“H-Hmm? This is your interrogation!”
“Our battle arose from a clash of opinions about your Starbinding. More importantly—did the tea party conclude as you hoped?”
“As I hoped...?” I repeated, blinking at him. I was unsure why Kenntrips took such a keen interest in the matter.
“How has Lady Rozemyne said that she can assist you? And what plans did the two of you devise? As you must be aware, I cannot provide my help without knowing. Oh, and if you had any doubts, Rasantark has no desire to aid you, so you should take great care to keep this information from him.”
I continued to stare at the apprentice scholar. Not a word that came out of his mouth made sense to me. I had not devised any “plans” with Lady Rozemyne, nor had that been my reason for inviting her to a tea party.
“Um... To what plans do you refer?” I finally asked.
“If you asked her to help unite you with Lord Wilfried, then surely one or two ideas—”
“I did no such thing!” I declared, emphatically shaking my head. Was my reputation truly sinister enough to warrant such an assumption?
“Excuse me? And why not?” Kenntrips asked, eyeing me as though I had said something truly absurd. “Did you not urgently invite her to a tea party to request her assistance with Lord Wilfried before she returns home for the Dedication Ritual?”
“No. I thought to ask for her help in repairing his damaged reputation.”
“You held a tea party over something so pointless?”
“It is not pointless,” I retorted with a glare.
Kenntrips grimaced as if the very act of speaking to me made his head ache. “Lord Wilfried needs only to find a new fiancée; then his reputation will recover well enough on its own. How can you act so leisurely when you are running out of time? Do you truly wish to marry Rasantark or me? Does the love that inspired you to betray our duchy mean so little to you?”
I could only swallow in response. Each question drove me deeper and deeper into a corner.
“The duty to carry out the oaths made through bride-stealing ditter falls not just to Lord Wilfried, but to Lady Rozemyne as well. If you would only explain that to her, she would not refuse to aid you. And with her support, marrying into Ehrenfest would be trivial.”
Kenntrips spoke as though I wished to marry into Ehrenfest as a matter of course, when the truth of the matter was far less simple. “Because his engagement to Lady Rozemyne was canceled, Lord Wilfried seems to have lost his position as Ehrenfest’s next aub,” I explained. “Therefore—”
“If the loss of one engagement is why he no longer has that security, then he can regain it with another. Coupled with the pressure our duchy could put on Ehrenfest, it would not be at all challenging.”
As correct as Kenntrips was, I doubted the future he spoke of was one Lord Wilfried would desire. I had just been told that he had wanted the engagement to fall through, as he hoped to be freed from his position as the next aub.
“Why are you being so insistent?” I asked. “If you are so strongly against being my suitor, then tell me. I can say as much to Father.”
“I am not against it, I assure you. I yearned for this opportunity even when we were young.”
Kenntrips made his declaration so casually that, for a moment, I could not even process it. A reserved “Um...” was the best I was able to manage.
“Long have I considered it my duty to protect you. Even when you were known as Lady Crybaby, I wished to do everything I could to ensure your safety, whether my attempts to become a knight were successful or not. But in the end, I was not enough. In your game of bride-stealing ditter, you chose not my magic tool but the hand of another.”
I recalled the weapon I had clung to throughout the match. My brother had given it to me, insisting that it would burn everything around me to a crisp on activation and that I should use it as a last resort.
“As I understood it, the tool you prepared was especially dangerous,” I said. “It ran the risk of harming my own knights as much as the enemy’s...”
“Indeed. But while our knights fought back the Sovereign intruders, you were on your own. And rather than taking up arms or using my magic tool, you chose to put your trust in Lord Wilfried. As a scholar, I cannot protect you if you do not use the tools I make. It was then that I understood you have no need of my admiration for you.”
It had moved me greatly to see Lord Wilfried race to my side in his concern. And when he had offered me his hand, my heart had raced in a way I could not even hope to describe. Never had it even crossed my mind that I was trampling on Kenntrips’s feelings for me.
“Kenntrips, I—”
“Marrying either Rasantark or me would make the most sense to ensure stability back home and secure Lord Lestilaut’s position as the next archduke. As we are both your brother’s retainers, it would not require the creation of a separate faction, and taking an archnoble husband would make you unable to become the aub. That is why neither one of your engagement candidates was chosen from your own retainers.”
I nodded. It seemed that Father would never permit me to take an archduke candidate as a groom.
“If you do not join us in supporting Lord Lestilaut,” Kenntrips explained, “then you risk sowing the seeds of chaos back home. Rasantark stated that if you married one of us, we would not have cause to worry. He also demanded to know why I encouraged you to pursue Lord Wilfried, whom he insists is an irresponsible coward of a man. He told me to put my mind to better use—namely to ensure that you stay in Dunkelfelger. He is very straightforward whenever you are concerned. I regret that I am not.”