"—Urgent news from our homeland, the Kingdom of Albert."
The secretary's voice was about half a tone higher than usual.
The Grand Duchy's office. The afternoon sun cut the shadow of the window frame at a slant, staining the papers on the desk in two colors.
Rosalind kept her teacup at her lips and moved only her eyes to the secretary.
"Read it out, please."
"Y-yes. —The Saint, Lady Miria Lowe, is with child. An heir to His Highness Crown Prince Alfred is expected as early as next spring—"
His voice trembled at the end.
His cheek twitched slightly, as if he were gauging her reaction. Three paces away, Lucas, who had been looking down at his documents, paused his pen for just a single beat.
Rosalind swallowed a mouthful of tea.
Then she spoke in her perfectly ordinary voice.
"Oh, how wonderful. But my sympathies."
The room went still.
The secretary's mouth fell open.
"Eh... um, Lady Rosalind, when you say sympathies...?"
"Taking on an heir under our homeland's present fiscal conditions will, I suspect, be rather tight from a household-budget standpoint."
The secretary finally lost his composure and burst out laughing. He hastily covered his mouth and bowed deeply to Rosalind.
Across the desk, the corners of Lucas's mouth rose—ever so, ever so slightly.
At an angle no one but the secretary could have noticed.
◇
"Well, then. Shall we run the numbers?"
Rosalind set down her cup and drew a blank sheet from the corner of the desk. In her past life, this would have been a job for spreadsheet software.
(Well, since I've landed in a world without any such convenient tools, I'll just have to make up the ground with paper and pen.)
She tucked the passing habit from her past life away with a faint, wry smile.
"I'll list, provisionally, the items the treasury will need to fund for the birth of an heir. —First, the celebration budget. Second, the offering to the temple. After that, the dispatch of blessing envoys, the physicians and wet nurses, and even a new retinue of maids—all of it running in parallel, nonstop, for ten months."
The secretary's pen stopped, unable to keep up.
"P-pardon me, my lady. In parallel—all of it?"
"All of it."
"..."
Rosalind tapped a blank space with the tip of her pen.
"Our homeland's treasury, as of the fourth quarter... pardon me, since the recent tariff revision, no longer has the capacity to scrape together a celebration budget."
—Careful, she thought, with a wry inner smile. Old habits from her past life: she kept dividing things into quarters without meaning to.
"There are two ways to scrape it together. A temporary tax increase on the nobility. Or a cut to the offerings to the temple. The former will provoke backlash from society; the latter, from the Church."
"B-both of those, well..."
"Whichever is chosen, I expect His Highness the Crown Prince's position will only deteriorate further."
In the secretary's head, the joyous event of the Saint's pregnancy was rapidly being rewritten into an account titled "Homeland Financial Risk."
Rosalind finished by giving the paper a light flick with the end of her pen.
"That concludes the Economic Advisor's assessment of the pregnancy bulletin. I believe this is an occasion for sympathy rather than congratulations."
The secretary had given up on not laughing and was nodding deeply.
A low voice came from across the desk.
"Your estimate is accurate."
It was Lucas. A single remark, delivered without lifting his eyes from his papers.
Rosalind replied only, "You flatter me," and reached for the next bundle of papers.
That bundle was the monthly intelligence report, gathered into the Grand Duchy through its network of spies.
—The same network that had once compiled three years of her history without skipping a single page. So the precision from her hiring review carries straight over into daily operations, Rosalind noted, in a thoroughly businesslike way.
She leafed through it. The movements of the homeland's finance officers, the doings of the Saint's faction, uneasy rumors around the Second Prince—the usual contents.
—Or so it should have been.
Her eyes stopped on a single small line added in the report's margin.
"List of Approaching Parties Within the Grand Duchy, by Social Venue (Advisor Rosalind Abel)"
Beneath it, the names of a dozen-odd young noblemen were meticulously laid out, complete with lineage, financial standing, and current engagement status.
Rosalind lifted an eyebrow.
"Your Grace."
There was the sound of a pen being set down.
"It seems this intelligence network covers not only our homeland but the situation within the Grand Duchy as well."
"Yes."
"And it is being updated as we speak."
"...Because it's necessary."
Rosalind tapped the report's margin lightly with a finger.
"Necessary, you say. Necessary to whom?"
Lucas paused a beat. Then he answered, half a second slower than usual.
"Necessary for the Grand Duchy's interests."
The secretary had dropped his gaze and was pretending, with great effort, to sort his papers. —His ears, however, were very clearly turned their way.
Rosalind's face took on a look of understanding.
"I see. Keeping the Economic Advisor's surroundings in order is part of security management. It bears on the confidentiality of information as well. How rational."
The secretary screamed, silently, in his heart.
(No, Lady Rosalind, that's—that's not it, it means something else entirely—!)
But of course, he could not possibly open his mouth.
Still wearing that look of understanding, Rosalind folded the report.
"In that case, I have a request while we're at it. Please have this network continue tracking the movements of Lady Lily, the count's daughter, on the homeland's side, as well as those of the young nobles from other countries who have lately been coming and going in the Grand Duchy."
"Of course."
Lucas's reply was the fastest yet.
Rosalind nodded in satisfaction, drank the last of her tea, and bowed to take her leave.
The door closed.
Only the secretary and Lucas remained in the office.
Lucas set down his pen and spoke in a low voice.
"About that report."
"Y-yes."
"Double the update frequency on records concerning Rosalind."
"...Understood."
Breaking into a cold sweat, the secretary bowed deeply and withdrew.
Evening.
Slanting light from the office window cast long shadows across the papers on the desk.
Alone, Lucas leaned back in his chair.
Three years ago. A corner of an evening party on a snowy night.
A silver-haired young lady on a settee by the wall, reading a book on economics without drawing a single glance.
That image was still within him.
Now she was in his castle.
And yet—
He was not yet at ease.
Down the corridor, Rosalind's footsteps receded. The sound of her usual stride, heading for the next office.
Each time that sound struck the floor of his castle, one step and then another, something inside him was finally able to breathe.
—Tomorrow, once again, he would learn the name of one more man drawing near to her.
That was fine.
What he knew of, he could crush.
The following week, five marriage proposals from other countries would arrive at the Grand Duchy's castle gates, all on the same day.
That Lucas placed not a single one of them on Rosalind's desk—she would only learn of it much later.