The ladies reflexively jumped to their feet at the violet eyes that sparked between her fingers. They would have loved to endure this moment somehow, not wanting to miss a second of this spectacle, but if the Viscountess said it was a cold, then it was a cold.
A cold that no one dared question, one where symptoms and timing were completely irrelevant.
“How long are you going to keep this up, Tiara?”
“Mother.”
After Countess Conrad and Viscountess LeBien quickly withdrew, Viscountess Cartien leaned back against the sofa and crossed her legs. Tatiana’s eyebrows twitched at her mother’s face, which suddenly showed signs of fatigue.
“I asked what this was.”
“Can’t you tell by looking? It’s fabric for your dress.”
“So why do I need a dress like this?”
“…Oh my. My dear child.”
The corners of the Viscountess’s mouth curved up gently. Despite her perfectly elegant smile, a tense atmosphere blazed between mother and daughter like flames in the fireplace.
“You seem to have lost quite a bit of sense these past few days. It’s obviously for your engagement dress.”
“……”
“You’ll soon be a Duchess, so shouldn’t we do at least this much?”
Viscountess Cartien lightly pulled the torso beside her. The fabric, white as fresh snow and fluffy, was so soft it seemed it would melt at the slightest touch.
“You should feel it too. After all, it’s best to make a dress from fabric you like.”
“Who am I supposed to be engaged to?”
“…Tatiana.”
The Viscountess had a habit of calling her by her full name instead of her nickname when things needed to be serious. As Viscountess Cartien rose toward Tatiana, who stood with an incredulous expression, Tatiana also approached her mother as if she’d been waiting.
“How could you arrange something like this! You, of all people, know what humiliation I suffered that day!”
Tatiana’s voice, higher than ever before, was filled with rage, and her clenched fists trembled. She desperately wanted to sweep everything away, the fabric, the torso, to make it all disappear from her sight, yet at the same time, she didn’t want to waste energy on such trivial things.
“Was this your plan from the beginning! I thought you understood me, but meanwhile you were preparing another engagement? You said to my face that if I didn’t like it, I’d never have to see him again, but behind my back you told the Duke to pursue me and even told him where to find me? Why didn’t you just invite him to the house?”
“I was going to.”
“Ha…”
“It would have been better if you’d brought him home today.”
Viscountess Cartien raised her brown eyebrows with a coldly settled expression. At her mother’s reaction, full of boredom as if listening to a tedious opera, Tatiana choked up and clutched her chest.
“Mother! How could you, of all people!”
“Because it’s me.”
“Mother!”
“Yes. Because you’re my daughter and I’m your mother. Would I have done this if you were someone else?”
Not a chance.
She swept away the dress hem in front of her with a cold gesture. After all, it was just a tool to show that ‘there are no problems with the union between the Cartien Viscounty and the Atlas Duchy,’ so there was no need to let obstacles block her path.
Whether it was just a dress or her prospective son-in-law’s whims.
“Tiara. Hasn’t that been enough time to sort out your feelings? There’s nothing good about dragging this out any longer. I’ve indulged your childishness enough.”
“Did you say childishness?”
“Then what would you call it?”
“……”
“I’ve never asked you to lift a finger until now. When your mother is trying to put you in a position that every woman in the world would envy, what should I call it when you can’t pull yourself together over such a trivial matter and argue with your own mother?”
Even her small gesture of tilting her head slightly while placing one hand on her chin, as if she truly couldn’t understand, was terrifyingly elegant.
“All I asked you to do was rest and sort out your feelings properly. Was even that too much?”
“I have sorted out my feelings. Completely.”
“Tatiana.”
“Whether it’s engagement or marriage, it’s over with the Duke. I don’t have a stomach strong enough to hold that man’s hand as if nothing happened after going through such an experience.”
Tatiana’s deeply subdued voice had also become unwaveringly noble. Come to think of it, among her five daughters, she was the one who most resembled her mother. She never easily got swept up in emotions.
Which could only please her mother.
“Did you really think I’d cry tears of joy if I met the Duke again? After such humiliation?”
“Humiliation, you say.”
“Then what would you call rolling around with another woman right before the engagement ceremony?”
“Tatiana, you really don’t know what true humiliation is.”
Oh dear, oh dear.
Viscountess Cartien, removing the hand that had been supporting her chin, quietly studied her youngest daughter. Unlike her pretty, gentle mouth, her eyes, whose age was impossible to guess, were only cold.
“True humiliation isn’t something like that. True humiliation is not being able to cry freely even when your debtor husband, whose only possession was a single title, dies. Do you know why?”
“Mother.”
