"Lady Rosalind is coming through!"
A child's voice bounced down the main avenue that morning.
When Rosalind stepped down from the inspection carriage, white garlands were swaying in the tops of the roadside trees. Under the eaves of the bakery, in the tailor's window, at the front of the fruit seller's stall: the same garlands. It was, she was told, the Grand Duchy's custom for celebrating a pregnancy.
But the words were a little different from what she had expected.
"Lady Rosalind, please take care of yourself."
"Lady Rosie, don't overdo it, now."
Then the florist came running up beside the carriage and bowed as he spoke.
"On the blessed news of the heir, my most heartfelt congratu—"
Lucas, beside her, cut him off short.
"Wrong order."
The florist's head snapped up.
"Mother first, child after," Lucas declared, as though it were obvious.
"Rosalind is the one to celebrate first. The heir's birth can wait until the heir shows his face. For now, look after the one who's giving birth."
For a moment the florist only blinked. Then he bowed again, deeply.
"Lady Rosalind, I pray you come through it safely."
Rosalind raised her brows slightly and looked up at the man beside her.
—That kind of culture is already here.
For just a moment, she remembered her own voice from her past life.
"Not married yet?" "Kids?" "What's next?" Questions anyone and everyone had flung at her between tasks. Those had not been words that cared for the body of the one doing the bearing.
Here was different.
"...Well. That is rather rational."
Her polished diction had nearly slipped; she hurriedly covered it with a cough. The corner of Lucas's mouth lifted, just slightly.
When they returned to the office, the final review documents for the tariff revision were stacked on the desk. Her second trimester. Rosalind picked up her quill and followed the figures at her usual pace.
"Rosie."
Lucas, peering at the papers, spoke low.
"Don't push yourself."
"I am not pushing myself. I'm only sitting and writing."
"...That you don't call that pushing yourself is what worries me most."
After grumbling that, he turned to the secretary and gave a short order.
"Let Rosie do as much as she wants. The moment she stops, take it over at once."
The secretary bowed deeply. Not one person in this office would raise an objection.
Rosalind heard that silence through the scratch of her pen. It showed even in a single binder of memoranda. On the cover of the thick bundle the head maid brought that afternoon was one line in Lucas's handwriting.
"If anything displeases you, throw it all out. We'll start again from scratch."
"Down to the color of the wallpaper, Lady Rosalind's wishes take top priority—that is His Grace's only instruction."
Rosalind accepted the bundle, and a small laugh escaped her.
He was a fiend for proper labor management, this man. She would have loved to let her boss from her past life hear about it.
In the evening, the two of them stood at the window.
Without preamble, Lucas turned to her.
"Rosie."
"Yes?"
"Even as a mother, you're still Rosie."
That was all he said. Not the heir's honored mother, not Her Highness the Grand Duchess. Just Rosie.
Rosalind heard something inside her come to land, quietly, with a soft little thump.
"Your Grace."
"Lucas is fine."
Rosalind closed her mouth for a moment.
—I've heard that line before. That time, it came with a time limit tacked onto the end: "for today."
Today, there was no "for today."
"...So there's no fixed term, then."
"None."
In contract terms, it was a switch from fixed-term to permanent. The kind of security Ritsuko Tanaka had never once managed to get her hands on.
"...Lord Lucas."
"Mm."
"Thank you... so very much."
Short. Only that.
He nodded, satisfied, and returned his gaze to the window.
Then, as if in afterthought, he added:
"If you don't want it, you don't have to do anything. The question of an heir—that's yours to decide, too."
Rosalind smiled a little and answered.
"I'm having this child because I want to."
It was the same tone she had used for the employment contract.
She decided for herself, and she signed for herself. This time, too, properly.
That night, a new volume quietly joined the corner of the bookshelf. The ink of the title on its spine had not yet dried.
The Age of Grand Duchess Rosalind.
She herself knew nothing about it. Too busy chasing the figures on her desk, she probably wouldn't have paid any mind to whatever the court historians were writing.
In a corner of the desk, a single sheet of paper lay spread open.
A list of name candidates for the child, half-written by the two of them.
Lucas's handwriting and Rosalind's went back and forth, line after line.
But nothing was settled.
"Let's decide once they're born and we've seen their face," Lucas said,
and Rosalind returned, "Before then, I'll make sure you know exactly what I like."
The list would grow longer yet.
It could be rewritten as many times as they liked.
—And no one can take it away.
Outside the window, the white garlands swayed in the night wind.
Tomorrow, surely, someone in the city would call her name first again.