Annerosa Ortegamo’s Memories
MY one source of joy in those days was to gaze out of a tiny fenestella in our family’s gloomy, stuffy old mansion, over the glistening waves of the canal, at another world that seemed to teem with life.
“Anne, Annerosa! You’re up there again...?!”
“Oh, Mother. I’m sorry. I was searching for something,” I apologized as she would insist a lady should, fleeing the fenestella. While she was satisfied with my apology, it was clear I wouldn’t be deceiving her so easily.
“I’m going to have Dorio nail this window shut. It is better that you be deprived of light than for you to waste your good looks on commoners.”
“Mother, please! They cannot see me all the way from down there and through such a small window, no less.”
“Whether they can see you is not the matter at hand, darling. Even just a rumor suggesting that one of them might manage to catch sight of us is disturbing enough.”
“Please...”
“It is only a natural concern. You are to become the second princess, after all. We must give them no cause for concern.”
Her words bored deep into my heart.
Being an old noble family, the Ortegamos had been counts and countesses for a long time, and while we weren’t necessarily dirt poor, our life was far from comfortable.
Because of that, my mother, whose expectations of propriety and manners were unmatched, was hired to be the etiquette tutor for the second prince himself. As His Highness’s teacher, my mother earned both ample pride and ample compensation.
Thus, she spent more than half of each month holed up in the palace. During those periods, when I was able to break free of the shackles of her intense demands of propriety, my desire to observe the commoners through whatever crevice I could find, and eventually my desire to be one of them, grew increasingly stronger.
“Now then, it’s time to prepare for this evening’s party. I am told the second prince will be present as well. Annerosa, it would seem he has expressed a great deal of interest in seeing you there,” she pressed, her earlier displeasure seemingly forgotten in her excitement.
I sighed, that younger boy’s strikingly lovely face appearing in my mind.
“Annerosa, you made it.”
“Yes, I trust Your Highness is in good health.”
The party at the palace had begun. After I gave my greeting to the king and queen, the crowd began to swell around me. I separated from my mother amid her excited greetings to everyone around us, and slipped over to my usual position along the wall, where the second prince himself managed to find me.
“Pink is indeed your color,” he said, nodding at my dress before offering me his hand. “Might I interest you in a dance, m’lady Ortegamo?”
“Y-Yes. It would be my pleasure, Your Highness.”
I was a bit surprised. He had still seemed so juvenile when last we met, and yet this time, he so confidently guided my steps.
Whether or not he had picked up on my surprise, the thirteen-year-old second crown prince escorted me onto the dance floor with ease.
After we danced to one song, the second prince led me out to the terrace. Refusing the prince’s invitation was not an option available to the daughter of a mere count, so I did as I was told.
“Is the old man your escort again today?”
“Yes, Count Barson was kind enough to do so.”
“Ah, very well. In that case, I shall be respectful of him. He’s no threat.”
“Pardon?”
As a seventeen-year-old girl with no marital prospects, I was unable to attend parties such as this without an escort. Those escorts were often relatives.
Lately, it was not a cousin close in age, but my eldest uncle, which made me wonder if my mother had... I regarded the second prince’s face with a discerning eye.
“I am to take on a bride,” he said, in a voice more cheerful than ever before.
“You are?”
“My father, I mean, His Majesty has granted his permission. Of course, there are still many decisions to be made, but...Annerosa, I...”
“Y-Your Highness! You have nothing but my respect and have made an indelible impact on my life. Ever since that day with my mother...”
I was referring to the debutante ball held on my fifteenth birthday. That was the first time I had met the second prince, when he came to see my mother in our antechamber.
I was so nervous that even remembering it now made me feel faint. And yet the way he spoke to me, only a boy of eleven at the time, with such animated gestures, was so charming that it helped calm me.
“Thank you very much, Your Highness. You are by far the most interesting person I have met today!”
“You too, Annerosa! You’re the cutest and prettiest girl here!”
His cheeks bright red, the prince took my hand and kissed the back of it.
It was the one bright spot in my otherwise cold existence as a noble in high society.
It was only natural that it wouldn’t last.
“Your Highness, I will pray that you find a partner who is truly worthy in her status and suitable in age. May you have a truly happy marriage,” I said, then quickly dashed off.
I ignored the second prince calling after me.
“A gift?”
“Yes, from the royal palace. I’m certain it is from the second prince. Your favorite flowers, preserved in sugar for you. My, he even remembered to preserve them as I taught him.”
My mother smiled, holding the box the flowers had arrived in and instructing the maid to prepare some tea.
The fact that he would send me a gift, even though I ran off as I did, lifted my spirits a bit. I could never hate the kind royal. I was actually rather fond of him.
However, I couldn’t bring myself to discuss what had happened. While the Ortegamo family was a noble one that kept up the appearances of proper nobility, it was nigh unthinkable that I could realistically become the second princess.
Ahh, being a noble...how I hated it.
I desperately wanted to become a commoner. To live on the other side of those glistening canals.
And as I bit into those sweets the prince sent me, my consciousness suddenly left my body.
I heard something, once, a voice beyond a purple veil calling out to me.
It sounded as if it was crying or shouting; either way, the voice’s owner was in desperate pain.
And in that time, very unpleasant words like fragments of shattered conversations fell in pieces around me.
“Candidate.”
“His Highness, the Prince—”
“Betrothal—”
“Mistake—”
“The Duke’s—”
Ohh, none of those things mattered anymore.
Someone, please tell that sobbing person not to cry. Please don’t cry for me.
Because I love—
And that was how I let go of my former life as Annerosa Ortegamo.