Chapter 3: Let’s Get Proactive

12: The Young Lady Bribes the Prison Guard

All this reading was making her shoulders sore, so Rachel tried changing things up by adding embroidery to her daily schedule. After she mindlessly stitched on a handkerchief for a while, she laid down her needle to see how it was coming along.

Looking at the embroidered flowers made only from outlines, Rachel murmured, “Hmm... It’s all a little too quiet.”

She wasn’t talking about her embroidery. Rachel had learned of the impending end of her engagement a month ago, around the time the prince began plotting. She’d chosen not to stop him as he prepared to act because that seemed...more “amusing.” She’d wanted to see just what that boneheaded prince and his lackeys could do too. Plus, if she were in prison, she could skip her lessons, at least until the king demanded the engagement stand. There had also been a certain excitement that something she hadn’t thought of might cause unexpected trouble.

For those reasons, Rachel had played along with the prince’s conspiracy, but Elliott was even shallower than she’d thought. It had been a week, and he hadn’t come up with anything other than trying to starve her out. She’d hoped that he would try far more underhanded methods of getting at her so she could make them all blow up in his face.

“If this is how it’s going to be, then I let him shame me for nothing. How dull.”

Rachel, who’d been staring into space for a while, took another sip of her already cold drink. The lingering fragrance of high-quality tea leaves tickled her nostrils. Then she smiled.

“Yes, I think I see the problem. Perhaps all this passive waiting isn’t like me. I had thought the prince would be the one making the moves, but... Yes, I think I’ll take the fight to him myself.”

Prison breaks often took place late at night, so the guard had to patrol then too.

“There’s just one young lady in the palace dungeon now, and I can’t see her breaking out...” the guard mused. Still, a job was a job.

The guard’s footsteps echoed as he descended the staircase to the dungeon. When he reached the cell, he found the young lady sitting on the floor with the lights turned down. She seemed to be awake despite the late hour. She was leaning against a cushion as she gazed out the little window.

“What are you doing?” the guard asked out of simple curiosity, and her beautiful visage, illuminated by the moonlight, turned to face him.

“Oh, Mr. Guard. It’s a lovely night. The moon is out, so I was just looking up at it.” She tipped back the shot glass she was holding in her fingers.

Detecting a familiar scent, the guard looked at her suspiciously. “Oh, come on now. A young lady like you, drinking whiskey?”

Whiskey was a hard drink, and if she was drinking it out of a shot glass, it was probably straight. If she were a man, then sure; there were some among the nobility who had a taste for it. However, it was generally a drink of the working class, not high society.

“Oh, you can tell just by the smell? You must be a fan. Would you join me for a drink?”

“You’re already drunk. Wait, what?!”

Seeing the way Rachel jovially held the bottle out to him, the guard reacted with dismay...then shock, as he did a double take.

“Hold up! That’s a thirty-year-old bottle of St. Valentine’s, isn’t it?”

“My, you do know your stuff,” Rachel said admiringly.

“That’s one hell of a drink you’ve got there. It costs more than two months of my salary.”

“I simply took a sealed bottle from my father’s cellar. It’s not a big deal. Here, have a glass.”

The guard hesitated. “No, in my position, I can’t. But it’s a thirty-year-old St. Valentine’s...”

“I have snacks to go with it too.” She offered him a tray with slices of corned beef, raisin butter, pickles, smoked cheese, and crackers with liver pâté. “Go on, knock it back.”

“Oh, so this is a thirty-year-old whiskey!”

Rachel now had him right where she wanted him. Was there a guard alive who could possibly say no to such a legendary item? No, there was not.

When the guard gave in and drained the whole glass, Rachel extended the brown bottle toward him again.

“You drank that like a champ. Now, follow it up with another three.”

Just as the guard was regretting that he’d polished off such an exquisite drink so quickly, Rachel poured him another glass of the fragrant amber liquid. He had a second, a third, and a fourth glass. Once he’d gotten used to the drink, Rachel offered him a different bottle. Having forgotten his duties by now, the guard didn’t even notice that Rachel had stopped drinking herself.

“Whiskey really does have to be straight,” Rachel remarked. “The finish simply cannot be beaten.”

“So you get it too?! This aroma at the back of the nasal passage is the best! You sure know your drinks, young lady!”

“Oh, not at all compared to you, Mr. Guard. Would you fancy a chocolate?”

“Ooh! Thanks!”

The prison guard was now completely intoxicated, and he’d let his guard down. While he was full of fine liquor, enjoying himself, Rachel began sweet-talking him. She even gave him an unopened bottle to take home.

