14. Enter Rohtas

We sent word of the Viola Eye Necklace Counterfeit Caper back to the Fisalis manor that same night. Discreetly. Under the cover of darkness.

Given the circumstances, we were keeping our investigation a secret from the Argenteias, my in-laws, and my friends alike. Right now retrieving that necklace was our number one priority. Our plan was to go public about the incident only once we had the full picture.

* * *

“If only I’d checked to make sure it was the right necklace...”

If I had, we would have caught on to the switcheroo sooner. Or maybe I never should have taken it off in the first place! On the other hand, wearing it 24/7 would have been murder on my nerves—that thing is crazy expensive!

When he saw how I was deflating like a balloon, Mr. Fisalis rushed to reassure me. “Don’t worry—it’s not your fault, Vi! Hell, it isn’t anybody’s fault!”

“But...”

“No doubt the perpetrator planned out their crime carefully, so it’s only natural that we didn’t catch on. I mean, the possibility of it hadn’t even crossed our minds before now.”

“You think so?”

“I do. So don’t let it bother you.”

“All right.”

He looked relieved that he had managed to get through to me. He knew full well that once I fell into a negative spiral, there was no pulling me out of the depths of despair (see also: The Broken Vase Incident).

“I believe the only thing on the schedule for tomorrow is the afternoon tea party.”

“Yeah. The guys will be joining us this time around, right?”

One of the whole points of this event was to find a good match for Miss Verbena, after all. Tomorrow’s tea party would make the perfect showcase for all those high-class (in multiple senses!) bachelors.

“Correct. Perhaps we can use the opportunity to ask some questions.”

“Good thinking.”

* * *

The next day rolled around.

It was a good thing our morning schedule was open, because I ended up oversleeping. We’d stayed up late into the night discussing the missing necklace—and that was to say nothing of all the built-up fatigue that had snuck up on me. When I woke up to the sight of Mr. Fisalis already sipping away at his tea, I was practically beside myself.

After a late breakfast, we held a room-wide strategy meeting in advance of the afternoon tea party.

“We’ve done our best to recall the circumstances of the accident,” Stellaria started us off. By the “accident,” she must have been referring to the multi-servant pile-up shortly following our arrival.

“Oh, have you remembered the particulars?”

“Yes. Though I can’t say for certain, I believe Marquis and Marquise Erectum, Viscount and Viscountess Pastoris, and Viscount Trifolium were all present. My recollection of the family crest on the other two carriages is fuzzier, but if I’m not mistaken, they belonged to Earl Lizardtail and Baron Radiata respectively. A few more families trickled in after that, however, so it’s entirely possible my memory is playing tricks on me,” she replied, thinking the events over carefully.

I could have sworn I saw Mr. Fisalis’s eyes light up the moment Viscount Trifolium’s name was mentioned, but let’s pray that was just my imagination. Oh, for crying out loud! Don’t pin this all on him out of pure self-interest!

“Earl Lizardtail and Baron Radiata rule over the territories adjacent to the Argenteia’s land. The earl is one thing, but the baron rarely shows his face in Rohze; I very much doubt you’d recognize him.”

Mr. Fisalis was right—I knew his name and face from the Noble’s Almanac, but I almost never saw him around at the royal capital or any major parties. Who would have guessed there was an even more obscure character than yours truly?!

“For now, we should keep those five people in mind and watch what they do during the tea party—right?”

“Precisely.”

“Will do!”

I was so hyped for our undercover investigation that all my earlier negativity had vanished without a trace.

Mr. Fisalis regarded my enthusiasm with a wry smile. “Try not to get so carried away that you blow our cover, Vi.”

“If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to check that nothing is amiss with the rest of our jewelry, then look into the other families’ servants. I’ll try to find out whose servant was the first to fall and who else went down with them.”

“Do your best to be discreet about it; we don’t want the culprit knowing that we’ve cottoned on to the theft. I realize that’s no easy task, though, considering how many potential suspects there still are.”

The maids all bobbed their heads in response. “Of course, Master Fisalis.”

Oh man, the time has come once more for our top-class servants to show their stuff! Something tells me they’re going to go above and beyond our expectations.

* * *

After lunch, everyone got changed for the tea party before meeting back up in the garden.

“Let’s get this investigation underway!”

“Tone it down a few notches, Vi! I need you to act natural, okay?”

“Okay, sorry. I’ll be good.”

My bad. I’d better take the pro’s advice on this one.

This time around, we were divided into one group of married couples and another group of single people.

“The matchmaking agenda isn’t even subtle anymore!” Miss Verbena seethed.

