Chapter 3

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Translator: Harry Potta
Chapter: 3
Chapter Title: My Nemesis, the Beautiful Isabella
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Cesare scoffed.

“Isabella was meant for me from the start! The strongest man deserves the most beautiful woman. Do you have any idea how humiliated I felt when your father pushed you on me instead of your sister?”

Ariadne stared blankly at Cesare, her mouth agape.

“Your sister was the most beautiful lady in San Carlo. I sent a proposal, and he had the gall to offer you instead! I was furious! What was I lacking?”

With Ariadne standing right before him, Cesare was recounting in excruciating detail the sorrow he had felt at being rejected. Ariadne was a “good girl.” She had repeatedly accepted her husband’s outrageous behavior. It was the only way she’d ever learned to be loved. She could never compete with her stunningly beautiful sister in looks. She enjoyed studying, but her temperamental stepmother had insisted that academics were not a virtue for a young lady, persistently obstructing her studies so she could not learn much. Ariadne had to be “good.” She wasn’t naturally docile or gentle. But by giving up what was hers, yielding, bowing her head, apologizing, and submitting, she had carved out a place for herself in a world that had offered her none. Or so she had thought. Until today.

“So I was just a substitute?”

A smile of disbelief spread across Cesare’s handsome face, a face that could have been carved from marble. It was a laugh bordering on madness.

“A substitute?”

He strode forward, reached out, and lifted Ariadne’s chin. He spat out each word through his teeth.

“To be a substitute, you must first be a replacement. You weren’t even that.”

Ariadne trembled uncontrollably, yet she studied every detail of Cesare’s expression. The way his upper lip curled to reveal a canine when he was angry, his high-bridged nose and the handsome, reddish-brown eyebrows that flowed from it, his high forehead and the muscles that twitched upon it in fury. And his piercing blue eyes. Those eyes, filled with an incomprehensible, cold rage. She knew Cesare all too well. He was a man her mind could not comprehend, but she had internalized his patterns. She had a feeling that today would be the last time she would ever see him. He violently flung away the right hand that held her chin. Unable to withstand the man’s strength, Ariadne fell, scraping against the bedroom floor.

“Get out of my sight. And never show your face again.”

She’d had countless hints. It was she who had foolishly stayed, ruminating on hope like a cow chewing its cud. She had known it would come to this.

* * *

Cardinal de Mare had taken holy vows, but like many clergymen of his era, he had several children. His mistress, Lucrezia, was of noble birth and had borne him three children, acting for all intents and purposes as his wife. Those three children were raised as the scions of a great noble house. The second child and eldest daughter, Isabella, was only seventeen, but her beauty had made her famous in high society. She was Lucrezia’s treasure and Cardinal de Mare’s pride.

“Papa, I don’t want to marry that man.”

With her peach-like skin and flaxen hair, she whined prettily to Cardinal de Mare. Her two amethyst eyes sparkled pitifully.

“They say he’s as savage as a beast. And there are rumors that he’s illegitimate.”

Cardinal de Mare stroked his angelically beautiful daughter’s hair.

“Yes, yes, your father knows. He was declared the prince’s cousin, but he’s actually the king’s bastard. I have no intention of marrying my daughter to a bastard.”

He spoke as if his own children were legitimate. Isabella smiled faintly. When a smile touched her innocent, beautiful face, she momentarily looked like a sweet pixie.

“You always told me to bring glory to the de Mare name, Papa. I will become the most beautiful and noble lady in this country. I can’t end up as a mere countess.”

“We’ll say our Isabella has fallen ill. No one can force a sick child to marry.”

“But we can’t just ignore Count de Como’s proposal, can we?”

A cool voice interjected from behind them. It was Cardinal de Mare’s mistress, Lucrezia.

“He’s soon to become a Margrave. We shouldn’t offend him.”

A Margrave was tasked with defending the kingdom’s borders. While it could be seen as an exile from the capital, it also meant gaining military power. But if luck was not on his side, he could lose his life in a skirmish with the Kingdom of Gallico, making him an unsuitable match for her daughter. However, to refuse a Margrave with an army and risk him turning rebellious and marching on the capital would be a disaster. Even if they couldn’t give him their most precious child, they had to maintain a connection. And since he was a piece they might have to discard at any moment, it was best that the connection be as disposable as possible.

“A bastard is a fitting match for a bastard. Send Ariadne, Your Eminence.”

“Ariadne… Now that’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time.”

Cardinal de Mare smiled, baring his teeth.

