I knew it! I knew he was a child you’d been hiding, what did you say?”
An uncomfortable silence fell. Adelaide was struck speechless because Lionel was not Duke Berthier’s hidden son, and Duke Berthier was struck speechless because his only daughter had suspected him of having an affair.
“Um…”
Lionel had been pressed close to Benjamin’s side during all the shouting, but he gathered his courage.
“Stay out of this!”
“Adelaide! Lionel has the right to speak too!”
“This is a family matter! You and me, Your Grace! Father and daughter! A matter between parent and child!”
Duke Berthier went rigid, the way a person does when struck by something they didn’t see coming. Since the passing of Duchess Elena Charlotte Berthier, the family had kept up appearances in name only, with almost no emotional connection between them.
Adelaide had been just eight years old when the duchess died.
Duke Berthier should have been there for his daughter, but he had been unable to pull himself out of his own grief. By the time Adelaide had grown somewhat and Duke Berthier had worked through his sorrow, they had already become strangers to each other.
So when Adelaide said the words family, father and daughter, parent and child, Duke Berthier’s lips trembled with emotion.
“Adelaide…”
“Ugh, why are you being so unsettling all of a sudden?”
“Yes, I am your father!”
“Benjamin, it seems His Grace has crossed a river there’s no coming back from. Have everyone inside and outside the estate silenced, and lock that one up so he can’t run away.”
Lionel quickly clapped a hand over his own mouth.
“I would never do anything to harm my lady.”
“How am I supposed to believe that?”
“My father, whom I never got to meet, was the man who saved His Grace’s life. For me, my lady is that person.”
“I have no memory of saving your life.”
“You’ve been kind to me. That’s enough.”
Adelaide was wiping Lionel’s hand clean with a handkerchief, rubbing away the stickiness from the candy. Lionel didn’t know what to do with himself, caught between distress that his white, clean hands were getting sticky too, and an inexplicable thrill that the noble lady had, in some small way, become a little like him.
Duke Berthier watched the scene in silence and rubbed his own palms together for no particular reason. He never touched candy, so his hands were already clean and needed no wiping.
“Ahem. In any case, Adelaide, I had no idea you harbored such a misunderstanding.”
“I don’t think that’s something the very person who caused the misunderstanding should be saying.”
“After Elena was gone, I threw myself into work! I am confident I gave you no cause whatsoever to misunderstand!”
“Yes! You came home late every single day because of that work! When other families were out on picnics, visiting galleries, going to summer villas and winter hot springs, you weren’t home, Your Grace! What was I supposed to think?
Everyone else’s fathers came home at a proper hour and spent time with their families, so why did only you have so much work to do,
was I supposed to think, oh, His Grace must be slower than everyone else and that’s why he stays so late?”
“Slower! You should have thought I was more capable than others and therefore had more work!”
“That’s exactly why I didn’t think you were slow and suspected an affair instead!”
“I’d rather you had thought me slow!”
Lionel was forgotten in the middle of the fierce argument. Benjamin dabbed at the corner of his eye for no particular reason, because whatever the cause, the Berthier estate, which had always been so quiet, was now full of noise.
“Regardless! Lionel is not an orphan of unknown origins! He holds a proper title!”
“…A title?”
“That’s right. He is Viscount Lionel Andreas Lavota. His father Andrei had a nature that loved to help people, so he gave everything away to others and moved so many times that he lost the certificate.”
It was the first Lionel had heard of it. His father had been Andrei Lavota, and he had left home to earn money when Lionel could barely walk, only to meet an untimely death.
Lionel’s mother had been a commoner who married for love alone and had no idea how much a certificate of noble status was worth. As the saying goes, three days of hunger can turn anyone into a thief, and with a young child to feed, she had sold the certificate for next to nothing.
The certificate had passed from hand to hand until it reached Duke Berthier. Duke Berthier found that the man he had been searching for, his savior, had already passed away, and that his wife and child were living in hardship, so he had set out to find where Lionel was.
By that time, Lionel’s mother had also died, and Lionel had entered an orphanage and was enduring difficult days.
Duke Berthier recognized the traces of Viscount Lavota in Lionel at a glance. Without a second thought, he decided that bringing Lionel home and giving him a full and comfortable life was the way to repay his debt to the man who had saved him.
His one concern had been Adelaide, but she, with her tendency to shut others out, was being unexpectedly kind to Lionel.
Duke Berthier now believed without a doubt that everything would work out well.
“In one month, we will go before His Majesty to have his noble status confirmed.”
“I don’t need anything like that, Your Grace.”
Lionel protested quietly. His worry was that if he reclaimed his name as Lavota through the confirmation of his noble status, he would have to leave the Berthier estate.
