Chapter 9                                                                                                                                                                                                ‘It was beautiful, I enjoyed it’—two words would have been enough. And yet, when someone who supposedly plays the piano asks what piece you’d like to hear—”

Agatha’s scolding went on endlessly, but none of it left any trace on Rose. It all slipped past her, meaningless.

Only Sophia’s flawless performance remained, replaying over and over in her mind like a haunting afterimage.

In the quiet study of the mansion, after the guests had left, Ray habitually placed a cigarette between his lips.

As he inhaled deeply, the stiffness caused by his lingering irritation finally began to ease.

Through the hazy smoke, Ray calmly thought of the root of the problem—his wife.

That insane woman who had dared to speak of being a pianist in front of none other than the Duke of Harland’s daughter.

People often said Rose didn’t seem like someone from Bolton. Perhaps not in appearance or personality—but in the way she thought, she was undeniably Bolton through and through.

But now, she could no longer remain that way.

He had left his wife in the care of his mother and the housekeeper for nearly a month—not only because he was busy, but also because he wanted his mother to realize her responsibility.

A consequence of insisting on this daughter-in-law.

And yet, it seemed even the proud matriarch of the Crawford family had failed to turn this woman into a proper Orturan.

Hopeless.

A long breath, almost like a sigh, escaped Ray’s lips.

There would only be more occasions where he had to bring along his “wife.” It wasn’t as if he could demand she remain silent for life.

She had already been practically confined within the Crawford estate. What more could he possibly do to control her?

His mother had even stopped inviting guests altogether.

But hiding her so desperately only made it more obvious that something was wrong. He couldn’t keep her locked inside forever.

Besides, the problem wasn’t her behavior—it was her very existence.

<The Shaking Crawford, The Shaking Conservative Party>

Ray’s gaze fell on the headline of the Daily Oakley Review lying on his desk.

The absurd title made him chuckle.

It was obvious that Archibald Avery had a hand in writing it—and the article itself was laughably pathetic.

Perhaps Avery intended to attack him, but the line “If Crawford wavers, the Conservative Party wavers” only made it sound as if Ray Crawford himself were the very center of the party.

A clumsy method—and poorly aimed at that.

Avery’s occasional displays of stupidity always robbed Ray of whatever faint inclination he had to take him seriously.

Ray knew people like Archibald Avery well—and despised them all the more for it.

The kind who resorted to cheap tricks because they lacked the ability to win properly.

Fools who didn’t even understand that if they weren’t worthy, the dignified thing to do was accept defeat.

To Ray, the method of victory mattered just as much as victory itself.

Which was why he loathed the way Avery chose to attack him.

“Ah, well… this is quite troublesome for me too. I couldn’t let this information fall into another newspaper’s hands, so I bought it myself first.”

Avery’s hypocritical face—pretending ignorance while testing him—came to mind vividly.

“But is it true? The former Duke Crawford… Good heavens, it’s difficult even to say it aloud.”

Avery had blackmailed him using his father’s mental illness.

That the war hero who had died honorably had, in truth, suffered from madness.

He threatened to expose it publicly—and used that to push the marriage proposal onto Ray.

Avery, though a prominent Conservative politician and Home Secretary, was older and already had a child.

Elliot Davis must have thought those flaws roughly balanced out the fatal disadvantage of being from Bolton, and proposed the match.

Perhaps Elliot never realized why Avery refused the marriage and instead placed a far better target—Ray Crawford—on the table.

In any case, the nouveau riche man did not let the opportunity slip by.

Avery had always feared that Ray might gain even greater power through a prestigious marriage. This was the perfect way to restrain him.

Ray would have preferred the truth about his father’s illness to be published.

And he still felt the same.

At worst, it would become drunken gossip—but it would not damage him politically.

But his mother thought differently.

Agatha had gone so far as to refuse food in extreme opposition to the truth being revealed—even accepting a Bolton-born daughter-in-law in exchange.

And this was the result.

“There’s no wheat or oats in Bolton—nothing you could even call proper food.”

The memory of Rose’s voice—boldly lying without batting an eye, even mocking the Duke’s daughter under the guise of a joke—made him let out a faint laugh.

In the deep silence, the cigarette burned shorter and shorter.

At last, he stubbed it out and slowly rose from his desk, leaving the study.

Even as he headed toward the bedroom, he hadn’t decided exactly what he would say or do to Rose.

He knew he needed to take action—but what form that action should take, he had no idea.

He had never felt this way, not even in the middle of a battlefield.

He was curious.

What on earth was she always thinking, wearing that blank expression?

A woman who constantly said strange things, unsettling people and keeping them awake at night—did she at least sleep well herself?

By the time he stepped into the corridor connecting their bedrooms, his anger had already faded.

Only a dull fatigue remained—like ash piling up in an ashtray.

It was the first time he had walked this corridor since the wedding.

His reluctant, slow steps came to a halt just before reaching the duchess’s bedroom.

A faint singing voice slipped between his footsteps.

Leaning against the wall, Ray quietly looked toward the source.

At his wife—who had intruded upon his perfect life just as unpleasantly as that sound.

She was sprawled across a long sofa, not the bed, humming in Antaka. Her pale golden hair lay scattered over the armrest.

The lyrics were childish—like a nursery rhyme, repeating the word “home” far too often. Her fingers tapped a rhythm lightly against her thigh.

Her voice, which sounded awkward when speaking Orturan, seemed completely natural—no, perfectly fitting—when she spoke Antaka. Or when she sang.

Was this what her voice was really like?

For a moment, she felt like a stranger.

“Come see the roses that bloom in May.”

The line should have sounded sweet—but instead, it carried an inexplicable bitterness.

The already small woman looked as though she might vanish at any moment.

As Ray wondered whether it was her melancholy demeanor or her unfamiliar voice that gave him this feeling, he suddenly recalled how she had stared blankly at Sophia Greenwood playing the piano.

Even a soldier who had lost his country wouldn’t have worn such an expression.

And over something as trivial as a piano.

She would occasionally glance at the piano in the drawing room.

The piano her father used to play—and which her mother hated.

Though she looked at it often, she never once played it. Instead, she would sometimes move her fingers in the air, alone.

Tapping the table, tapping a glass—her fingers were rarely ever still.

That behavior… that attitude—it irritated him endlessly.

That sentimental fixation on meaningless things only made her flaws stand out even more.

Such traits inevitably made people weak.

As Ray endlessly questioned why he could not bring himself to like his wife, he finally ran a rough hand over his face.

He knew, in truth, where all this discomfort and aversion came from.

This marriage had ultimately been caused by his father.

And the woman he had married reminded him of that very father.

It felt like a cruel joke played by life.

“Sometimes… I feel like your mother dislikes me.”

His father’s voice, from those rare moments of clarity before his death, echoed faintly in his unpleasant memories.

He had been smiling weakly.

And the expression Ray had shown him at the time was probably—

“What does that even matter? That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it? Is there really nothing in you that resembles me?”

Judging by how his father had laughed awkwardly as he said that, Ray must have been looking at him with disdain.

Even after his father died, his thoughts had not changed.

His mother may have found his father pitiful, but she had not hated him.

And even if she had, it made no difference to their marriage.

That was what marriage was supposed to be.

Considering the devotion his mother showed during his father’s final days—when he could not even recognize his own family—it was a marriage worthy of admiration.