The Night Before the Wedding
It was a night when autumn had ripened to its full.
A carriage stopped near the residence of Duke de la Rosa. The one who emerged glanced around, and only after confirming that no one was in sight did he quietly set off walking.
Entering a secluded lane, the man opened a door fit for servants to use. The adjutant who had been waiting rose hastily to greet him.
“Your Grace, you’re only just arriving.”
The man nodded and took off his cloak, handing it to him. Brushing back his disheveled hair, still carrying the chill autumn wind, he asked.
“And the banquet?”
“It began quite a while ago. Duke de la Rosa keeps asking whether you still haven’t arrived. I was sweating bullets.”
“Really. I told you to say mud got stuck in the carriage wheel on the way.”
“And you think he would believe that?”
“It was an accident. How was I to know?”
Watching the man brush the dirt and dust off his clothes with brisk pats, the adjutant finally took in his attire, and his eyes went wide.
“Oh my, and why are your clothes like that…?”
The man was not wearing his officer’s dress uniform, but a spare tailcoat he had prepared. Even that was somewhat crumpled and covered in dust.
“Everyone was struggling to pull out a single carriage wheel, so I lent them some muscle. It is fortunate I had at least these clothes.”
“Wouldn’t it be better to change now?”
“No. I don’t intend to enter the banquet hall.”
“What?”
They were not words that should come from one of the two stars of this celebration banquet. Before the adjutant, whose eyes had gone round at the irresponsible remark, the man gave his order.
“Tell them there was an accident on the road, and that I likely won’t arrive until tomorrow.”
“Your Grace!”
“Just smooth it over nicely. You can do that, can’t you?”
When the man smiled with a shameless face, the adjutant let out a deep sigh and nodded. In the adjutant’s world of absolute obedience to orders from above, if the man spoke so, somehow an answer of “yes” had to be produced.
“Aren’t you even curious about your bride?”
“…Hmm.”
The man trailed off ambiguously.
“We’ve been betrothed for twenty years already. I’ve seen that child’s portrait every year. He must be a grown baby by now.”
Meaning that grown or not, he would still seem like a baby.
“He is the third child of de la Rosa. You are a blessed man, Your Grace.”
“Yes. I suppose I might be.”
At his superior’s manner, indifferent as if it were someone else’s affair, the adjutant was just about to heave an exasperated sigh.
The man put a finger to his lips. Shh.
A girl passing by carrying a water jar met his eyes. Seeing her eyes fly wide in surprise, the man whispered softly, “Quiet,” and she nodded and quietly withdrew behind him.
The man glanced toward the banquet hall. The great hall over there was already bustling with the people who had gathered.
“It looks as if they’ll keep that up past midnight.”
“Probably…”
The adjutant answered with his shoulders slumped. It was obvious without looking. His superior would spend this whole night foisting the grave duty onto him and hiding himself away somewhere.
As if answering that expectation, the man smiled with his eyes crinkled shut. Watching that face, which shone brightly even in the darkness despite his age, the adjutant felt like beating his own chest.
“Well then, I’ll leave it to you.”
Patting the adjutant’s shoulder a couple of times as if to cheer him on, the man vanished into the dark night road at the back.
***
The ducal house’s banquet hall, where some hundred people had gathered, was thronged with all the leading figures of high society.
On the tables, a veritable field of pale pink roses, the food laid out in silver dishes was plentiful. Everything filling the hall was splendid beyond compare, reflecting the tastes of the mistress of the house.
For months the Duchess de la Rosa had driven the chief steward hard for this day, and the servants, breaking into cold sweats under her exacting orders, had spared no effort, hoping only that this night, now finally arrived, would pass without incident.
And for good reason: this banquet, where all manner of notables had gathered, was for the little young master they had raised with all their hearts since he was a baby, the youngest son the Duke and Duchess cherished beyond measure.
The marriage of that famous Rubio de la Rosa, said to be the loveliest in all of Castile, was tomorrow.
Born with a silver spoon in his mouth, this child was from birth a member of one of the empire’s five ducal houses. His elder sister had long since been marked as the next chancellor after their father, and his elder brother had made a name for himself by entering the imperial knights at the youngest age ever.
