“I… do want to get married. …To someone else. Simply dissolving the engagement won’t be enough. I need to break the engagement and have my position as a member of the nobility stripped from me as punishment.”
Claudio narrowed his eyes.
Why would she want to have her status revoked?
“You want to eliminate the status difference between you and your lover?”
“Yes… I don’t want to be a noblewoman anymore. I want to just be Stella.”
Still leaning his chin on his hand, Gian looked up at Stella with an astounded expression. It seemed that he certainly hadn’t been expecting this.
“I see, so that rumor…”
Ophelia gasped at Gian’s muttered comment. Stella had been the one spreading the rumors about her! Rather than feeling anger at being used in Stella’s scheming, Ophelia was more surprised than anything.
“A fated meeting between two star-crossed lovers who are forced to keep their feelings a secret, and a seemingly insurmountable difference in social rank…”
She’d been referring to herself, hadn’t she? Claudio gently extricated his arm from Ophelia’s now-loose grip and gave her a little pat on the head.
“The man you’re in love with is the third son of a baron, right?”
“…Yes. His family is in service to ours, having no lands of their own. As someone with virtually no possibility of inheriting his family’s title, he might as well be a commoner. There’s no way my father would ever allow us to marry.”
Gian removed a handkerchief from his jacket pocket and used it to blot away Stella’s tears. It seemed he felt sympathy for her predicament. Perhaps he was drawing a parallel in his mind between their situations, both unable to escape their family’s plans for them. Ophelia gazed at them.
“If my behavior caused the king’s brother to break our engagement, I’d have no hope of marrying well after that. If that happened, Father would happily wash his hands of me in the quickest way possible, even if it meant marriage to a younger son of a minor noble. So please, Lord Claudio, I beg you… Use your power to ruin me.”
Claudio and Gian both looked at Ophelia questioningly. It seemed they both wanted to confirm Stella’s conviction. Ophelia wasn’t shaking at all.
That’s it! That night at the ball, when I first spotted Stella, she was saying, “I was very much looking forward to attending tonight’s ball with you, Lord Claudio.” …While imagining attending with someone else.
“Director…”
When Ophelia looked up at him, Claudio sucked in a sharp breath and furrowed his brows as if considering the matter deeply.
“…Stella, from the moment your attention fell on Ophelia, I quietly initiated an investigation into you. I knew you wouldn’t act like such a foolish, run-of-the-mill, vain, and airheaded woman for no reason. His Majesty wouldn’t have selected you as my fiancée if you were that kind of person.”
“…”
Stella didn’t say anything. She stood there silently, shoulders slumped, looking at the ground. How hadn’t she noticed? An investigation into someone the director of the Ministry of Justice considered suspicious was nothing if not thorough.
“I found out about your relationship with your childhood friend, the third son of the baron, quickly enough. When would you tell me about it? Or would you go through with marrying me, keeping it a secret the whole time? It’s almost a given for nobles of any country to have lovers after marriage, after all. I was wondering what you planned to do, but I never imagined you would resort to this.” With a long sigh, Claudio folded his arms and looked at Stella steadily. “Our engagement has already been dissolved.”
Stella was so shocked she couldn’t force her voice to work. All she could do was stare at Claudio in disbelief, her entire face refuting his claim.
“I had a little talk with that third son of the baron of yours. And I brought the results of my investigation with me.”
Stella’s shoulders quaked.
What Claudio referred to as “a little talk” must’ve included being dragged off somewhere and grilled relentlessly. Recalling her and Bernard’s ordeal of being carted off to the Ministry of Justice without any notice and questioned for what felt like hours, Ophelia felt a pang of sympathy for this faceless third son of a baron.
“He quickly understood what you were trying to do for him. It seems that he immediately went to speak with your father to try and negotiate with him for permission to marry you.”
“What?!”
At this, Stella finally found her voice. It seemed this was the first she’d heard of it. If possible, her face grew even paler.
“Just the other day, Marquis Meucci came to apologize to me in person. He was quite agitated, realizing that he’d served up a daughter who was hiding a secret lover to the duke who infamously despises liars. It was truly amusing.”
“F-Father…”
“He said that he couldn’t let his daughter appear in society anymore after incurring the wrath of the king’s own brother. It seems he plans to force the baron’s third son to take responsibility for you and bequeath one of his own minor titles upon his new son-in-law.”
“Wha…” Gian, who spoke up without meaning to, couldn’t help being impressed. No one could’ve hoped for things to go this well. Claudio had steered the situation so perfectly… Or, more likely, the entire thing had gone according to his plan all along.
Stella still didn’t seem to believe it, because she stared at Claudio with furrowed brows.
“Marquis Meucci still hasn’t announced your engagement, so I was planning to go give him a kick in the rear to get him going, but… well, I certainly didn’t expect you to raise such a ruckus.”
“…I’d thought that Avere’s been blushing and acting like there’s something he wants to say recently, but… I never would’ve guessed it was something like this…”
Stella had both hands pressed to her mouth and was blinking over and over again as she struggled to process the huge revelation. Ophelia presumed that Avere must be the name of her lover, the baron’s third son.
Claudio leaned back in his seat, smirking faintly. “I’m sure the marquis doesn’t want to make it an order from your father, but he instead wanted to let your beloved tell you himself. Above all else, the marquis wants his daughter to be happy. You should’ve consulted your father in the first place, rather than resorting to all this.”
Stella’s shoulders trembled for a moment, but then a stream of tears flowed from her azure eyes, and she bowed her head deeply. “Lord Claudio, thank you so much. …And Lady Ophelia… I’m sorry for everything.”
Ophelia nodded her acknowledgment of the apology Stella delivered in a shaking voice. Ophelia’s arms and legs were still, but her heart trembled with an intense heat.
When Stella had previously asked about Ophelia’s mother, who’d left the nobility to become a commoner, it must’ve been because she was considering a similar path. Would it be possible to live happily, even if it meant giving up one’s life as an aristocrat to live as a peasant, as long as you could be with the person you love? She must’ve been wondering about that.
Ophelia’s eyes dropped to her own hands, which had ceased shaking by this point.
However, I can’t believe it turned out like this…
“I can’t believe… that the director got dumped…”
“Huh?!”
“Lady Ophelia?!”
“Ophie! What are you saying?!”
Ophelia frantically slapped her hands over her mouth, but it was already too late.