A corner of the corridor.
Oswald the secretary and Klaus, a young attendant, stood there with their voices lowered. The documents in their hands were, by now, mere props.
"Say, have you noticed lately?"
"Noticed what, sir?"
"His Grace. In the mornings, he's been arriving half an hour earlier than usual."
Klaus let his gaze drift off at an angle.
"...I had noticed, sir."
"Thought so."
"What's more..."
Klaus quietly hid his mouth behind the corner of his documents.
"He checks the parcel of sweets himself before he leaves."
Oswald closed his eyes.
"...Those two, could it be...?"
"No, sir. Lady Rosalind stated quite clearly that it was 'work.'"
"Well, of course that's what she'd say. That's the kind of lady she is."
It was a deep, deep sigh. The kind a seasoned civil servant lets out only when he has given up on something.
Klaus looked up at his superior's grave face.
"Um... Secretary. Which way should one bet on this matter?"
"Don't bet. Your life depends on it."
"Sir."
"Pretend you never noticed. We have seen nothing."
The two nodded to each other in silence and walked off in separate directions. Only their backs looked oddly like comrades-in-arms.
The office, in the afternoon.
In front of Rosalind's desk, the clerks had formed a loose line.
"Lady Rosalind, please look over this approval request as well."
"Lady Rosalind, I'd like your advice on a personnel matter."
"Lady Rosalind, I'm terribly sorry, just one urgent item—"
Rosalind took the documents one at a time, checked the key points, stamped them, and gave each a word in return.
Businesslike, but not cold.
"The original draft is fine for this. Once it's gone through Finance, could I have a copy?"
"For the personnel matter, have you confirmed what the person himself wants? Asking first will settle it faster."
"For urgent items, the conclusion first. The preamble can come after."
At the end of the line, a young scribe whispered quietly to the colleague beside him.
"...It's different from how it was under our previous superior."
"What is?"
"She listens all the way to the end."
His colleague nodded in silence. Then he added just one more thing.
"And when we've made a mistake, she tells us plainly, 'This is a mistake.'"
"Which makes it easier to work."
"Which makes me not want to quit."
The two spoke as though it were nothing at all, but the warmth in their voices was probably the same kind as that of the secretaries whispering at the corner of the corridor.
When the line had finally thinned out.
The office door opened, and Lucas looked in, only half his face showing.
"That's enough for today."
Short. Only that.
Rosalind, her hand still resting where she'd set down the stamp, gave a light nod.
"Understood."
The door closed.
Without a word, the clerks scattered to their respective posts. Not one of them remarked, outwardly at least, on the fact that the one who'd come to deliver their superior's orders had been the Grand Duke himself.
Her private room.
Rosalind opened a book on her desk.
A classic on the history of currency, ordered through a bookseller in the Grand Duchy.
It was a book that Ritsuko Tanaka, in her past life, had stuffed into her bag on last-train commutes home and never managed to finish. The binding was different, but the structure was very much alike.
She hugged her knees up on the chair. Outside the window, dusk was just beginning to fall.
She turned a page.
Followed the words with her eyes.
—She could follow them.
No other work came barging into her head.
No one's moods, no plans for tomorrow, no unsubmitted documents—at this moment, none of them had a place in any corner of Rosalind's mind.
Rosalind stopped her finger on the page.
(I have time to read a book.)
She murmured it briefly, only in her heart.
(—I have it, don't I.)
That was all.
And yet that little thing, for some reason, settled small and deep in her chest, and did not move for a while.
Evening. Back in the office, Rosalind meant to deal with one last bundle of the documents still left unprocessed on her desk.
As her pen ran across the page, her eyes caught on the drafting date.
Three days before the matter arose.
(...This is just how it should be, isn't it. Really.)
Back at the palace, when she had been his fiancée, the approval requests passed down from Alfred's desk were always drafted "the night before," with the deadline for sign-off "the next morning." Even when she stayed up all night balancing everything and pushing it through, at the royal council he would report, cool as you like, "I arranged it."
The memory seeped out, softly, from the tip of her pen.
The words slipped out on their own.
"Ugh... no way. That Crown Prince really didn't understand a single thing, did he..."
Her pen didn't stop; only her mouth moved.
"I was pulling all-nighters to push it through, and he had the nerve to act like it was all his own doing..."
"I mean, honestly, the moment you toss an approval draft over the night before, as a working adult—"
The air in the doorway went still.
Rosalind sensed the presence from the tip of her pen and slowly raised her head.
Lucas stood in the doorway with documents in hand. He was frozen mid-step, half a pace into the room.
Their eyes met.
Rosalind, expressionless, let a single beat pass.
"Your Grace."
"..."
"That falls within the scope of talking to myself."
The corners of Lucas's mouth moved, very slightly.
For just an instant, truly, very slightly.
"...I don't mind."
He said only that, low and short, then set the documents gently on the corner of her desk and turned his back without a word.
From the corridor, an attendant watched Lucas's back from a distance as he left.
As they passed each other, Klaus the attendant tugged at the sleeve of Oswald the secretary.
"...Secretary."
"Don't say it."
"Wasn't His Grace just now holding back a laugh?"
"Let's pretend we never noticed. For both our sakes."
The two scattered once more in separate directions.
Night.
The private chambers of Grand Duke Vernant.
Lucas was placing fine marks, one at a time, on a map of the continent spread across his desk. The highways of his homeland's neighbor, the Kingdom of Albert. The ports on the far side of the strait. The borders of the Church's lands.
His aide, Sir Dieter, set a letter on the edge of the desk.
"Your Grace. Further reports have come through the usual network, both on the movements of the envoys from the homeland and on changes in the health of the Saint, Miria Lowe."
Without raising his eyes from the map, Lucas moved one of the marks.
"Read it to me."
"Sir."
Sir Dieter opened the letter and went over the key points in a low voice. Lucas listened to the end, nodding briefly now and then.
When it was finished, he set down his pen.
"Keep the intelligence network running."
"Sir."
"It's something I've been building for a long time."
Short. But it was a little different from his usual businesslike replies.
Sir Dieter closed the letter and, about to leave, turned back at the doorway.
"Your Grace. —Regarding the Saint candidate, Miria Lowe. It seems she has tried to send for a physician and cannot. Her monthly courses appear to have stopped."
The tip of Lucas's pen halted at a single point on the map.
Across the sea, the royal palace of that kingdom.
"...Understood."
"One more matter. The affair at that evening party three years ago—as for Lady Rosalind..."
With the tip of his pen, Lucas lightly pressed down on a different point on the map.
It was the very venue where, three years ago, Rosalind had made her debut in society.
"—Not yet."
That was all he said.
Sir Dieter bowed deeply and withdrew.
When the door closed, Lucas leaned back in his chair and gazed up at the ceiling for a while.
On the edge of the desk lay a single pen that Rosalind had forgotten to return during the day.
He intended to put it back on her desk when he arrived at the office tomorrow morning.
The parcel of sweets, the tea, and that pen.
And beside them, a short note, added at just the right angle.
—Such a trifling thing.
But that "trifling thing" was something he meant to keep doing for years to come. As a continuation of the time he had spent three years only watching.
—Only Rosalind herself, tonight, too, knew nothing at all.