~CHAPTER 31~
“What did the Emperor even do?”
Roderick, Duke of Belua, set down his wineglass with a sharp clack.
The expensive wine splashed across the table.
Sitting a little distance away, Baron Aldebaron studied him nervously.
“A date… is what I heard.”
“Rision Catalos? A date? With a living human woman?”
Even when he heard the news that the Princess and the third son of House Roysen had exchanged rings, he had not been this shocked.
If the source had been anyone other than Ambassador Nixandor, he might have thrown his glass at Baron Aldebaron’s head.
“That block of wood is meeting a woman…”
Rision Catalos, Emperor of Catalos, was someone who fell outside every category Roderick understood.
Roderick had never met a man who possessed so much yet desired so little.
He had watched Rision since he was a baby crawling across the floor of the Imperial Prince’s Palace.
As he followed the path of the future Emperor’s life, he tried to grasp anything Rision liked, disliked, wanted, or refused.
The reason Roderick had been able to carve out advantage after advantage throughout the former Emperor’s reign was because he understood that man perfectly.
He planned to tame Rision in a similar way.
Starting early only made things easier.
But Rision was not his father.
If one were generous, Rision was simple.
If not, he was simply dull.
He was indifferent to whatever food was served and wore whatever clothes his attendants put on him.
He did not enjoy hunting, and though skilled in riding and swordsmanship, he had no special attachment to horses or swords.
He showed no interest in asserting authority through lavish banquets or martial tournaments.
Above all, he was as chaste as a convent headmistress.
Roderick knew better than anyone about that frustratingly rigid purity.
He had been the one who secretly sent a woman into Rision’s room on his sixteenth birthday.
The carefully prepared “gift” had been sent straight back by carriage to the ducal mansion.
When Roderick angrily demanded why she had returned so quickly, the trembling woman had silently handed him a note.
One mistake is forgivable.
Twice is disloyalty.
– Rision Catalos.
Even after that, several attempts were made to present women to Rision.
Catalos’s most beautiful women were offered one after another, but he didn’t spare them a look.
The women themselves often became desperate instead, collapsing with lovesickness or causing trouble.
Using women had been the easiest way to control the former Emperor, so Roderick had simply assumed the son would be similar.
But Rision never responded according to Roderick’s expectations.
And now this man was meeting a woman?
In this situation?
Sneaking out of the palace for a secret date, and doing so with some degree of passion?
“Who is the woman?”
Baron Aldebaron let out a giggle.
“That’s the funny part. Remember how I told you the Princess recently got a governess?”
Roderick had been extracting information about Oak Palace through the baron’s daughter, Bertona.
It was one of the reasons he had spent so much to recruit Baron Aldebaron, an eastern noble and supporter of the Emperor.
“That Diana Ortensa girl, is it?”
Even saying her name filled him with disgust.
Diana Ortensa had been the biggest reason the Spruce Palace plan collapsed.
If she had not hovered around the Princess and taken the knife in her place, the palace would have been thrown into chaos just as Roderick planned, and the anti-Arasas faction would have risen.
Baron Aldebaron, who knew nothing of these details, went on cheerfully.
“I heard His Majesty’s date partner was that governess.”
Roderick narrowed his eyes.
The first woman the Emperor had shown interest in over twenty-six years of life… and it was the governess who had ruined his plan?
Originally, Roderick’s plan had been to provoke the Princess during the founding anniversary banquet and lure her somewhere away from the Emperor and the head maid.
Once she revealed she knew about Edric Roysen, she would panic and flee the hall.
She was only an eighteen-year-old girl who had been spoiled all her life.
It would have been nothing to push her with a few sharp words.
But that governess had interfered.
Even so, it had still been workable.
The bribed attendant was quick-witted and managed to guide both the Princess and the governess to the designated spot in the garden.
There, the Arasas servant planted by Ambassador Nixandor was to hand the Princess a note to lure her, or, failing that, stab her on the spot.
But the one stabbed had been the governess, not the Princess.
And that annoyingly sharp-witted young Emperor had discreetly eliminated the assassin prepared in the hunting grounds.
When Roderick regained his composure, what should have been an Arasas-backed attempt on the Princess’s life had become a confused servant slightly injuring an innocent lady.
There was no evidence.
The witness kept his mouth shut.
The Emperor declared it truth.
And so it became truth.
Not even Roderick Belua could overturn the laws of the Empire.