“Because if I cry and collapse, your sisters starve. True humiliation is walking 10 miles without a carriage the day after your husband dies, carrying four daughters. Humiliation is clinging to your unwelcoming grandmother and begging for meals. The humiliation I know is having to cover my mouth while hiding in a storage room with morning sickness, unable to properly eat even the bread I earned by enduring being called a husband-killer.”
“……”
“Compared to that, this is nothing at all. My dear.”
The Viscountess’s terrifyingly hardened gaze melted like snow and focused on Tatiana again. Toward her youngest daughter, who looked at her with confusion at this story she was hearing for the first time, on the verge of tears, the Viscountess smiled as if it were nothing.
“Actually, maybe now is much better. Her Imperial Majesty has decided to give you the Mouton villa as compensation for this incident. It’s the warmest place in Lebron, so it’ll be good for spending winter, and when upsetting things like this happen, you can rest there.”
“…Don’t you have any pride, Mother?”
“Pride, you said?”
At her youngest daughter’s eyes, which held only contempt now that the shock had passed, Viscountess Cartien burst into hollow laughter. Her red lips, glimpsed behind her fingertips, curved as if truly amused.
“If I had cared about pride, you wouldn’t have been born. Tatiana Lauren de Cartien, my most beloved daughter.”
△▲△▲△
A cold wind blew through the Cartien estate like never before. With all four daughters married and only the two of them left as real family, the mother and daughter turning their backs on each other created an atmosphere like thin ice.
It was on a completely different level from obvious fights involving raised voices or bursting into tears. Like predators keeping each other in check, an extreme tension that dried the blood filled the Viscounty. It got so bad that the servants whispered among themselves that things were better when Lady Regina had taken polo sticks and smashed up the entire house with full swings.
‘At this rate, our young lady will die first!’
Unable to bear it any longer, Anne secretly slipped out of the estate and went to Count Oberdeen’s house, tearfully begging for help from Annesia, the eldest daughter of the Cartien family. Never having dreamed such a thing would happen at her family home, she immediately rushed to the Cartien estate. However, what Annesia encountered upon arrival was a scene she never could have expected.
“…Mother, what are you doing right now?”
“Can’t you tell by looking? Preparing for the engagement ceremony.”
Viscountess Cartien, who had removed her gold-rimmed glass monocle from in front of the jewelry box, raised her eyebrows at her eldest daughter. Her beautiful face, peaceful to the point of being radiant, showed not even a hint of upset or haggardness anywhere. Rather, the twins who had arrived first and been caught by their mother looked much more pitiful with their pale, wan appearance.
“The jewelry just arrived. What do you think of it, Annesia?”
“…But Tiara is—”
“Right. We’ll probably need to resize everything. After starving herself for days, even her fingers must have gotten thinner.”
Oh right.
The Viscountess calmly set down the diamond ring as if she’d just remembered. Even at a glance, the brilliant ring that looked to be at least a hundred carats had an obvious source.
“M-Mother! So you’re really going to proceed with the marriage to Duke Atlas?”
“Of course. Did you think this marriage would fall through?”
Viscountess Cartien raised both corners of her mouth, paying no mind to her daughter who stood there stunned and bewildered. As Annesia looked around frantically, her chest heaving with shock, not knowing where to look, the Viscountess didn’t forget to follow her gaze and survey the surroundings.
“What? Were you worried the whole house would be turned upside down like with Regina?”
“……”
“That would have been better. I could just watch quietly until she smashed everything and exhausted herself.”
“What about Tiara? Where is Tiara?”
This isn’t the time for this.
Feeling like she couldn’t get through at all, Annesia looked around for her youngest sister and sent Ann upstairs. After Ann hurriedly disappeared following her signal to pack some things and come down, the Viscountess muttered.
“…I’ll have to send that girl away soon too. How dare she spread my family’s business around.”
“Mother. That’s not the point. Anne was so worried about Tiara—”
“Worried? I’m worried because she’s too fine.”
Viscountess Cartien, crossing her legs, leaned back against the silk sofa embroidered with large magnolias. Now that the daughters currently in Lebron had gathered in one place, her main point was about to begin.
“That child is different from Regina. Different from all of you, of course.”
“So you’re determined to marry her to the Duke?”
“If you’re going to say such things, why don’t you bring me a better groom than Duke Atlas?”
“……”
Viscountess Cartien lifted her chin sharply like a warning to Viviana, who was shaking her head.
“Do you think it’s easy to find a man with that kind of wealth, that kind of title, that kind of background? Since the previous Duke and Duchess are gone, she won’t have to deal with in-laws like you do, Vivi. And there aren’t troublesome in-law brothers to worry about like with you, Kitty.”
“But the Duke had an affair!”
“Ah yes, an affair.”
Right, that’s what happened.
Leave a Reply