“This is tyranny!”
“I’ve been looking forward to this so much I couldn’t sleep all week!”
“Shut up! How dare you go along with Rachel’s plan like this!” Elliott shouted back at the protesting young ladies, completely forgetting that he’d originally been planning to use them to counter Rachel.
Suddenly, the curtains behind the magician moved, and a middle-aged man popped his head out.
“Oh? Am I on already?”
“Huh? John Smith, the comedian? The one everyone says is an absolute god when it comes to impressions and song parodies?! I want to watch him too!” Wolanski cheered.
“Thank you!” the comedian replied.
“No! You’re not performing either!” Elliott declared. “Wolanski, what did you even come here for?!”
Elliott was forced to drive out the performers on his own because his followers were useless.
As everyone was leaving, two young ladies confronted Elliott.
“Your Highness, why are you making such a fuss during a fun party?!”
“That’s right! We’ve all been counting down the days until this!”
“Urgh, the daughters of Duke Gordon and Marquess Taft,” Elliott griped.
Their fathers both belonged to factions that opposed the House of Ferguson, so Elliott couldn’t just order them around. He sighed, loath to deal with such troublesome opponents, but he was resolute about shutting down Rachel’s plan.
“This is a prison! Rachel is in here until she learns her lesson! Letting her host a show like this would be—”
“We don’t care one whit about that!” Duke Gordon’s daughter exclaimed.
“No, we don’t,” echoed Marquess Taft’s daughter. “Enough talk! Remove yourself at once!”
“Wh-What?!”
Cut off before he could even finish, Elliott blinked repeatedly as the young ladies began forcefully ejecting him from the dungeon.
“Leave, quickly!”
“Yes, do! If the schedule is pushed back any further, Adam Stewart’s time will be cut short!”
“Huh?!”
Every one of the young ladies rose to their feet when Catherine Taft said that.
“Really, Lady Catherine?!” one of the young ladies asked in a panic.
“Hurry up, Your Highness! You need to leave!” demanded another.
“If you cut into Adam’s time, consider yourself a dead man!”
“Get out!”
“Don’t get in the way!”
“Whaaa?!” Elliott backed away, overwhelmed by the intensity of the mob.
“Th-The Adam?!” Margaret said, breathless. “Wow! I can see him?! In the flesh?!”
“Margaret?!”
It wounded Elliott to see the woman he loved so into this Adam fellow.
“H-Hey, who is this Adam that’s making them go crazy like this?” Elliott whispered to Wolanski. His other followers wanted to know too.
“He is an intensely popular actor at the central theater. His cruelly beautiful face and slim, muscular body ooze sexiness. Every woman in the capital has their eyes on him.”
“Huh? What is an actor going to do on a small stage like this?” Elliott asked, confused.
Though he’d asked Wolanski for more information, it was Duke Gordon’s daughter who urgently explained. “Word is, Adam will be putting on a special strip show!”
“Huh?” Elliott felt like he was hearing words from another dimension. “A male...stripper?”
Duke Gordon’s daughter added, “I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t compare this to the kind of vulgar displays that you men want to see! He never takes that last strip of clothing off! But we’ll still be able to see his sculpted form and admire it up close! Every woman here today has spent her nights dreaming of tucking a neatly folded bill into his swim briefs!”
“Whuh...?” None of this made sense to Elliott.
Nostrils flaring, Margaret interjected, “Being an actor isn’t stable work, so a lot of them take on nobles or other wealthy people as patrons! But Adam is incredibly popular, so he doesn’t sully himself by becoming a kept man or even by doing private performances! If Rachel is able to call him to her house and even get him to perform a strip show, then her connections must be incredible!”
“I-Is that how it is...?” Elliott stuttered. He didn’t really understand this world, but he knew now why all the women in the front had such bloodshot eyes.
Damn Rachel. It isn’t fair of her to use money to get a popular actor to help her win over the opposing factions!
“Now, listen here, ladies...” Elliott began, attempting to reason with them.
“Get out!”
“We didn’t pay to see your mug!”
“Adam!”
Elliott was crushed. “Wh-What’s with them...?”
“They must be so worked up that they don’t know who they’re talking to...or what this could mean for their houses, or any of that,” Wolanski guessed.
“D-Damn it all...”
If he was going to punish them, he’d have to reprimand all of their houses. But there were so many that he wasn’t convinced he could identify who everyone was and whose daughters they were. And if the reason for his reprimand was that they were so obsessed with a stripper that they ignored the prince... Well, he couldn’t bring that to the king.