And at the center of that “truth” stood Diana Ortensa.
Baron Aldebaron topped off his glass with wine and smacked his lips.
Roderick shot him a look of contempt, but the baron was too drunk to notice.
“But that’s not all. My daughter says the Princess has started real lessons.”
“…What?”
“Every day she locks herself in the study with that governess and studies Arasas for hours. Everyone knows the Princess isn’t very bright, so I doubt it’ll help much, but…”
The wineglass flew through the air.
Baron Aldebaron yelped and covered his face.
Wine splattered across the expensive rug.
Roderick snapped.
“Why are you only mentioning something that important now?”
“You could have said it instead of throwing…”
Confusion and fear crossed the baron’s face.
Baron Aldebaron was a small landowner from the East.
His family had served the Imperial line for generations and was still counted among the Emperor’s supporters led by Grand Duchess Ellaris.
His daughter Bertona had been accepted as a maid to the Princess for that reason.
The problem was the current baron cared more about gambling debts than political principles.
At gentlemen’s clubs for nobles, credit records were tied to honor.
A red mark on the ledger blocked a child’s marriage prospects first.
The baron adored his daughter above all else.
There was no way he could reject the rope Roderick offered.
Roderick used Baron Aldebaron thoroughly.
Through Bertona he learned the inner workings of Oak Palace and planted spies.
The baron was useful for gathering intelligence or spreading false information among the Emperor’s faction.
And most of all, the Emperor didn’t bother to keep an eye on such an insignificant noble, making him perfect as a middleman to Ambassador Nixandor.
But the baron lacked the insight to judge which information mattered.
He had no grasp of the bigger picture.
Roderick pressed a hand to his tightening chest and took a slow breath.
He forced a gentle tone.
“Adelaisa. Explain to the baron why this matters.”
Adelaisa, who had been sitting still like a doll closest to the wall, slowly lifted her head.
Her glass-like eyes moved past Roderick and settled on Baron Aldebaron.
Roderick’s obedient daughter lowered her gaze and spoke softly.
“If the Princess, who has been refusing His Majesty’s order to marry Lavellan Arasas and running away, has begun studying Arasas with her governess, it can be interpreted as her finally accepting the marriage.”
“Ah… is that so?”
Adelaisa smiled kindly at the baron who nodded foolishly.
“Yes. And if she began lessons after the founding anniversary banquet, it means that governess has quite a strong influence over the Princess, don’t you think?”
“Hmm. That could be true.”
“The Princess may feel the governess saved her life.”
It was a neat summary.
Roderick looked at Adelaisa with satisfaction.
She would soon become Empress.
He had raised her for that role.
Her firstborn son would be the next Catalos Emperor.
Her second son would become the next Duke of Belua.
It was the perfect lineage.
A governess or two wouldn’t disrupt anything.
The Emperor could have lovers or mistresses as he liked.
As long as Roderick could use them as leverage, they were welcome.
He had not raised his daughter to suffer over something as trivial as her husband’s women.
The real problem was Rision Catalos’s intentions.
Unlike the former Emperor, Roderick had never once been able to read what Rision was thinking.
“Would the Emperor actually take that governess as his lover?”
At Roderick’s murmuring, Baron Aldebaron replied lazily.
“Are you worried because she’s unmarried? Then just find a suitable family, give them a mine, marry her off, and bring her back to the palace. Simple.”
It was indeed the usual method by which Catalos Emperors installed unmarried women as official mistresses.
But Roderick was not asking about logistics.
A man who had resisted countless temptations for twenty-six years… how would he behave when he finally met a woman he desired?
No matter how much he thought about it, he couldn’t guess.
Roderick Belua still had no read on Rision Catalos.
In moments like this, he missed the former Emperor, who had been so easy to manipulate.
“That woman… she keeps bothering me.”
Perhaps it had begun the first time he met her in the rose garden.
Even then, the Emperor had moved as if shielding her from Roderick.
As he sipped wine to calm his tangled thoughts, he felt a gaze.
Adelaisa.
She looked at him quietly, then smiled faintly and bowed her head.
Roderick felt a moment of puzzlement, but brushed it aside.
Well. If she becomes a problem, she can be removed early.
He had killed Edric Roysen, the Emperor’s personally appointed envoy and beloved guardsman, without consequence.
The vast web of power Roderick Belua had woven could not be dismantled even by the Emperor.
Making an insignificant governess disappear quietly was nothing at all.
