Chapter 25
“What does that mean?”
“Why act like you don’t know? The Duke wouldn’t just leave his only daughter a divorcee. Perhaps the marriage registration will be filed before the ink on the divorce papers even dries.”
“…Right. That’s true.”
At Auguste’s assertion, Max’s hand, which had been moving mechanically over the documents, went still.
Why on earth had he assumed, so naturally, that Freya Blanc would be left alone at Blanc Castle after their divorce? He was stunned by his own presumption—a thought he had harbored instinctively since the divorce contract was drawn up.
Even if she had hinted at such a thing herself, he hadn’t realized until now how little sense it made. No matter what she desired, the Duke would never leave Freya alone.
It was shocking that he had overlooked such an obvious fact, but what was more unsettling was the feeling rising within him—something viscous and foul, like filth.
It was a wretched sensation, like being dragged through the mire. The mere thought of a man other than himself standing by Freya Blanc’s side was suffocating.
“So, what is the lady who will soon be a divorcee doing, since she isn’t even coming to work?”
Just as the fountain pen in Max’s hand made a sharp, discordant scrape—on the verge of snapping—Auguste’s question pulled him back.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Madam, the painting has arrived.”
Late Monday afternoon, the piece bought at the Salon Exhibition finally arrived.
“Hang it here.”
“H-here, Madam?”
The spot Freya indicated was above the fireplace, directly in her line of sight from the bed.
To hang a painting depicting a human subjected to eternal punishment for mocking the gods in a space usually reserved for family portraits or serene landscapes—even Milla, who would blindly agree if Freya claimed the sun were the moon, could not hide her bewilderment.
“But, Madam….”
“I like it here.”
“…Yes.”
While the mansion’s servants hung the painting above the fireplace, Freya sat on the sofa and opened the newspaper.
*Luthes-Saint-Germain-En-Laye Railway Project, ‘Luthes Railway Company’ Stock/Bond Public Offering!*
At last, Max’s business had taken its first step.
There must have been a grueling process to reach this point, but in truth, the real war was only beginning. Business was, ultimately, a war of capital. Securing investors would decide the project’s fate.
Under normal circumstances, Erle Tristan would have taken the lead in securing investments from bankers, capitalists, and nobles, but Freya had no intention of letting it go that way.
*If I can just catch Asil Delaporte, I can keep Erle Tristan in check.*
To do that, she had to find a way to entangle Luthes Bank in this project.
*For now, I must keep my head down and wait for the right moment.*
By now, the Royalist faction must be buzzing with the conversation she had with Asil Delaporte.
Would the mad noblewoman seek someone else out? How would the Duke react to his daughter’s erratic behavior? Could she truly influence the passage of the bill?
Most would be skeptical, but the curiosity would be fervent nonetheless. However, if several days passed without the noblewoman making any further moves….
*As expected. I knew it.* They would dismiss it as a mere whim—the deranged woman had just caused a stir to hold onto her husband.
And Asil Delaporte would surely be among them.
Like a beast poised for the hunt, Freya focused her mind, envisioning Asil Delaporte.
The place to trap the unsuspecting prey: the Longchamp Racecourse, where the next competition was to be held.
Unlike their last meeting, she would need to prepare with surgical precision so that no one would witness her encounter with Asil. If the last time was a request, this time it would be a threat.
*From Mr. Delaporte’s perspective, it would have been better to just listen to what I said during our last meeting….*
In truth, he had no choice. From the moment he faced her, Asil Delaporte had unknowingly walked into a trap from which there was no escape.
Freya gathered her thoughts, folded the newspaper neatly, and placed it on the table.
✦ ✦ ✦
After dinner, Freya changed into her nightgown early and stood before the fireplace, gazing at the painting of Aegis.
The naked man was climbing a hill, shouldering a massive boulder.
The figure did not evoke aesthetic satisfaction or desire; it radiated raw, visceral pain. The muscles of his entire body, supporting an unbearable weight, were screaming, and his knees were buckling under the pressure.
But the most agonizing part of the painting was not the man’s suffering, nor the boulder itself.
It was the cliff waiting at the end of the climb. That cliff, where her most terrible memories remained etched in stone. The true horror was that even if the man reached the edge, there was no rest for him.
“Is this the kind of art you like?”
Freya startled at the sudden voice and turned. Her husband was leaning against the open bedroom door, watching her.
The husband who had only grown more distant when she desperately sought his warmth was visiting her again.
He hadn’t entered her bedroom once in five years, yet he now seemed entirely unfazed by the fact that he had crossed the threshold for the second time in mere days.
It had been this simple all along.
“Is this the painting you said you liked more than the one by Dupre at the Salon? Why this, of all things?”
Max approached her and asked again, his eyes fixed on the gloomy oil painting. Freya turned away from him to face the canvas.
“Because I liked it.”
“Why?”
Her gaze flickered back to him. She wondered if he was asking out of genuine curiosity, but his blue eyes, slightly furrowed, were locked onto hers, waiting.
Max, trying to engage in idle conversation.
He seemed strange today. Perhaps this, too, was his own clumsy way of trying to trust her. Even so, she had no intention of explaining the painting’s true meaning. It would be an unbelievable story, even if she told it.
Instead, Freya chose to explain how she recognized the landscape.
“You might not know, but the cliff in this painting….”
“It’s Lovers’ Cliff.”
Freya’s eyes widened as she turned to him.
“…You know about Lovers’ Cliff?”
At her naive reaction, Max replied with a bitter smile.
“I know the surroundings of Blanc Castle better than you do.”
Around the age of twelve, he had been sent to the Imperial Boarding School by the Duke’s order. During the school’s summer and winter breaks, Max spent about a month at Blanc Castle.
Back then, he would share meals or tea with the princess locked inside the castle, walking through the gardens. When he was younger, he had made a few reckless attempts to take Freya outside the walls, but he soon accepted his life as a puppet—a cuckoo clock, appearing at a set time and place to amuse the young lady.
When he wasn’t with Freya, he would wander alone, sketching the surroundings and the town below. That was when he had heard the legends of the cliff.
“They say that if lovers stand on that cliff and make a vow, their eternal love will come true.”
After hearing those rumors, Max would occasionally climb the cliff. And he would imagine.
If he brought her here, abandoned the name of Blanc, abandoned the name of Russell, and asked her to run away with him in secret, what would the white princess say?
In his imagination, the Freya of his dreams always smiled as brightly as she had the day they first met, nodding at him.
They would hide away in some small countryside—neither at Blanc Castle nor in Grandcen—and live simply as Freya and Max.
In a place where there were no heroes of revolution, no survivors of an old dynasty, and no hands to manipulate their lives at will—there, they would be happy.
And when the imagination ended, he would return to the castle. To act as the perfect prince, appearing before the princess at the appointed time.
What allowed him to endure the exhausting life at the boarding school and the hollow life at Blanc Castle—where he was thoroughly neglected whenever he wasn’t in her presence—was the time he spent on the cliff, imagining a future that would never come to pass.
“…Surely you didn’t come here just to look at the painting I bought. What are you here for?”
At her voice, she turned, and Freya was smiling at him, a forced, brittle expression. For some reason, her face looked like she was on the verge of tears.
*Exactly, why am I back in front of you again?*
For a long time, he had imagined only the moment of breaking free from Blanc, but now, he was standing before her again, of his own volition.
Why? Was it because he had imagined the existence of someone else standing by her side? And that the figure of that someone happened to be the Marquis Tristan, who had already sent a marriage proposal to the Blanc family?
Max’s eyes darkened.
Perhaps, to Freya Blanc, Erle Tristan was the partner who truly suited her.