Miss Iris, meanwhile, was the picture of complacency. “Now, now! Since they’ve already gone to the trouble of grouping us up, we might as well take the opportunity to bag ourselves a nice catch!”

Looks like she’s back on the prowl!

Since we’d been split up into spouses and singles, that meant I was on my own today. That said, there was no dancing on the itinerary, so at least I’d have Mr. Fisalis with me the whole time.

Even among the married guests, not everyone seemed to be from our parents’ generation. The aforementioned Erectum couple looked close to our age. They were definitely on the younger side, at least.

I held hands with Mr. Fisalis and took a stroll around the garden while we were waiting for the tea party to start. Mostly in the interest of monitoring our targets, mind you.

“I see Viscount Trifolium and Baron Radiata are both bachelors.”

The two men my husband had pointed out were talking to each other over where Team Singles had gathered.

“And Marquis Erectum, Earl Lizardtail, and Viscount Pastoris are all married,” I observed.

“Viscount Pastoris is the only one with a daughter. The marquis and the earl don’t have children yet.”

“I wonder why. Maybe because they’re still pretty young? Unfortunately, I don’t remember their exact ages. All I can do is match names to faces.”

“That’s still a sign of progress.”

“Exactly!”

Once we got back to the manor, I was hitting the Noble’s Almanac again.

“Let’s keep in mind that every bachelor invited here is someone who was deemed worthy of Lady Verbena.”

Leave it to the people of our kingdom to think, Who cares if a duke’s daughter hooks up with a baron? One of the best things about Flür was that nobody got fussed over love between classes! Of course, that only applied to marriages that were for love. It wouldn’t fly in a marriage of convenience—that is, unless the lower-ranked half of the pair was pretty darn loaded.

Hm? Hold on a second... If I didn’t know better, I’d say we have an exception to the rule standing right here...

We spotted Celosia among Team Singles too.

While the eldest son of the Argenteia family had found himself a fiancée and was soon to be married, Celosia was in a more flexible position than his brother; with any luck, he might even find the right person here at this party. He didn’t seem to be under as much pressure as Miss Verbena, however.

“Should we try asking Celosia?” Mr. Fisalis whispered, keeping his voice low enough that only I could hear him.

“About who was standing around the entrance that day, you mean?”

“Yeah, exactly.”

“How are we supposed to bring that up, though?”

“Watch and learn.”

After shooting me a subtle wink, Mr. Fisalis tugged me along by the hand and walked up to Celosia.

The epitome of casual, he opened with: “Gorgeous weather, isn’t it?”

“You said it. It’s so nice that I’m a little worried the ladies might get sunburned,” Celosia replied, flashing a smile my way.

“It’s almost hard to believe it was pouring rain when we first arrived.”

“I’ll say. I wasn’t sure what we were going to do if the storm carried on like that, so I’m glad the sun finally decided to come out.”

“Just getting here was a struggle, and I can’t say things got much easier after we’d arrived. The traffic jam out front was so bad that for a moment I wondered if we’d wound up at some incredibly fancy inn.” Mr. Fisalis chuckled.

“Ha ha ha! What can you do? The rain had everyone running behind schedule. We had a real circus on our hands, let me tell you.”

“There were already a few other families waiting when we got here, weren’t there? I almost feel bad for cutting to the front of the line.”

“Don’t be silly! There were...what, five people ahead of you, if I’m remembering correctly? Earl Lizardtail, Viscount Trifolium, Marquis Erectum, Viscount Pastoris, and Baron Radiata. Not a one among them is entitled to better treatment than the Fisalis family,” said Celosia—for all he knew, just casually moving the conversation along.

Whoaaa! Celosia just rattled off all five of our suspects’ names! Leave it to Mr. Fisalis—just look at how smoothly he steered the conversation to the subject of our arrival! Should I chalk it up to a trick of his trade? Regardless, I have to take my hat off to him! And if you ask me, Celosia is just as impressive for coming up with all the guests’ names on command...but I’ll spare everyone the rest of my ramblings.

While the two men were chatting, I shot my husband a discreet but admiring glance. He was so awesome. What a natural!

I had to hand it to Stellaria and Drosera for their impressive memories too. I could hardly believe they’d remembered everyone there correctly.

Uh-oh. Is it just me, or is everyone else making me look like an idiot?

* * *

The tea party was over before evening fell, and we all returned to our rooms for the time being. There was still some time before dinner, so we had to take this chance to compare notes.

“Hey, guys, it’s us!”

“Welcome back.”

“Rohtas?!” Mr. Fisalis and I shouted in reply.

What a surprise we’d come back to! There to greet us with a smile was none other than Rohtas himself.

“Huh? What? Rohtas? You came all this way just to report back to us in person? Who’s taking care of the mansion?”

