Rachel smiled at her terrified brother.
“If we’re talking about things that aren’t so little, could you mean that time in May when you were eleven and snuck into my closet to touch my dresses? Or perhaps you mean that June when you were fourteen, when you checked that no one was around before sniffing my bedsheets? If that’s not it, then maybe you mean last July when you were fifteen and stole my unwashed underwear and kept them as a sort of treasure?”
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry, sister! Sorry! Sorry!”
Terrified, George could do nothing but apologize repeatedly.
In the pink envelope George had found was a record with snippets of embarrassing things he’d done that would end his life were they to ever get out. There was no question that his sister had penned it. It was written plainly, in a neat hand that he recognized, laying out a timeline of all the things he’d done that would ruin him should the public find out—things he’d done after checking that no one was around and things even he had forgotten about until this letter brought them back up. They were things that his sister and her personal servants never should’ve seen, yet they were laid out on paper as if they were a business memo.
And if Rachel knew all of it...
George remembered some things that had happened between the lines of what Rachel had written, so she must have known about those too. In other words, the letter in the pink envelope contained only a selection of his deeds. If his sister could write all this out in such detail, there was no way she didn’t know every last sordid detail of his history.
Rachel, who was still insisting on playing innocent, gave him a troubled look, as if she were perplexed by the way he was quivering.
“Goodness, George. You needn’t be so afraid. I simply wrote all those things in a letter because I don’t know when His Highness might execute me, and I wanted to get all my thoughts out, you know? I was thinking I had a lot of fond and happy memories. I only wanted to share them with you.”
Then, having established her absolute dominance as his elder sister, Rachel smiled beautifully and elegantly, though her smile didn’t reach her eyes.
“George, you’re a growing boy. When you fell for Miss Margaret, it was only natural you would forget all those little memories with your big sister. With me in prison, liable to die any day now, I hope my independent little brother will remember me, if only a little, so that even should I perish, I might live on inside your heart as your big sister.”
“N-No!”
There was no way that Rachel would quietly accept execution after she’d soundly beaten Prince Elliott all those times. George knew that Rachel knew that too, but he wasn’t so ignorant of his current position that he could point that out now.
Rachel gave George a charming smile, one so wonderful that you wouldn’t imagine it came from someone who supposedly feared her looming execution, and held up a book in her hands.
“Ah, but you’re so taken with Miss Margaret that there’s no room left in your brain for your big sister, is there? In that case, maybe I should pass this book, with everything I remember in it, to... Ah, yes, I know. To mother and father. Then I’ll watch over you from the hereafter, assured that I did the right thing.”
“For the love of God, sister!” George hollered. “Please, I’m begging you, don’t say a word about these things to mother and father!”
“Sister? It was so much cuter when you used to call me sissy,” Rachel remarked.
“S-Sis!”
“Sis?”
“S-Sissy... Please, don’t tell mother and father all my embarrassing secrets!”
“What? But with so little time ahead of me, I can’t watch over you any longer...”
“No matter what happens, sist—sissy, I swear I won’t let His Highness lay a hand on you!”
“But, George, you believe I did all sorts of horrible things—exactly what, I’m not entirely sure—to Miss Margaret, don’t you?”
“No, absolutely not!”
George desperately denied his sister’s contrived question. He knew for a fact that Margaret’s things had been broken and that she’d been pushed down the stairs, and until half a day ago, he’d been fully convinced it was his sister’s doing. But now he could say for certain that it wasn’t. If she could do all this from inside her cell just to torment him, she wouldn’t do anything so tame to bully her romantic rival. Actually, if Rachel truly saw Margaret as competition, it wouldn’t have ended with bullying. If his sister were to get serious about it, Margaret would have up and vanished by now, and they’d never find the body.
“I believe you when you say you didn’t lay a hand on Margaret!” George assured her. “I’ll make a written statement! So please, sist—sissy, don’t give that to mom or dad! I’m begging you!”
“Oh? And you’re sure it’s just mother and father you don’t want me to tell?” Rachel inquired.
“Y-Yes!”
“Really? Isn’t there anyone else?”
“Huh?”
Rachel’s emphasis gave George pause. He was grateful it sounded like she would keep quiet, but who else was there? Knowing his sister, she might spread some things around just to mess with him for the fun of it.
“Th-Then...don’t tell the head maid either...”
“Anyone else?”
“Huh? Erm... Then His Highness and Margaret too...”
“Anyone else?”
Rachel was being awfully insistent. There was definitely a pitfall here, but he couldn’t see what it was.
As the sweat rolled down his back, George racked his brain for anyone else who might still be left.
“A-Anyone else? T-Then, Sykes and the others...” George squeaked.
“Is that right?” Rachel said without asking again.
George breathed a sigh of relief as the interrogation ended.
Rachel approached the bars and extended her hand out with the notebook, but not to George.
“I understand. I’ll respect your wishes,” she said.
“Th-Thank you so mu—” George started, but Rachel cut him off.
“To be quite honest with you, I’ve already told her everything, so I was going to be rather troubled if you told me I couldn’t.”
“Come again?”
Before George had time to wonder what his sister meant, the clicking of boots on stone echoed behind him.
“Huh?!” he exclaimed.
Turning to look, George saw an extravagantly dressed girl emerge from the darkness next to the stone stairs. Although she was very different from his sister, her regal beauty made her Rachel’s equal in appearance. Smiling, she approached the bars and took the notebook from Rachel’s waiting hand.
George was struck dumb with shock and terror.
“Ah, ah, um, ah...”
The girl turned to face George, curtsying to him with a daring smile.
“It has been far too long, George. We haven’t met since I accompanied my father abroad, so a little over a year...”
She had the smile of a refined lady, but her eyes were those of a vulture.
“It is I, your humble fiancée, Alexandra Mountbatten the cuckquean, whose very existence you forgot about after only a year, even though we’ve been friends since we were young. It’s good to see you again. Or should I say ‘it’s nice to meet you’? For the first time?”
“Ee... Eeeek?!”
“George, I know I’m the kind of woman you could forget even after being with her for a decade, but it hurts that you would react to me like you just ran into a monster in the darkness. Ah, but it is dark here, isn’t it? Hee hee.”
✦ ✦ ✦
Rachel smiled at the lovely reunion. “I thought it would be best to share all those ‘fond memories’ with the person who is going to be your lifelong partner. Alexandra, do take care of George for me, will you?”
“Yes, big sister,” Alexandra said, nodding.
“And George, you do as Alexandra tells you.”
“Eeeek?!”
“That reply concerns me, but...” Rachel sighed. “Well, it is your first time seeing each other in so long. I’ll step back so you two can have some alone time. I’m sure you have a lot to talk about. Like, oh, say...certain lessons that you need to be taught.”
Rachel ignored the screams, the shouting, and the tearful apologies as she enjoyed a nice spot of tea.
“Now then... I’ll have to tear off Prince Elliott’s other wing too, or the balance will be all off.”