"The third one. And this time, he's come in person, apparently."
Without so much as glancing at the wax seal, Rosalind slid her letter opener through it.
On her desk lay a petition stamped with the seal of the Chancellor of her homeland, the Kingdom of Albert.
Same handwriting, same signature. This time, though, the nature of the demand seemed to be different.
With a soft rustle, she drew out the contents and gathered the gist from the first three lines.
"I already gave my answer to the first letter. It seems our homeland's Chancellor has some trouble with his memory."
The attendant waiting nearby bowed his head, his shoulders still stiff.
"...About that, um, today's petition, the contents are..."
"Different?"
"Y-yes."
Rosalind dropped her gaze to the fourth line.
There, for the first time, her hand stopped.
His Highness the Crown Prince has arrived in person at the Grand Duchy's border checkpoint.
We humbly beseech direct consultation regarding economic assistance in His Highness's presence.
She let out a short breath.
She leaned back in her chair and looked up at the plaster ceiling. Three seconds.
Then she pulled over the schedule sitting at the corner of her desk.
She moved one or two of next week's items forward, and in the slot for two o'clock to two-twenty this afternoon, she wrote with a practiced hand:
"Meeting, twenty minutes."
"T-twenty minutes?"
"Yes. Any longer and it would interfere with my work."
The attendant swallowed audibly.
"B-but the other party is His Highness the Crown Prince..."
"I'm well aware."
Rosalind set down her pen, looked up for the first time, and smiled.
"That is precisely why it's twenty minutes."
—By my old-life standards, this is a cold call without an appointment.
A memory from her days as Ritsuko Tanaka flickered through Rosalind's mind.
An executive from a client company, with no meeting scheduled, would show up at the building uninvited and start raising his voice at reception. Security, at their wits' end, would phone upstairs.
Ritsuko, the accounting department's point of contact, would be dragged out to deal with it in her boss's place. Looking at the business card held out to her, she would smile and say:
"I'm afraid we can only offer you fifteen minutes."
Back then, fifteen minutes was all she'd been able to spare.
Now, Rosalind was graciously granting twenty.
—Heh. You've moved up in the world, Ritsuko.
Under the desk, she lifted her toes slightly, then set them right back down.
The office door opened without a knock.
"Pardon me."
A low voice, and a short one.
Rosalind didn't turn around. Her hand was already reaching for the next document; there was no need to check who the voice belonged to.
"Your Grace. You're back early."
"The report reached me first."
Lucas, Grand Duke Vernant, bent his tall frame slightly and stood beside the desk. His gaze fell for one second on the words "Meeting, twenty minutes" in the schedule.
Then, without a word, he took Rosalind's quill and added two words in the margin beside it.
Will attend
Rosalind glanced at it out of the corner of her eye.
"Attending in a professional capacity, I take it. How helpful. That saves me one note-taker."
"...Yes."
Lucas lowered his eyes, just slightly.
"You won't be alone."
In a low voice. That was all.
Rosalind gave a small nod.
"I'm grateful for your consideration. Having one's superior present is an effective deterrent for ending a meeting on schedule."
By the door, the attendant cast his eyes up to the ceiling once.
—"Having one's superior present"? In response to what His Grace just said?
He quietly squared the corners of the papers he'd been entrusted with. Rosalind didn't see.
Lucas pressed the tip of the quill down just a little harder.
By the time Rosalind had cleared about half the mountain of documents and finished checking her afternoon schedule, another attendant came rushing into the room, pale-faced.
"P-pardon the intrusion. Um, there's another one, by separate post..."
"From my homeland?"
"From your homeland, well, sort of..."
The attendant's hand was trembling.
The envelope he held out was crumpled at the edges and didn't even have a wax seal. Just a sheet of stationery folded in two—obviously an informal thing.
In the sender's field, in shaky handwriting, a single name.
Miria Lowe
The air in the office came to a slight standstill.
Rosalind took it and slowly turned it over once, front, then back.
Without opening the unsealed letter, she set it at the edge of her desk.
"...So she still had enough spirit left to write to me here with a trembling hand."
Briefly, as if talking to herself.
Lucas's gaze stopped on the envelope for just an instant.
He started to say something, then stopped. He was not a man who meddled in matters Rosalind was handling.
"Your Grace."
"Yes."
"It seems I'll be adding one more item to today's schedule."
Rosalind picked up her pen again and wrote one more line in today's slot.
Meeting, thirty minutes
Ten minutes longer than twenty.
The matter of Alfred was already settled on paper. Reparations and apology alike had been put into writing, on her terms. Seeing him face-to-face was nothing more than a final confirmation.
But Miria was different. Nothing whatsoever had been settled there yet.
—Which is why I'll throw her an extra ten minutes.
That this was not mercy, but the time it would take to clear an unresolved case, Rosalind herself knew better than anyone.
One hour until two o'clock.
Word had already come that the carriages from her homeland had passed through the Grand Duchy's main gate. Gold ornamentation, white steeds, the royal crest. A procession as flashy as ever, befitting a visit made "in person."
Rosalind took just one sip of her tea and murmured softly into the cup.
"Welcome, Your Highness."
"This will be our first meeting since the broken engagement, won't it?"