“Considering the scale of the problem, I thought it best to put in a personal appearance. Not to worry—Cartham and Bellis have everything under control at the manor.”

“Oh, fair point! What did you tell security to get inside the villa, though?”

No doubt the Argenteias would suspect something was up if the Fisalis butler was showing up this late to the party.

“I claimed that some urgent work had come up for my master.”

“But why would the butler be personally delivering that message?”

“Fear not—I talked my way around that.”

He flashed us yet another smile. Well, if Rohtas said it was fine, I figured there wasn’t anything to worry about.

“You work fast, Rohtas,” remarked Mr. Fisalis. “By the way, did you look into everything we asked about?”

“Yes, sir. And a few points of interest did come to light in the process,” the butler responded, holding out a stack of documents.

Mr. Fisalis took the offered papers and began scanning them over. “Hmm... Funny how this is a perfect match for the list of names we came up with.”

“Got your eyes on a few suspects already, have you?”

“In a sense. They happened to be at the scene of the crime, but we have yet to conduct a proper investigation.”

“I see.”

“A perfect match”? What, do you mean with those five noblemen we already talked about?

“First, there’s Marquis Erectum. Despite his extravagant lifestyle, he’s always claiming to be broke—and as a matter of fact, he is quite deep in debt.”

“That checks out. The Erectums were a pretty flashy couple.”

They were perfectly matched as a handsome man and a beautiful lady.

“Then there’s Earl Lizardtail. He was once a wealthy lord, but his territory’s poor harvest has put a significant strain on his wallet these days.”

“Now that’s a familiar dilemma!”

Oh man, this is breaking my heart. But there’s one big difference between him and my family: this guy is so vain that he cuts all sorts of corners looking out for his own livelihood! Take better care of your subjects, you jerk! Also, I’d assumed he was already married, but it looks like his plus one to this event is actually his fiancée.

“Next, Viscount Trifolium. He’s a subordinate of Duke Argenteia with a reputation for being a hard worker. Unfortunately, his parents passed away very recently, saddling him with a great deal of debt that has left him hurting for money.”

“But he must make a lot at his job, right?”

“More than enough to support himself—but enough to pay back what he owes? That’s another matter entirely.”

“That makes sense, I guess.”

“All right, it’s got to be him! He’s the culprit!”

“Don’t bring your personal feelings into this, Cercis!”

The viscount had seemed like such a kind, mild-mannered fellow. I could buy that he was a hard worker, but he didn’t strike me as the type to turn to crime.

“Moving on... Viscount Pastoris. He’s another one of Duke Argenteia’s subordinates, also lauded for his diligence. His daughter is a diehard fan of yours, and it seems she’s been pestering him for a copy of anything and everything she sees you wear—which has been a burden on their financial situation as of late.”

“Yikes... I feel kind of bad.”

“It’s hardly your fault.”

Either way, I was pretty sure it was bad parenting to buy your daughter every little thing she wanted!

“Finally, Baron Radiata. He’s the very picture of a rustic lord. He’s not particularly hard-pressed for money, nor does he have a bad reputation. He was more likely invited out of courtesy to a neighbor than as a potential partner for Lady Verbena.”

“Then it doesn’t sound like there’s anything too suspicious about him, does it?”

“True... I think we can safely remove him from our list of suspects.”

With that, we’d narrowed the possibilities down to four people.

“While the two of you were busy with the tea party, we did some investigating of our own.” This time, Stellaria was the one to speak up. “With the exception of the Viola Eye, all the jewelry we brought with us is safe and accounted for.”

Mr. Fisalis mulled that bit of information over. “Hmm... I wonder what we should make of that. If the culprit knew about the seals, what’s to stop them from counterfeiting even more Viola Sapphire accessories?”

Rohtas frowned. “Perhaps they couldn’t...because we have too many Viola Sapphires?”

“What do you mean?”

“Ahem. We’ve had a great many accessories made with the Viola Sapphire, and there was no way to know which of them we would be bringing with us. However, the Viola Eye—which we showcased for the first time just the other day—was leagues above anything else we’d produced thus far. Given that there had been no word of us getting our hands on a more valuable gem since then, it was easy to assume that the madam would wear the same necklace to her next social event...and thus the culprit focused only on counterfeiting the Viola Eye.”

Oho... I get it! You’re a genius, Rohtas!

“Then this had to be a fairly premeditated crime, right?” I suggested.

“That’s more or less in line with what we were already thinking. It wasn’t an accident that the necklaces got swapped—this heist was planned out well in advance.”

“I’m inclined to agree with that, Master Fisalis.”

All right! Someone’s going to pay for their crimes!