He signaled to his adult attendant, then strode out of the room. Rasantark finished eating and departed just as quickly. I was lost for how to respond.
“Now then, milady... Let us entrust those preparations to the two lords. Focus on your meal for now.”
I took my seat. The other students seemed equally disturbed; they shot me less than furtive glances as they ate, then also took their leave.
“Something is clearly amiss,” I said, my head swimming even as I ate.
Heilliese and Andrea merely exchanged glances. If there was something they wished to tell me, then they must not have been able to broach it here. I made a mental note to ask them later.
“Speaking of which, Cordula...” I continued, “what did you mean when you said I have something to tell them?”
“The matter with Drewanchel, of course,” my head attendant responded, exasperated. “As your engagement candidates, they need to be informed. You failed to completely refuse the proposition, did you not?”
I averted my eyes and popped a small piece of herb-roasted hatel into my mouth. Indeed, it had slipped my mind that I would need to update them.
Kenntrips promised to assist me if I wished to leave for another duchy. Is he a man of his word, I wonder?
I shook my head. To even have such a thought made it seem like I was prepared to accept Lord Ortwin’s proposition, when that was anything but the case.
“Is something the matter, milady?” Cordula asked, bringing me back to my senses. I must have been poking at my hatel in a trance because, when I peered down at my plate, I saw that it was something of a mess.
I forced an innocent look and elegantly cut into my food, hoping to salvage the situation. “E-Erm... I do not see Raufereg anywhere. I suppose we are safe to keep him in the dark?”
Cordula’s eyes wandered to the doors. “Indeed, Lord Raufereg was not formally chosen by the aub. Not to mention, he is to blame for Lord Ortwin’s actions in the first place. You are free to ignore him.”
Eep! That is one terrifying look!
After finishing my meal, I went to the meeting room where Kenntrips and Rasantark awaited me. Rasantark was only half seated, as though primed to bolt toward me at any moment, while Kenntrips’s incessant finger tapping belied his calm exterior.
“Cordula, Heilliese—stay with me, if you would. The rest of you, please leave the room.”
The meeting room was small, so I sent most of my retainers away. We were about to have a rather private conversation, in any case, and they had their own matters to attend to.
I took the seat that was offered to me, and Rasantark finally settled into his chair. Kenntrips squeezed his gray eyes shut before sighing.
“Lady Hannelore, this might be blunt to the point of being rude, but I must ask nonetheless—were those hairpins a gift from Ehrenfest?”
“Indeed,” I said. “From Lady Rozemyne, to be precise. She declared them proof of our friendship and an expression of gratitude for my assistance in her true ditter match. Do you remember the hairpin my brother gave to Eineliebe? Well, mine were made by the same craftswoman.” I reached up and touched the accessories in question. “Wonderful, are they not?”
The pair exchanged puzzled expressions.
“From... Lady Rozemyne, you say?”
“Not Lord Wilfried?”
Why would they be from...?
“Ah!” I looked up with a start. “If they were meant as a gift from all of Ehrenfest, not just from Lady Rozemyne, then indeed, I will need to thank Lord Wilfried and Lady Charlotte too.” I had been invited to Lady Rozemyne’s personal library rather than to the castle to place my order, so I had assumed the hairpins were solely from her. More likely than not, they were actually a gift from the duchy as a whole.
“That is not what we meant...” Kenntrips said, massaging the bridge of his nose as if to soothe a headache. “We are asking whether they came from your escort partner for the graduation ceremony.”
My... escort partner?
“O-Of course not,” I said, rejecting the notion without hesitation. “How could they have, when I don’t even have an escort partner yet? Not just Lady Rozemyne but the female students of Ehrenfest and Alexandria wear such hairpins whether they have a partner or not. Can I not do the same?”
Cordula sighed. “I see the source of your confusion, as Lady Rozemyne wears her own hairpins and promised to give you some of your own so the two of you could match, but still... To the people of Dunkelfelger, hairpins from Ehrenfest are understood as gifts from escort partners given to women about to come of age.”
In my excitement to have received new hairpins, I had paid no mind to how they might be perceived. I clapped my hands in a moment of clarity and exclaimed, “So everyone thought I had chosen a partner from outside my engagement candidates!” No wonder those in the dining hall had treated me so strangely.
Heilliese slumped her shoulders. “I attempted to warn you before, but I see I was not clear enough.” When she remarked on my hairpins back in my room, she had apparently been trying to inform me of what they signified.
My apologies...
“I understand your reasoning, but all duchies other than Ehrenfest will come to the same mistaken conclusion we did,” Kenntrips said with a troubled smile. Truly, I had allowed my happiness to blind me.
It was never my intention to put my engagement candidates through such anguish. Honest!
Rasantark’s expression was gloomy to a ghastly degree, and his usually spirited chestnut eyes glared at my hairpins with vexation. It starkly contrasted the relief that Kenntrips now exuded.
“Rasantark,” I said, “could it be that these hairpins do not suit me?”
“No, they suit you exceptionally well, to the point that I now understand how one can fall victim to the Goddess of Chaos.”
The Goddess of Chaos tended to represent complex feelings of envy and resentment, so his words hardly felt like a compliment. What had inspired such strong emotions in him?