“Whew, now that we’re talking, you’re pretty easy to get along with!” the guard blurted.

“Hee hee, I do like to think I’m good with people, even if it may not seem that way. But Prince Elliott is always talking about himself, you know? It’s not that we had nothing to talk about; it’s that it was impossible to have a conversation with him. It’s maddening.”

“Oh, I get that. I really do. I mean, just look at the guy. He’s clearly an idiot.” The guard hiccuped. “Yeah, you did nothing wrong!”

Their fun time drinking together had crushed any suspicion the guard might have had. He didn’t realize that she was skillfully talking around him, so everything Rachel said went straight through to his brain. By the time they parted, he was convinced that the prince was an evil moron, while Rachel was pitiable and good.

“It’s gotten quite late,” Rachel said, yawning. “Mind your step on the way home. We wouldn’t want you dropping that bottle, would we?”

“Yeah, I’ll do that! Oh, right! I’ll make it easy for you to get in contact with the outside world, so if you’ve got anything more like this to share, let me know, would you?”

“Of course. If I have the freedom to meet with people and send letters, I think I’ll be able to get more and more treats for both of us.”

“Sounds like a plan. Okay, I’ll figure something out.”

“Please do.”

Once the guard finished tottering up the steps, holding his precious gift tightly as he stumbled along, a shadowy figure stood up in a lightless corner of the prison.

“Young Mistress, you needn’t induce a petty official like that to help you. We can bring you most anything you need...”

Rachel, who was arranging her cushions before going to bed, grinned. “This is the same as with the gate guards. It’s important that the courtiers back me over the prince. For my plan, in particular, I’ll be needing their sympathy and cooperation so that I can mock Prince Elliott to his face.”

“Yes, ma’am. It seems I spoke out of turn. As for the mansion, we will be making the preparations we discussed the other day.”

“See to it.”

As the shadowy figure disappeared once more into the darkness, Rachel pulled the covers over her and turned out the lights.

13: The Young Lady Kills Time

Rachel looked up through the bars at the clear sky.

“It’s a fine day. The larks are flying so high.”

Rachel did, occasionally, long for the freedom she’d known before being sent to prison.

“Not that I can go outside...”

Well, it was more a case of wouldn’t than couldn’t.

Suddenly, it occurred to Rachel that it might be fun to throw paper airplanes. Oh, if only they could fly through the sky in her place. She went looking and found some scratch paper with notes on it that she didn’t need anymore.

“There’s more to making paper airplanes than I’d have thought.”

The shape and folds could entirely change how they flew. The ones she tried to make stylish didn’t fly that far, but with the thin paper she was using, the wind would sometimes pick them up and carry them to the other side of the wall. She got really into trying different folding methods to make a variety of paper airplanes. The white pieces of paper flew this way and that, and some that had touched down already caught a gust of wind and lifted off again.

Rachel’s inventions kept soaring into the sky from her little window until she had used up all the paper.

Prince Elliott happened to be looking up at the sky when he spotted some paper trash dancing about at a low altitude. It was nothing for one of his stature to concern himself with, but what caught his attention was the different shapes flying by one after another. There was everything from proper paper airplanes to simple paper tubes. It was clear that someone had to be making them.

When Elliott picked up one that happened to land nearby, he realized there was something written on it.

“Hm?”

Opening it up, he saw a neat but hastily written note that said:

“Scoop: The Prince’s Long Hair is to Hide His Baldness?!”

Elliott let the note drop to the ground. Then, before it could catch the wind again, he hurriedly picked it back up.

“What is this?!” he exclaimed, rushing to gather up the other papers.

“The Pretty Boy Prince’s Ten Year War against Dermatophytosis: His Hopeless Battle with Athlete’s Foot.”

“A Personal Room in the Town Brothel: The Prince’s Debauched Personal Life.”

“The Palace in an Uproar! Failing Marks in All Subjects! Ministers Speechless at the Prince’s Inability to Study!”

Elliott felt faint just reading them, but when the wind tried to snatch them out of his hands, he hurriedly adjusted his grip on the stack of papers.

“What is all this made-up gossip?! Don’t tell me it’s flying all over!”

He looked around and saw an airplane here, and another airplane there.

“Oh, for the love of God!”

To top it all off, on the other side of the wall, he heard the children in the castle town singing a song he’d never heard before.

“One day our prince got up on a horse.

He took one step, and he slipped of course.

On his second step, the prince did fall.

He can’t control his horse at all.

Oh, our prince, he doesn’t know how to ride.

