Morning in the office.
Anna's voice as she read out the reports had lost its usual color.
"Envoy of the Duchy of Northland: departing this morning."
Without stopping her pen, Rosalind gave a single nod.
"Representative of the Southern City League: departing tomorrow morning."
Another nod.
"The King of Riatos's younger brother, from the east—due to poor health, requests to return home today."
"Oh my, how unfortunate for him."
"The Kingdom of Valder, in the north, withdrew its own request to extend its stay. Last night."
Scratch. The quill paused for a beat.
"Lady Rosalind, with that—every marriage inquiry for this month has been concluded."
Anna paused a beat, then added:
"The last was Count Hogel. This morning, he came and delivered his own statement of withdrawal, right outside the office door."
The fingers moving the pen stopped, ever so slightly.
—Count Hogel. At a social gathering three months ago, he had tilted his wine cup and laughed in a voice that carried across the room.
"Duke's daughter or not, she's still a castoff sent home after a broken engagement. I wouldn't mind taking her out of pity."
The report from a servant who had been present still slept quietly in the drawer of Rosalind's desk.
That same man, this morning, had apparently read out his retreat speech with sweat beading on his brow.
"Oh my."
Rosalind finally looked up.
"It seems my schedule will be opening up considerably."
"...Yes."
"His Grace's handiwork has been a great help. I can move up the projections for the next currency reform."
Anna started to say something, but in the end she only bowed deeply.
(Beginning with Clarc's return home, they're falling like dominoes.)
Rosalind returned her gaze to her spreadsheet, mildly impressed.
The sudden return home of Clarc's second prince—that had been the starting point. Three days since then. One after another, the envoys of every nation had departed, each with a reason attached: "circumstances at home," "health reasons," "budgetary constraints."
The reasons all differed.
—There was, however, one thing common to them all.
Beforehand, Lucas had laid out on the desk, one sheet at a time, each nation's "matters too economically significant to ignore." The advantages of the new sea route, the timing of tariff reviews, projected delays at their own harbors. Every document was thoroughly rational.
A method of letting the other party discover, for themselves, the reason they had no choice but to leave.
(How very like His Grace.)
Rosalind's pen raced across the page, and she was grateful from the bottom of her heart.
(To trim so much wasteful, work-related socializing so neatly. Converted into total clerk labor hours, that must have freed up three hundred hours a month.)
As labor management, extremely rational.
No other interpretation existed within Rosalind.
In the afternoon, a different envoy arrived in the Grand Duchy.
Anna burst into the office, her face pale.
"Lady Rosalind, Your Grace. —It's a formal special envoy from the homeland, the Kingdom of Albert."
Lucas looked up from his documents.
"The letter."
"Here."
The seal bore a familiar crest. Written on its face was a request for urgent consultation on improving economic relations between the two nations.
Anna's hands were trembling.
"Your Grace, this is—"
"Right on schedule."
Lucas glanced at the letter and set it at the corner of his desk. Then, without so much as looking at Rosalind, he spoke.
"Advisor Rosalind. I'll arrange an audience next week. Attend."
"Certainly."
Rosalind answered at once, and then the corners of her mouth lifted, just slightly.
(So the sinking ship has finally sent for a lifeboat.)
Lightly, yet coldly, she murmured it in her heart.
It was that feeling from her past life, six months after she'd left her job, when her old workplace had reached out: "Could you come back and help out, just for a little bit?"
She had left every last handover document behind.
If her successor couldn't read them, that was the employer's problem.
(I would so like to reply, "I respectfully decline.")
Rosalind murmured it to herself, then promptly shook her head.
"No—that will be for His Grace to judge next week."
Anna was staring blankly at her mistress's face.
The corridor at dusk.
Rosalind handed the approved documents to Anna while reading out tomorrow morning's schedule.
"From eight, verification of tariff trends. From nine, the secretariat meeting. From ten—"
"Lady Rosalind, perhaps you might rest a little more."
"Oh, but an environment where I can focus on work like this—in my past life—I mean, the person I used to be could never have had such a thing."
Long shadows slanted in through the corridor windows.
Within those shadows, a tall figure was walking back toward the office.
He did not look back at anyone.
A man who hadn't spared a glance for a single one of the foreign ladies who had thronged the salon. A man who had dismissed the greetings of the several court ladies he passed in the corridor with nothing more than the barest nod.
Just before the door closed, for the briefest instant.
His gaze caught Rosalind's retreating figure as she walked away, arms full of documents.
—It had been this way for three years.
His gaze always followed only one person.
The bundle of papers pushed to the back of a drawer. The hemp twine. The note by the wall, dated January fourteenth. Ever since that night.
She did not notice.
Without noticing, she went on toward her own work.
That was fine, the Grand Duke thought.
For now, at least.
The door closed quietly.
Back in her office, Rosalind spread a fresh sheet of paper across her desk.
Materials for handling next week's special envoy from the homeland.
The nib touched the page.
"Article Three of the bilateral memorandum, the interference clause... calculation of compensation... a sum the homeland's finances could never possibly pay."
Gazing at the figures she had murmured onto the page, Rosalind let slip something like a smile.
(Well then. Let me prepare my refusal properly.)
At the corner of the desk, her tea slowly went cold.
Down the corridor, the door of his office had already closed.
Tomorrow morning, once again, a little plate of baked sweets would surely be waiting in its usual place.
Never noticing, Rosalind turned to the next page of the tariff table.
Until the homeland's envoy passed through the gates of the Grand Duchy: seven days.
Until the day she would, of her own will, tell her homeland "I respectfully decline": seven days.