One relaxed afternoon, when the sun shone in at its brightest, two young ladies sat at identical tables on either side of a set of bars, looking like mirror images of each other and enjoying a spot of tea.
“The moving party was a hit, Alexandra,” Rachel said gleefully. “Thank you for assisting with the arrangements. You were a great help.”
Sitting across from Rachel was a girl with wavy blonde hair and distinctive emerald green eyes. Rachel’s words prompted the corners of her mouth to turn up, forming an intimidating smile.
Alexandra Mountbatten was the daughter of a marquess. Rachel felt she could be herself with Alexandra, so she was a friend and special companion whom Rachel treated almost like family. Compared to Rachel, whose appearance was more demure and understated, Alexandra’s appearance was more flashy, and her beautiful countenance brimmed with confidence. If she were to wear pants instead of a dress and carry a sword, she’d look like the type you’d want to call “Sis.” Hers was a different sort of beauty than Rachel’s.
“You can leave things outside the country to me, Rachel,” Alexandra said. “It’s about all I can do for you, after all.”
Because Alexandra’s father was a high-ranking member of the foreign service, many in the upper echelons of other countries knew her. The reason so many ambassadors had attended Rachel’s moving party—and the reason bad rumors about the prince hadn’t spread after—was thanks to the groundwork Alexandra had laid for it.
“Still, it seems you’ve been enjoying slapping His Highness around. I wish you’d let me in on the fun sooner.”
The provocative smirk on Alexandra’s face suited her well. With the dungeon’s stone walls behind her, she looked almost like the female protagonist of one of those adventure stories.
Rachel, meanwhile, arched her eyebrows and gave Alexandra a small, troubled smile. “It’s nice, but if I beat him too badly, I worry that the stress will make him explode in strange ways.”
“I get you. So...what’s next? Are you letting him off the hook?” Alexandra pointlessly asked, knowing full well that that wouldn’t be happening.
Rachel gave Alexandra a weak smile and shrugged. “Yes, it’s about time to pack it in, so I’m going to hurry up and crush him before he blows up.”
Rachel’s smile only looked weak.
“I’d have liked to see you draw this out some more, and have some fun with it,” Alexandra said, “but what can you do?”
“Such a shame,” Rachel replied. “But His Highness never learns, so before he goes crazy and does something reckless, I’ll have to hit him hard enough that he can’t recover.”
“I’ll do my best to support you,” Alexandra stated.
“Hee hee, thanks.”
The two young ladies exchanged charming smiles and clinked their tea cups together.
When George Ferguson disembarked from the carriage, he violently shoved his bag into the waiting butler’s hands and entered through the front door. He stomped off to his own room, his footsteps echoing loudly in the wide hallways.
“Damn it! They’re all useless...”
The plan to back his sister into a corner was going nowhere. Light harassment didn’t work on her, but anything more intense would harm her and make it difficult to justify the means. He needed to find the line where they could make her concede but not incur the disapproval of any third parties. He wasn’t confident that line even existed, though.
It didn’t help that the courtiers were afraid to get involved. They wanted to stay out of it until the king rendered his judgment, and they always found some excuse or another not to lay a hand on his sister. The best George had managed was to get the knights to keep an eye out for spies entering the prison. Yet though his sister had held a party in the dungeon, which would have been impossible without help from the outside, security had yet to catch so much as a single mouse going in.
George had also tried to stop the ducal house from assisting her, but he didn’t know how effective that had been. As far as he could tell, there was nothing going on inside the mansion, yet his sister was most definitely receiving supplies. No one in the house dared oppose George directly, but he sensed they were only loyal to him when he was watching.
Honestly, George was at his wit’s end. He couldn’t see the enemies who threatened Margaret, the light of their lives.
“Damn it all!”
George opened the door to his room, thinking that he would just sleep for the rest of the day. He took one step inside, and when he looked around... Well, it was impossible to succinctly describe the emotions he experienced. He felt he deserved to be praised for not screaming out loud. At the very least, it was impressive that his legs didn’t give way.
They were right there, in the middle of his room. Books and paintings were neatly displayed on the tables and chairs as if they were fancy bookshelves. These items were things he’d hidden—erotic novels and portraits of actresses in various states of undress. His secret diaries, which contained things he could never tell anyone, and fan letters he’d started writing with no intention of sending were also featured. George had carefully hidden them in various places so that the maids wouldn’t find them when they were cleaning, or so he’d thought, but here they were, all gathered in one place.
“Wh-Wh-Wha...?”
Panicking, George hastily gathered all the pieces of his secret shame and desperately tried to find a place to hide them. Obviously, if they were on display like this, his secret was already out, but he couldn’t help himself. He tried putting them in a bag to temporarily stash them under the bed, out of sight at least.
“Damn! Who was it?!”
Who would have been likely to do something like this? It had to have been one of the servants, one of his sister’s sympathizers who didn’t like what he’d been doing.
The servant’s faces flitted through George’s mind one after another as he hurriedly scooped up the books on top of the tables. As he did, an unfamiliar envelope—pink, like the kind women used—slipped out of one of them.
“What’s this? I have a bad feeling...”
Against his better judgment, George had to look. He opened the envelope. Inside was just a single piece of letter paper.
He opened the letter, glanced through it, and...this time, he did scream.
That night, in the front room of the dungeon, George was kowtowing in front of the bars.
“Forgive me, sister!” he said, trembling and pressing his head to the floor.
Rachel, who’d been preparing to go to bed when he’d arrived, looked at him with her head inclined to the side.
“My, George. What is this all about?”
Rachel was playing ignorant, but she wasn’t—not a chance.
George rubbed his forehead against the uneven stone floor, desperately shouting, “The great queen of terror! I am so sorry for deciding that you were responsible for the bullying Margaret was experiencing without so much as talking to you!”
“Oh, dear. What could have happened so suddenly to make you say such a thing?”
Even if Rachel continued playing innocent, George had no choice but to keep bowing his head to her.
“Please, please, sister. Keep what was written in that letter a secret.”
After she listened to her little brother’s desperate plea, Rachel asked, “What’s gotten into you? The heir to a ducal family mustn’t kneel on the ground like that. Now, as for what the letter said...” When George tried to respond, she cut him off, cocking her head to the other side. “Were you talking about the time you wet the bed in August of your fifth year? Or the time when you were seven and the fireworks scared you so much that you wet yourself where you stood? But those are such small things. Just funny little stories, really.”