“I-I-I’m sorry!” I cried.
“No, I should be the one apologizing,” he replied. “When I heard that Lady Elena had gone home, I thought I would clean up. I apologize for disturbing you.”
“No. No, no. It’s fine. I shouldn’t have just sat here staring into space.”
“It’s fine to stay right where you are if that’s what you feel like. I’m only clearing the table, and it won’t take more than a moment.”
The truth of the matter was, I was already treating the dining room like it was my room. Still, Whateley was nothing if not the sharp one, and he noticed something about me as I made to leave.
“Do you require somebody to talk to, my lady?” he asked.
Trust the family steward to sense when I needed to get something off my chest. I didn’t want to blurt out everything—that would be plain embarrassing—but I also knew that the haze would never clear if I didn’t talk about it.
“You’ve so much more life experience than me, Whateley, and I wonder...does that extend to matters of love too?”
“Love...you say?” mused the steward. “I wouldn’t say my experience is abundant, but I’ve experienced as much as any other man, I suppose.”
I was so glad that he was willing to just hear me out and take me seriously.
“Just to be clear, I’d very much prefer this all to be kept secret.”
“I won’t speak a word of it, I promise.”
“Well, yes, it’s you, and I trust you implicitly... Erm... How to put this...? So when it comes to determining whether you love someone or not, where do you start?”
“Hmm,” Whateley murmured. “Where to draw the line between like and love, then...”
Ordinarily, there shouldn’t have been any need to ask any such question. At this moment, however, I couldn’t seem to trust my own senses on the matter. Achim’s words seemed to echo in my mind when I thought about it.
“Yes, well, in my case,” said Whateley after some thought, “it’s a matter of whether or not I want to be by the person’s side. What matters is whether or not I wish for that person’s happiness. To see their smile, you could say.”
“To see their smile...”
Conventional wisdom, you might have called it, but for Whateley the words were also true.
“But it’s not something where I’m beyond desperate to be with them. In truth...the chances of us ever being together are near zero,” I admitted.
“While it may be easier said than done, that leaves the option of a love that is maintained from such a distance that nobody is left hurt.”
“I understand...I think.”
And anyway, it’s not like I’m completely clueless when it comes to love anyway. I lived another life before this one, and it was as ordinary as most others, even in that regard...
“You seem troubled,” said Whateley, seeing my hands at the side of my head. “Is something bothering you?”
“It’s nothing. Just a slight headache.”
I’d tried to comb through my old memories only to find them decidedly vague. It was like picking up an old photo of someone you knew only to find that the face had faded away. I could still recall the people I’d been close to, but they felt distant, as if they now existed somewhere even farther away. I felt a sudden pang of homesickness throb through my heart. And yet, I didn’t hate the sensation. I didn’t question myself for choosing to stop my search of the past. It felt entirely natural, in fact.
When I thought more on Whateley’s advice, I came to understand that when it came to Reinald, I did not want to get hurt.
“You fall for who you fall for, I suppose,” I said. “Whether they’re troublemakers or otherwise.”
“Things like rank and status have little to do with it. There is how well the two people in question get along, and sometimes love blooms entirely by accident. When it comes to the heart, it is always this way—it rarely listens to what we decide with our heads.”
“Can it be true even for someone pursuing their own demise?”
“Now that is a more complicated matter. Were I just a mere steward hearing of it, I might move to stop things depending on what stage they were at. However, being a member of the family means my stance differs.”
“I see. In which case, let us both forget that I asked that last question.”
Whateley had already surmised exactly who I was talking about. Were he to speak his thoughts, he knew they would leave me uncertain, and so as the family steward he said nothing.
“I suppose I’ll...think on it for a time. But Whateley?”
“Yes, my lady?”
“Please don’t think that I...that it was through some schoolgirl crush that I decided the fate of the Conrad family.”
Love, romance, affection, infatuation—these were not the reasons I chose to follow Reinald when I was in Falkrum. I chose the best possible option for the Conrad family, and I did not want Whateley to misunderstand that. While it was true that I wanted to see the extent to which Reinald saw through his goals, it was because the Conrad family were safe that I could bear the whole world talking of me as though I were a wretched witch who had sold out her home.
Whateley must have seen this worry in me, for his eyes went wide for a moment.
“But of course,” he said, bowing deeply. “I never would have left such a decision in the hands of someone who would be so easily whipped around by the whims of their own heart.”
“Do you think Wendel understands too?” I asked.
“He is wise for his years, and I believe so.”
I didn’t think I’d made the wrong decision, but I’d needed to hear it from Whateley. I’d needed him to speak the words himself.
“Thank you...” I said.
“Do not mention it. There is little else an old man like myself can offer but an ear in time of need. Should you need it again, you need only ask.”
And yet, even then the haze in and around my heart persisted. I returned to my room and hid under the covers of my bed.
Do I want for Reinald and I to be together, is that it...?
I wanted to see him become emperor. He spoke of lofty goals, and though I understood that he was a bad man, even then I wanted to see him walk his path. Our paths had intertwined by a twist of fate, and it was by that twist that he was kind to me. His smile brought me joy. It was a happiness similar to what Ern’s smile brought me.
If I thought about things with a clear mind, I was quite a bit older than Reinald, and very much at the age when I should have been able to better manage danger.