’Cause poor Ellie’s head’s got no brain inside!”

Elliott’s footsteps echoed through the prison as he raced down the stairs.

“Racheeeeeel?!” Holding a lance, he thrust it through the bars into the cell. “Youuuuu! I’ll kill you! Kill you dead! Kill you real dead!”

After he’d thrust his weapon several times, Rachel, who was reclining on her cushions in the back of the prison and reading a book, glanced in his direction.

“Your Highness, jousting lances are powerful, but not very long. Couldn’t you realize that without a woman explaining it to you?”

“At least be a little scared, you impudent wench!” Elliott cried.

“Your only redeeming feature is your pretty face, so I do think you had best watch the way you speak. It’s unbecoming of you.”

“Is there anything more unbecoming than what you’ve just done?!” Elliott threw the papers he’d collected against the iron bars. “What is this?! You’re spreading slanderous lies about me! I wouldn’t have expected you to try and sully my name like this, you dirty liar!”

“That’s awfully rich, coming from a man who condemned me on the testimony of just one party...”

Rachel glanced down at the pile of memos, then back at Elliott.

“I had no particular intention of slandering you, Your Highness.”

“Then what are these?! Let’s hear you try to come up with an excuse for spreading this drivel!”

Rachel sat up and closed her book. “Where is the slander against you?”

“Where, you ask? It’s all libelous!”

Rachel pointed to one of the pieces of paper that had landed inside her cell.

“Please, read it more carefully. This one only says ‘the prince,’ right? There are hundreds of princes out there, you realize? If you immediately assumed it was about you, perhaps you have a persecution complex? Why not talk to a doctor about it?”

“Just who do you think has put me under all this stress?!” Elliott snapped. “The children in town were singing an extremely disrespectful song about ‘Ellie’! That had an actual name in it!”

“You think this ‘Ellie’ is you? Why, it could just as easily be an Ellison, or an Ellington, or an Ellery, couldn’t it? You’re so self-conscious, Your Highness.”

“A prince! With the name Ellie! And around here?! I’m the only person who fits those criteria, and you know it! Don’t be ridiculous!”

Rachel frowned. “You’ve been getting smarter lately... It’s not cute.”

“What is that look for?! Your words and actions have already gone past the point of being merely disrespectful!”

“I seem to have already gone too far, so what could a little more add to the list of charges?”

Elliott glared into the cell. “So, you admit it then?! That you’ve been mocking me!”

Ignoring the chimpanzee prince, who was screeching and trying to intimidate her outside her cage, Rachel opened her book.

“I told you, that wasn’t my intention. It’s true that I made some paper airplanes to kill time. But I just used whatever scrap paper I had lying around.”

“Scrap paper?! With what it said?! What could you possibly have to write that would leave notes like that lying around?!”

“I happen to be working as a copywriter for an underground publisher. Those are candidate titles for a gossip rag.”

“What kind of job is that for the daughter of a duke?!”

“The prince is so stupid it makes my head hurt. He didn’t even point out that it was weird for me to be working from inside a jail cell,” Rachel said, sighing.

The prince had finally managed to strike a blow against her! If you could call it that?

Rachel grumbled as she pulled all of her books out of the wooden boxes.

“Hrm... I knew it. I’ve read everything I brought here with me.”

She’d packed every interesting-looking book she could lay her hands on, but with the excessive amount of free time she had, she’d read through every last one of them. There was an appeal to rereading things, but it was still too soon for that.

“And I just finished with my embroidery too.”

George’s best outfit, which she had brought with her—without asking—now had a dynamic pattern embroidered onto it—without his permission.

The black mantelet depicted a battle between dragon and phoenix in gold and silver thread. It would go perfectly with his faux intelligence and his scowling glasses-guy image. They would no doubt praise him with such comments as, “Whoa, there’s a guy drunk on the idea that he’s omnipotent,” and, “How old is he? Does he still think, ‘I was chosen by God,’ or something?”

“George is sure to be popular in this. I’ve worked hard for my little brother.”

He was certainly going to shed tears of gratitude. She’d have to have someone sneak it back into his closet later.

With her hobbies exhausted, Rachel now had nothing to keep her occupied at night.

“I’ve been forbidden from music and hunting too.”

It would be entertaining to deliberately break those bans, but she was sick of the prince right now and didn’t want to make him rush in here in the middle of the night.

“Honestly, making a fuss in a young lady’s room in the middle of the night. His Highness lacks discretion,” Rachel whispered, a criticism that might have been more valid were she not the direct cause of him doing so.

