IDIBC SS 7

The Ending We Share

The Duke and Duchess of Rochester visited Resotia from time to time, but they still stayed at the townhouse where the roses bloomed beautifully. Their reason was that the mansion was too large for just the two of them.

The ducal couple, who had come to Resotia before Lienne gave birth, remained there until a hundred days had passed after the child was born.

And when Paula left Resotia, she looked at Edward and said the same words Mariette had once said.

That she wanted to spend the rest of her life in Resotia.

Once Mariette finished her regency and fully passed the imperial throne to her son, the Duke and Duchess of Rochester would likely be able to come to Resotia at last.

“Have you finished reading all the letters Stuart left behind?”

At Mariette’s question, Ricardo and Lienne exchanged a glance. The two of them had spent the entire following day reading through Stuart’s letters. Within those letters were accounts of what had happened after Ricardo’s awakening.

At the passage describing how Ricardo had carried on so extraordinarily that rumors had spread throughout the capital claiming he had abandoned the saintess, Lienne burst out laughing before she could help herself.

On top of that, Rochester had never made any official announcement regarding the engagement.

Lienne supposed that the Duke and Duchess of Rochester at the time must have respected Ricardo’s wishes, just as they did now. They had surely worried about their son’s future, but what mattered most to them had always been Ricardo’s happiness.

As if by some unspoken agreement, Ricardo and Lienne chose not to read the letters from the period after he had departed for war.

During that time, Judith would have taken to the road dressed in nothing but plain cotton, and Lienne would have been suspended from the pillory.

They could not return to those days, but Lienne could now understand what she had not been able to then. The cold expression Ricardo had worn when he looked at her had been an expression of his despair and anguish.

Seeing him like that, the Lienne of that time would have wanted to ask only one thing.

Do you still remember me?

Watching her walk the path toward death, Ricardo had gone straight to Stuart and turned back time. And as a result, here and now, both of them were alive.

“Yes, it was truly a meaningful time.”

Those who had been through so much together needed few words. Stuart was no longer at their side, but as long as they remembered him, they believed he would always be with them.

“Ah, they’re finally coming.”

Following her gaze, they could see Walter and Julian approaching from a distance, their faces wreathed in broad smiles.

“Duke Chaplin is apparently in the midst of preparing to welcome a duchess these days.”

Mariette smiled toward the approaching pair as she shared the news with Lienne.

“Really? Did she not come with him today?”

At the question filled with eager delight, Mariette laughed as though she found it amusing.

“The slight flaw is that he has yet to find a woman to be his wife. But what matters, I suppose, is that Duke Chaplin is making an active effort.”

The one who responded to those words with a quiet snort of laughter was Ricardo. He had maintained his meetings with Walter by traveling back and forth to Dermeier on occasion.

And not long ago, Walter had passed along word that there was a woman he had his eye on as a prospective Duchess Chaplin.

Walter and Julian drew near and offered impeccable courtesy befitting a foreign royal couple. Yet their expressions also carried the warmth that could only be seen on the faces of those reuniting with old and dear friends.

“It has been a long time.”

Walter’s voice, as he met her eyes with his characteristic uprightness, was as composed as ever. Lienne thought how relieved she was that his face looked so much more at ease.

“Yes, it truly is wonderful to see you.”

“The Crown Prince must have grown a great deal as well.”

Lienne thought of Edward, whom she had left behind, and smiled brightly.

“He has. This is the first time I’ve been away from him for so long, so I miss him terribly.”

Ricardo said nothing in particular, simply watching the two of them converse.

“Now that we’ve met again, I’ve wanted to tell you how grateful I am. So many things came rushing in all at once that I left Dermeier without being able to properly say my farewells.”

“Did you not already convey as much by letter? Duke Rochester also expressed his thanks on several occasions.”

At the mention of sending a letter, the fingertips of Ricardo’s hand resting against Lienne’s back gave an involuntary twitch, but he kept his composure and maintained his expression, lifting the corners of his mouth.

After the political situation in Resotia had stabilized, Lienne had sent Walter a lengthy letter filled with deep gratitude.

In response, Walter had sent back a courteous reply — a plain, unadorned letter that was perfectly reminiscent of him, and Lienne had spent a long while afterward lost in old memories.

“Even so, I wanted to say it again in person.”

Lienne looked in turn at Julian, Walter, and Mariette with eyes full of renewed feeling.

“Without all of your help, the peace we have now would have been beyond even my dreams.”

If Julian had not appeared at the Rochester mansion thoroughly drunk, if Walter had not taken Lienne to Micheela Cor, if Stuart had not been able to turn back time — she could not begin to imagine what situation any of them might be in now.

“So when are you departing?”

Just then, an impatient voice broke through Lienne and Walter’s reunion. It belonged to Julian, and the one who answered it in a mischievous tone was Mariette.

“It seems Young Duke Paquin is in quite a hurry.”