* * *

Ariadne’s mother had been the mistress Lucrezia’s handmaiden. One rainy night, a thoroughly drunk Cardinal de Mare had taken the maid instead of Lucrezia. When Lucrezia found out, she flew into a rage. But the maid was already carrying the Cardinal’s seed in her womb. Immediately after giving birth, the maid was locked away in a room at the top of a tower. The child born was not a son and, worse, a daughter who bore no resemblance to the Cardinal. Ariadne grew up in the servants’ quarters. Having received no proper education, at fifteen, Ariadne could neither write, nor draw, nor play an instrument. Then suddenly, in the spring of her fifteenth year, the Cardinal’s steward, Niccolo, informed ‘Lady’ Ariadne that she was to pack her things and move into the inner castle. At the time, she thought her father had finally remembered her. She thought she finally had a family, that her noble family beyond the castle walls had at last forgiven her mother’s lowly status and accepted her as one of their own. Family? If a family was something that sucked the marrow from your bones and then, when you were no longer useful, stabbed you spectacularly in the back, then the Cardinal’s three children and Ariadne were, without a doubt, a family.

* * *

「We accept your proposal. A daughter of House de Mare will be engaged to Count de Como.」

Cesare de Como was ecstatic when he received this reply. Isabella, the only daughter Cardinal de Mare had presented to society, was the secret love and ultimate prize for every man. Winning her was like a certification of being the most distinguished man in the capital. With her porcelain-white skin, rosy peach-blush, and veil of flaxen hair, Isabella’s beauty was like that of an angel in a holy painting. When a smile graced her amethyst eyes, she could also seem as mischievous as a fairy from an ancient myth. But her beauty was at its peak when she wore a solemn expression. When sadness touched the noble and pure sculpture that was her face, anyone would be desperate to soothe her sorrow. And that was the very image of Isabella that now stood before Cesare de Como.

“Lady Isabella, why do you look so troubled?”

“…”

“Do you not find me to your liking? Though I hold a noble title instead of a claim to the throne, I am still the king’s cousin and Count de Como. The domain I will soon receive is rich and beautiful. There is no better match than me among the nobility in the capital right now. I will wager everything I have to make you happy…!”

“It’s not me.”

“Pardon?”

“I am not the one who is engaged to you, Count Cesare.”

Cesare was taken aback.

“But the reply to my proposal was clearly affirmative…”

Isabella lifted her amethyst eyes and gazed at him with a look of pity as she spoke in a delicate voice.

“The ‘daughter of de Mare’ written in that proposal is my younger sister, Ariadne. A poor child, not well-known in society. My sister told Father that she had nothing in her life and threw a fit, demanding to marry the most distinguished man in the Kingdom of Etruscan. She’s so stubborn, no one could stop her.”

Isabella lowered her golden lashes and let out a deep sigh.

“I… have had so much more in life than my sister. Father said I must yield to her this time, so…”

Pleading tears welled in her violet eyes. As if not wanting to show them, she deliberately lowered her head.

“I cannot defy my father, Count Cesare.”

Her slender, bowed head looked so pitiful.

“I have always admired you from afar during High Mass. But we are to become family now, aren’t we? Such feelings of adoration are not permitted between family. Please bury this feeling deep in your heart and remember me only with affection and goodwill.”

“But…!”

“Shh.”

Isabella raised a finger to Cesare’s lips. Her pale, translucent finger pressed gently against them, touching the soft membrane. Cesare gasped at the unguarded touch of her warmth.

“Ariadne is a good girl, too. Please treat her well. I only came because I wanted to tell you this myself.”

With those words, Isabella de Mare gracefully turned and returned to her family’s pew in the church’s great hall. Cesare watched her retreating figure, dumbfounded. Then, he noticed her gauze lace handkerchief on the floor. He picked it up and tucked it away preciously in his coat. He wanted to smell its fragrance, but even that felt sacrilegious. He thought he could feel a faint warmth from the handkerchief inside his breast pocket. He placed his right hand over his heart, where the handkerchief lay.
—Thump, thump.
His heart pounded, and he couldn't tell if it was racing with excitement from seeing Isabella or with fury at having her snatched away from right under his nose.
When he looked up, his eyes immediately fell upon Cardinal de Mare conversing with those around him from a distance, and standing beside him with her head bowed was a dark-haired girl. The girl was needlessly tall, her slumped back resembling that of a lowly servant doing chores rather than the treasured daughter of a high nobleman, and her sun-tanned skin was rustic. He glared endlessly at the white-robed Cardinal and the dark-haired girl huddled beside him.
A golden trophy had been just within his grasp.
Those two have ruined my life.

* * *

“Giacomo!”

“Yes, Your Highness, the Prince Regent!”

“Escort Lady Ariadne to the top of the west tower for her recuperation. She has been overcome with madness and is utterly incapable of performing her duties as queen. The sight is unsightly, so handle it discreetly where no one will see.”

“Yes, Your Highness!”

—Clank