Rachel began looking around for something to do. Suddenly, her eyes fell on some writing paper. She’d sent her scrap paper off as paper airplanes, but she still had plenty of blank paper.

“I know... If I have no novels, I can try writing my own.”

She wouldn’t brag about it herself, but Rachel was a creative individual. She’d even written books before. While she’d never penned anything long, she was blessed with an abundance of time and material here.

“Hmm, my protagonist will be Prince Vermouth, the prince of a small country. An idiot, loyal to his desires and loath to think about anything difficult. He falls into traps and chases after any girl he sees, and his own horse even horses around with him.”

As she wrote down the character’s background, story ideas and side characters popped into her head one after another. Even just looking at the list of bullet points gave her the feeling that she had quite a lengthy work on her hands here.

“Yes, I like it! If I have no novels, I’ll just have to write my own!”

Rachel rounded up all the paper and ink she had, bringing the light closer and taking pen in hand.

One night a few days later, a woman emerged from the shadows in front of the cell bars. She quietly called out to Rachel, who was writing something, and said, “Young Mistress, I brought the things you requested because you said it was urgent, but...what do you plan to use these things for?”

She approached the bars and slipped the items she’d brought inside the cell. There were four or five stacks of writing paper wrapped in brown waxed paper, and two or three cardboard boxes with a dozen ink bottles in each. In all, it amounted to a few thousand sheets of paper and plenty of ink. It was more than what an individual would normally go through.

“These aren’t from the ducal house, I hope?” Rachel asked.

“No, I bought them in town,” the woman replied, shaking her head. “No matter who you give them to, no one will be able to trace them back to you.”

Rachel handed the woman a large stack of papers—what she’d finished so far. It was written in neat, easy-to-read script, but...well, it was an awful lot.

Rachel, bags under her eyes, smiled at her servant as the woman looked through her work.

“There was a publisher who was good at distributing things underground while keeping the author a secret, right?” Rachel asked.

“Yes, ma’am. I have some ideas, but why?”

“I want that manuscript spread all around town at once. They can retain my share of the profit, so have them keep the price low and print as many copies as they can to sell in the capital.”

Rachel handed over the ending she’d just finished to her servant and rubbed the bridge of her nose. It was clearly time to turn in for the night.

“Whew. After working this hard, I feel more exhausted than I have in quite some time.”

Her servant, who had been looking through her work, cocked her head to the side. “Young Mistress... To be honest, I cannot imagine there was such a desperate need to finish this right now.”

“That’s because you don’t understand the creative process. When inspiration strikes, you have to throw everything you have into your work before your passion cools. Heh... Heh heh... You know, I got so into it that I finished three volumes of The Moronic Prince’s Great Adventure, and two of a spin-off titled His Highness Is After Me.”

It went without saying that Rachel had used her abundance of personal experience to write the ways Prince Vermouth humiliated himself, but she figured she could just add a disclaimer saying, “This story is a work of fiction,” and it would all be good.

In the spin-off, an innocent and stupid young boy named Hanks aims to become a knight, and when the prince unexpectedly recognizes his talent, he rises up in the world. The kindly prince chooses Hanks to be his personal knight, but it turns out that, actually, the prince swings that way and is after him. High jinks ensue.

These days, the literacy rate was rising, and there was a lot of press around popular novels. If it was interesting, they’d likely read it.

“I went to all the trouble of writing it, so I most certainly want the public to read it. I’ll be writing more too, so I’m counting on you, okay?”

“Yes, ma’am!”

Her servant nodded, but instead of leaving, she continued flipping through the manuscript.

“Young Mistress.”

“Yes?”

“Two of your pages are misnumbered. Also, in His Highness, don’t you think the reader will get bored in the key scene where Elliott forces himself on Sykes if you have them do it three time in a row between the lines, ‘Ah?!’ and ‘I’ve been tainted...’? And if I might venture to offer a personal opinion, I think I’d like it better if Sykes were a weak-willed top instead.”

“I wasn’t asking you to go so far as editing it. But fine, go ahead and fix anything that seems strange.”

Mr. Robinson of the Mouse & Rat Company wiped his bald head with his handkerchief and smiled at the unidentified woman who’d come in saying she wanted a novel published through black market routes.

“Okay, I understand your conditions for publishing it. Our public-facing business has nothing to do with publishing at all, so you can count on us to cover up where it came from. I’ll have this all over the place without people even knowing we were involved. Now, by the way...”

Robinson pointed to two different spots in the manuscripts that were supposed to have the same meaning.