Julian — scarcely believable as the man who had always smiled with such easy composure — nodded with unmistakably urgent urgency.

“I am.”

Julian had finally been unable to hold out and had come to Resotia before the year following Sabrina’s departure had fully passed.

In the three years since that day, he had traveled constantly between Resotia and Dermeier, attending to Sabrina with devoted and wholehearted care.

The nobles of Dermeier had at first mocked him — the man once known as the greatest womanizer and the lover of all — for displaying such pure and single-minded devotion, but later came to cheer on his love.

And in the year Edward was born, he had at last received Sabrina’s consent.

Julian had immediately wanted to become formally engaged and hold the wedding without delay, but Sabrina, unwilling to leave Resotia, kept putting off the date again and again.

And so, having made up his mind that this time he would truly marry her, Julian had decided to join Ricardo and Lienne’s procession on their return home.

His plan was to hold the wedding in Resotia first, then come to Dermeier together with Sabrina immediately afterward and hold a second ceremony there.

The man who had once claimed to know nothing of love found himself unable to make sense of the new feeling he had discovered. The same was true for Sabrina.

Behind their masks, both of them could handle anyone with smooth ease — but before the one sole person who had stripped away their masks, they were disarmingly honest, and just as clumsy.

Yet Lienne could tell. That this noisy, tumultuous love might creak and strain, but it would never crumble.

Unable to resist Julian’s urging, Ricardo hurried their departure along. Lienne embraced Mariette tightly one last time.

The two women said nothing, yet they were able to convey more than enough of the comfort and encouragement they held for one another.

Because the send-off that had begun early in the morning had stretched so long, it was nearly noon by the time they were passing near the Rochester estate.

“Shall we not stop by?”

At Lienne’s question, Ricardo shook his head. He, too, felt the same longing to return to Resotia even a moment sooner.

“That place was my home, but to be honest……”

Ricardo, who had been seated across from her, rose and came to sit at her side. Lienne gently rested her head against his shoulder.

When his singular, steadfast scent reached her from close by, a full and overflowing joy swelled in her chest.

“My home now is wherever you are.”

Lienne leaned a little deeper into his shoulder and nodded. She, too, was only just now coming to realize anew that the place she shared with Ricardo and Edward was, at last, truly home.

Resotia — where her mother was, where her brother and sister were — had now become her complete and whole homeland.

Watching the Rochester estate recede into the distance, Lienne thought to herself: perhaps all of this had been within the providence and plan of God from the very beginning.

A conversation she had shared with Ricardo in the Rochester library on a day that now felt impossibly distant came back to her.

[You…… which ending do you like? The emperor ending?]

Looking back on it now, Ricardo’s voice when he had asked that had carried a playful undertone. Perhaps even then, Ricardo had been trying to escape his sorrowful fate.

What had she answered him? She couldn’t quite remember.

“What are you thinking about?”

Ricardo posed the same question, as though carried back to that very moment. Lienne straightened from where she had been leaning and met his eyes squarely, just as she had that day — filled to the brim with a truth that must have felt decidedly forceful to him.

“I was thinking I might change my taste in novels a little.”

Ricardo, seeming to recall that day as well, drew one eye into a long, narrow line and made a playful expression.

“How so?”

Pleased by that look, Lienne burrowed into his arms. Ricardo made room for her as though it were her rightful place and rested his chin on her shoulder.

“An ending where everyone becomes safe and at ease — a conclusion where that is enough. Isn’t that the kind of happy ending you like?”

Lienne had been listening to the quiet rhythm of his heartbeat against her ear when she slowly lifted her head. His pupils were a deep, rich shade of green.

Toward the man who expressed his love with his eyes instead of words, Lienne gave him the brightest smile she could manage.

Even now, whenever she met his gaze, Lienne’s heart surged and swelled like a small boat set upon the waves.

Looking into Ricardo’s beautiful eyes, Lienne thought: I hope he is happy now, she thought, and if that is his ending, she could want for nothing more. And so the ending she wished for him was——

“An ending where we are together.”

Ricardo pulled Lienne closer and burst into full, open laughter.

“What kind of ending can you even call that?”

“This is, of course, also a happy ending.”

Ricardo turned the words over in his mouth, just as he had that day. The phrase that no longer felt awkward lifted the corners of his lips naturally.

“It suits you well.”

“Does an ending like that suit me very well this time around too?”

He caught her slightly pouting lips between his and murmured against them.

“No.”

“Then?”

Deepening breaths, like a deepening sigh, passed evenly between the two of them. It was a warm and deep kiss, free of all anxiety.

“It suits us — it suits us well.”

In words that felt like a complete and whole blessing, there was no longer any sad ending hidden within them.

As long as the two of them were together, their endings would be the same. The kind of conclusion that said: in your ending, I will always be there. An ending where that is enough.

A true happy ending.

~The End~