Unfortunately for him, that wasn’t the worst of it.
“I wanna see him! I wanna see Adam!” Margaret shrieked.
“Margaret?!”
Even Margaret was champing at the bit. That wasn’t the end of it, though.
“Hey, you!” called Duke Gordon’s daughter. “We’ll not let you get away with watching for free!”
“No, we’ll not!” added Marquess Taft’s daughter. “It wasn’t easy for us to get our hands on tickets!”
“No fair...” Margaret objected.
The young ladies pushed Margaret, who hadn’t bought an advance ticket, out of the dungeon.
“Please! Let me in too!” she pleaded.
“No!”
But Margaret kept struggling, unwilling to give up.
“M-Margaret. You really don’t need to watch...” Elliott said, trying to take her away so she didn’t embarrass herself further.
Just then, the angel of salvation—Rachel—arrived to address the crowd.
“Now, now, everyone. I’m sure Miss Margaret wants to see Adam too.”
“Yes! I do! I really do!” Margaret exclaimed.
“C-Come on, Margaret...” Elliott whispered.
Rachel pointed to the one empty seat in the house. “I kept a seat open, just in case something happened. I’ll give it to Miss Margaret.”
Magaret gasped. “You mean it?!”
“Hey! Margaret?!” Elliott yelped.
Rachel nodded with the smile of a saint. “Yes. Adam’s smile would take any girl’s heart away. Now, Margaret, our sister in love, take your seat.”
“Thank you!” Margaret screamed.
“Margareeet?!”
Margaret gleefully sat down, not even hearing Elliott’s protests.
Rachel extended her hand to Margaret, dropping two gold coins into Margaret’s palm.
“And I’ll leave these with you.”
“Whuh? Gold coins?”
Knowing that all the other young ladies’ ears would be perking up, Rachel lowered her voice and explained in a whisper, “Adam’s wearing stretchy swim briefs. Normally, you’d tuck a bill into them...but what would happen if you were to put in something harder, like, say, a heavy gold coin, instead?”
“What would happen?” Margaret asked.
“Heavy gold coins in his stretchy briefs... It will be something incredible.”
“Something incredible?!”
The rest of the young ladies got very excited.
“I never thought of that!”
“That’s...amazing!”
“Y-You people...” Elliott muttered, exasperated.
Margaret knelt reverently before Rachel and accepted the gold coins.
✦ ✦ ✦
“H-Hey, Margaret?” Elliott said, trying to get her attention.
“God...” murmured Margaret.
“God?”
“There is a god, down here in this dungeon!”
“Margaret?!”
Elliott tried raising his voice to regain control of the situation.
“All right, enough is enough, ladies!”
But just as he did, a beautiful young man, a hunk of muscle forced into a tuxedo, emerged from the curtains.
“Squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!”
Elliott’s voice was obliterated by the delighted squeals of young women.
The young dandy, all too used to handling screaming girls, blew them a well-practiced kiss and shot them an enticing smile.
“Hi there, you adorable little kitties. The show’s about to get started, so wait just a little longer, m’kay?”
“Hey, you there!” Elliott called.
“Squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!”
Elliott tried to stop Adam What’s-his-name, but he was buried under a tidal wave of squeals and shrieks from behind him. He could try to tell them off all he wanted, but now that the young ladies had seen Adam, in the flesh, they didn’t even register Elliott’s existence.
“If you don’t cut this out at once, I’ll—!”
“Adam! Adam! Adam!”
“Hey, listen to me!”
“Adam! Adam! Adam!”
When Elliott and his followers emerged from the dungeon, utterly exhausted, the prison guard greeted them.
“What happened?” the guard asked.
“Well, you see, His Highness...” a hanger-on began.
Elliott was crawling on the floor, bawling his eyes out in frustration.
“Damn it... I’m a pretty boy too,” he moaned between hiccups. “They were always fussing over me in the palace... What’s that actor doing in my territory?”
“He lost in a battle between hot men,” the hanger-on finished.
“That wasn’t what it was!” Elliott protested.
“Ah, guess he picked a fight with the wrong guy, then,” the prison guard remarked.
“I’m pretty amazing myself, you know!”
“I thought you said it wasn’t that kind of battle?” the hanger-on asked.
“That’s right!”
As things got further and further off track, the prison guard held out the money box.
“Sorry, Your Highness. I’ve got a job to do here. You were watching, so you gotta pay.”
“You said there were no day-of tickets, didn’t you?!”
“You’re letting him get you off track again, Your Highness.”