The siblings who had raised the young youngest fretted over everything, as if Rubio might blow away in the wind. The Duke and Duchess, who had come by their youngest late in life, likewise raised him simply doting on him, so Rubio grew up loved for merely breathing.
On top of that, his face, white and small with nothing out of place, his long eyes with their shallow double lids, the prominent line of his nose flowing naturally from them, were lovely beyond compare. Even his pink lips, lively as if dyed with flower water, drew everyone’s gaze.
Born the child of a grand ducal house and blessed with so much, another might have grown arrogant, but he was soft-hearted by nature. If he did something wrong, he would fret over it alone, then confess it first and apologize, so there was never cause for anyone to dislike him.
And so the one flaw Rubio had was that he was a reckless little troublemaker who did things nobody could predict. Like tonight.
“Hah…”
A breath burst from his crimson lips. The boy in white ceremonial clothes, who had crept across the corridor, quietly opened the balcony door and slipped inside.
Rubio had hidden away in a corner of the banquet hall’s second floor to avoid the gazes pouring down on him. He opened the heavy curtains and the tall glass door, stepped outside, and panted with a flushed face for a good while. Just sneaking here, careful step by careful step, had left him out of breath.
Now, when the groom, Duke Téllez, had still not arrived, was his golden chance to run away.
He gripped the balcony railing with his two small hands and looked down at the garden’s landscaped trees and dense thickets below. His hair, like golden thread, fluttered in the night wind.
It was a beautiful scene, as if from a classical painting, the kind that would steal the heart of anyone who saw it. Yet that lovely face, still youthful in aspect, was filled only with discontent.
“Father is really too much.”
A sulky murmur slipped from his pretty lips. His peach-like, rosy cheeks were also puffed up round.
“Mother too. Sister and Brother too. There’s no one in the world on my side.”
And he heaved a sigh deep enough to sink the ground. For Rubio it was a truly despairing day. The reason was that this marriage had been decided from the moment he was born, and the other party was a man no less than fifteen years older than Rubio.
His betrothed was the only son of the Duke of Téllez. At that time he had been the young duke-to-be, but now he had inherited the title of his late father. In his youth he had graduated at the top of the academy, received his commission at once, and was even called a hero who had led battles in the north to victory.
As the child of a prestigious house counted on five fingers, he could have ridden his father’s halo to one success after another in the political world. Instead he had fought in every sort of battle, and in the end the label of warmonger had attached itself to him.
But to Rubio, the man was simply horrifying.
How vicious must a man be for such a nickname to stick to him?
Rubio narrowed his eyes petulantly and grumbled curses at his betrothed inwardly. It did not matter how great a noble the man was, how much money he had, or how good he was at fighting. Rubio himself was a noble of a house no lesser than his, and the fortune his father would leave him was at a level where counting it was meaningless.
Besides, what good came of being good at fighting between husband and wife? It could only do him harm, never good.
Rubio grew more and more dejected, lamenting his own situation.
If we trace back the background of this marriage between Rubio and a man fifteen years his senior, at its root lay the Emperor’s tearful effort and matchmaking to foster goodwill between two houses that had been in constant discord.
Now that Rubio had just come of age, it was already a matter of more than twenty years past.
The heads of House Téllez, a famed military house, and House de la Rosa, which had produced chancellors for generations, had not been on good terms since they were children.
The rivalry that had begun in their far-off academy days continued even after they succeeded to their dukedoms and entered politics, and many people were swept up in their fights.
Had it happened once or twice it might have been different, but as these incidents piled up one by one into a great headache, the Emperor came to hope that the two houses would form a marriage alliance, so that no more blood would be seen.
The problem was that both of the de la Rosa children were already married or betrothed. He could not attach just anyone to the Téllez duke’s only son, so he set about searching for a suitable person.
He even secretly dispatched people to look into the de la Rosa cousins, second cousins, and third cousins, but there was no one usable for a betrothal. As he was worrying over it for days, God answered his wish. News came that the Duchess was pregnant.
The Emperor, truly overjoyed, decreed a betrothal between the two houses.
Rubio’s father, of course, leapt up in outrage. The pregnant Duchess also cried for more than a week, saying it made no sense. Rubio’s sister, his brother, and all the servants of the house opposed it with a fervor that looked ready to rush to the imperial capital and fall to their knees.
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