“Eleanor. If you step aside, everything will be settled peacefully.”
My father’s heavy voice shook the air of the study, permeated by the cold of winter.
On the leather sofa in front of me sat Cedric, my fiancé. Right beside him was my younger sister, Marianne.
Marianne clung to Cedric’s arm, her face pale as if she might breathe her last at any moment, her shoulders trembling in small tremors.
“Sister… I’m sorry. I never meant to steal Cedric away from you. But with this body of mine, my doctor says I might not have much longer to live…”
“Marianne, don’t speak. It will strain your chest.”
Cedric stroked my sister’s back with a touch as if handling something fragile.
Then he turned his gaze toward me. In those amber eyes was the contempt and irritation I had grown accustomed to seeing over the years.
“You heard her, didn’t you, Eleanor? Marianne is delicate. She’s not like you—sturdy, able to handle everything on your own. If you hand over your position as fiancée to your sister and renounce your right of succession to the family headship, the bond between the House of Lawrence and the House of Cromwell will be preserved. Both families’ honor will be maintained. No one will be hurt.”
No one will be hurt.
I had known, since I was old enough to understand anything, that I was not included in that “no one.”
Whenever my sister ran a slight fever, my birthday celebration would be cancelled.
Whenever my sister whined that she wanted to wear “Sister’s dress,” my newly tailored dress would be moved into her closet.
The estate’s audit ledger that I had stayed up three days and three nights straight to finish was, before I knew it, twisted into “a natural duty to cover my sister’s medical expenses.”
Cedric was the same.
Dinner dates we had promised were cancelled again and again on account of “Marianne’s attacks.” Even when the bill for the restaurant reservation—where I had waited alone—was passed to me the very next morning as though it were only natural, I said nothing.
“You’re the older sister, so bear with it.”
I had been bound by that curse.
My father slid two sheets of parchment across to me.
An agreement to break off the engagement, and a notice renouncing the right of succession to the title. Both already bore Cedric’s and my father’s signatures.
The three of them waited for my reaction.
Cedric raised his eyebrows; Marianne peeked at me from behind his arm.
Once before, when I had asked to have back—just once—a dress that had been given to my sister, they had worn this same expression. In the end, back then, it was I who had ended up apologizing for making her cry.
I slowly drew a breath.
Neither fierce anger nor tearing sorrow welled up in me, strangely enough.
Deep in my chest, one taut, hardened thread simply snapped with a small sound.
‘Ah… fine, then.’
I picked up the quill pen on the desk and dipped it in the inkwell.
On both papers, I signed: Eleanor Cromwell.
Cedric frowned, looking puzzled.
“…Eleanor? What are you scheming?”
“Scheming? Not at all, I assure you.”
I set down the pen and removed the silver ring Cedric had given me from the ring finger of my left hand.
It was a slender ring covered in small scratches, nothing comparable to the lavish diamond brooch given to my sister.
I slid it quietly onto the documents.
“Understood. If my stepping aside will settle everything peacefully, then so be it. Please, do as you wish.”
There wasn’t a single tremor in my voice.
Not a single tear welled up either. I simply stated it flatly, as though processing someone else’s routine correspondence.
“Wha—”
Cedric caught his breath.
Marianne, too, stopped trembling and blinked, her eyes wide with astonishment.
More than being shouted at, more than being cried at, it seemed my dry smile—utterly devoid of warmth—looked deeply unsettling to them.
“Well then, shall that conclude our discussion? I will come to pay my respects properly tomorrow morning.”
I bowed deeply and left the study without once looking back.
There was, of course, no intention of going to pay respects the next morning.
I returned to my room, locked the door, and pulled out an old, small leather trunk from beneath my bed.
It was something I had been preparing bit by bit for the day I would leave this house.
Into the trunk I packed the silver coins I had saved from side jobs of fair-copying and embroidery I’d been asked to do, the identification I had also used for banking procedures, and two sets of plain clothes. I had also already checked the departure times for the stagecoach.
The only thing I had lacked was the courage to say I was leaving.
I left a short note at the edge of the desk.
Any documents requiring approval from tomorrow onward were arranged in order by date atop the desk. I left the estate’s ledgers and the safe’s key behind as well. The only things I took with me were my own.
I wanted not even a single fragment of the lavish furnishings or jewels bought with this household’s money.
Just before the date changed, I slipped out through the back door into the night’s curtain, unseen and unnoticed by anyone.
—Please, be as settled and peaceful as you like, to your heart’s content.
Never call my name again.