She wanted to tell the mayor that it was his son who had made it impossible for her to stay in town in the first place, but she’d put up with a fancy inn if Vince wanted her to.
“I guess that’s fine...”
“I can stay with you ’til Nelly and Allen show up,” Haruto offered.
“That’d help.” She finally had her destination for the night decided, then.
“He’ll still want you to come for dinner, though.”
“Whaaat?”
“Ha ha ha. I’ll join you for that.” For some reason, Vince was coming with them to dinner, it seemed.
She’d come here all enthusiastic after receiving the request from Rosa, but she was deflating now thinking it was all leading up to a visit to Ted’s house. But she shook her head, trying to convince herself that it wasn’t that bad.
True, he was the worst when she was living in Rosa. But on their way to Camellia and when they’d reunited in the capital, he hadn’t done anything mean to her, he’d just been a bit curt. At the time, she’d been able to think of him as just another traveling companion.
She should stop thinking about all this random stuff just because she was back in Rosa, Sara told herself. “I just have to think of it as my duty as one of the Invited to rub elbows with the important people wherever I go.”
After that, she was guided to an inn in the Second District. She took a relaxing bath in a single room without Nelly and by the time she was dressed again, it was time to head to the mayor’s house. She put on the dress Ri had gotten her for more formal occasions and waited for Vince to come pick her up.
Eventually, there was a knock on the door, and she opened it to find a more neat-looking Vince than usual, his hair combed back. Haruto was next to him.
“We’re here to get you, Sara. I know I said as much earlier, but you really have gotten pretty.”
Sara smiled, accepting the compliment without argument. “Well, should we get going?”
They headed from the Second District to the First. Sara had never been there before. They headed through the gate of the slightly shorter inner wall to find a small noble district at the heart of the town.
“Wow, look at these mansions!”
They were a lot smaller than Ri’s mansion in Hydrangea, and the mansions in the noble district of the capital were fancier, but Rosa didn’t have much land to work with, so each building had to be relatively small. Still, the mansions in this district all had spacious gardens and fences with big, fancy gates.
“It’s nothing like the Rosa I know.”
No matter where she looked, there were no buildings that looked particularly small or cheap, and the people walking around the district looked just as fancy as all the nobles she’d seen in the capital.
“Even in Rosa, if you lived here, you might not believe there were people living outside the walls.”
“Yeah. Hard to say if there’s a bigger gap between the rich and the poor anywhere else,” Vince said with some chagrin. “Come on, it’s the fanciest mansion, there. They wanted to send a carriage to pick you up from the inn, you know. It was a lot of work getting them to back off.”
The mansion Vince indicated was even more gaudy than the ones around it. There was a guard at the gate, and in the garden there was a fountain. And when they knocked on the big door and were led inside, they were greeted by the whole household.
It was a bit strange to see Bradley waiting there with a smile like he was part of the family, and Sara had never expected to feel relieved to see Ted’s face. She almost burst out laughing, and her voice came out kind of strange because she was trying to hold her mirth back.
“Ted’s...smiling... His eyes are dead, though,” she said quietly and Vince elbowed her.
“Keep it to yourself. I don’t think he’s happy about this either.”
Between Ted and a beautiful lady who must have been his mother was the stern-faced mayor. He almost looked like an actor in a movie.
“It pleases me greatly to finally meet you, young Invited. And may I say, you are quite the beauty.” The mayor spread his arms in an exaggerated welcoming gesture. “I am the mayor, Conrad. I hear you’re on good terms with my son Theodore.”
“My name is Sara. He helped me out in the capital.” They were absolutely not “on good terms,” but Sara was enough of an adult that she knew how to respond in a tactful way.
“I’m glad to see you as well, Haruto. And it’s been far too long since you’ve visited, Vince.”
“Well, we see each other enough at the Guild, don’t we?”
Haruto had eaten here a few times already, so he seemed comfortable here, and Vince seemed to be on good enough terms with the mayor as well.
“Well, Ted?”
“Right. This way, Sara.”
After they exchanged greetings with the mayor’s somewhat timid-looking wife, it seemed Ted would be guiding them to their dining location.
Though Ted had a smile on his face, before reminiscing over their reunion or anything like that, he cautioned Sara, “Don’t say anything unnecessary. And the engagement or whatever might come up, but it wasn’t my idea. Just ignore it.”
“Well, I don’t really have anything to say in the first place, unnecessary or no. I’m turning down all of my marriage proposals anyway, so that’s fine.”
“Good.”
The blunt words were just like Ted. Sara was actually relieved to hear them.