“In the first volume, the prince is Vermouth, and the knight is Hanks, but later on it changes to Elliott and Sykes. Was the author writing with someone in mind? I think one of these must be the names of the people she was modeling them on. Which would you like to standardize it to?”

Model commoner that he was, Mr. Robinson didn’t even know the names of his own country’s royal family. And the maid who’d come to deliver it was far too influenced by Rachel.

“I think it would probably be good with Elliott and Sykes.”

Elliott noticed that Sykes had been a bit cold to him lately, always staying at an inconvenient distance.

“Sykes, did something happen?” Elliott asked.

“No, Your Highness, don’t let it bother you,” Sykes said as he smiled awkwardly and covered his butt.

Elliott cocked his head to the side in confusion.

14: The Prince is Led Astray by a Debate

“I come to see you after a few days and... Rachel, what is the meaning of this?!”

Prince Elliott’s all-too-familiar shouting prompted Rachel to raise her sleep mask and glance in his direction.

“Honestly, Your Highness, coming into a woman’s bedchambers and shouting so loudly? Things like that will reveal your upbringing to people.”

“I’m the prince of this country, not some lowly bumpkin who needs to hide his origins! Besides, if you call this your bedchambers, where is your living room, huh?!”

“Fine, then please remodel the prison to have two rooms.”

George poked the prince’s shoulder. “Your Highness, you’re getting off track.”

“You’re right,” the prince replied. “Rachel, that’s not what I asked you about! What’s going on with all these things inside your cell?!”

“It’s been like this for a while now. What’s strange about it? I’m tired, you know?”

“It’s totally different! You must have been leaving the prison!”

“I haven’t left,” Rachel protested sleepily. Then she put her sleep mask back on and crawled under her down blanket.

The mountain of wooden boxes that had been scattered around the prison had now been neatly restacked, increasing the amount of space. That was fine. Maybe Rachel had tidied up in her spare time. However...

“You were sleeping on cushions before now, weren’t you?!” Elliott questioned. “Where did that canopy bed come from?!”

“Mngh... It’s been here awhile,” Rachel answered, nonplussed.

“Fine, then what about that high pile carpet and reclining sofa with an ottoman?! What about the charcoal briquette stove?! And, worst yet, what is that writing desk by the window?! It’s too big to fit in the door! How did you even get it in here?!”

“Nngh... You’re so noisy. I told you, it was all here to begin with.”

“Don’t you lie to me!!!”

Rachel must have been tired, because she rubbed her eyes through her sleep mask, then pulled on the cord hanging beside the bed. There was a whooshing sound as a drop curtain fell just inside the bars of her cell.

The curtain had one word written on it in big letters: “CLOSED.”

“Whaa...?” Elliott squeaked.

Elliott gathered a group of close to ten young men in his office. They were the sons of influential nobles, the same as Sykes and George, and were both Elliott’s hangers-on and members of the Margaret fan club. While Sykes and George seemed to do all the talking, Elliott had a number of people who trailed behind him like goldfish poop, and he’d gathered them all together, no matter whether he had business with them today. It was unusual for him to do this without some occasion, but the situation he found himself in right now was a bigger deal than some ball.

Sitting at the head of the table, Elliott looked at them all with a bitter expression as he said, “I thought I had condemned Rachel, but she does whatever she pleases. It’s even worse than before. I want to discuss whether there’s anything we can do against her.”

Despite Elliott’s bold declaration of his pathetic position, no one present had the common sense to call him on it.

With a strained look on his face, Elliott turned to his close friend. “First of all, George. Didn’t you tell me you had your house under control?! How did the inside of the prison end up like that?!”

“W-Well... There was no indication anywhere inside the house that she’d prepared that sort of thing, Your Highness. None of the servants appeared to be acting strangely either.”

This man who, on paper at least, was supposed to be talented, had never considered his sister might have a base of operations in town.

“What’s the guard have to say for himself?” Sykes, who hadn’t been tagging along earlier that day, asked George. “It has to be a dereliction of duty that he overlooked all this, right?”

“Well, you see...he has other duties, and he only visits the dungeon on patrol. He was shocked to see how things had changed when he went there today.”

“Hmph, what a dolt,” Sykes muttered, though a meathead like him had to be about the last person the guard would have wanted calling him that.

“Creating openings is a specialty of hers, after all! Damn you, Rachel!” Elliott slammed his hands down on the desk, his face contorted with rage. “Would most noblewomen be so defiant after being tossed in a dungeon?! I thought a few days in there would make her cry and beg for forgiveness. How could that boring woman, whose only redeeming quality was that she would keep her mouth shut and do as she was told, have changed so completely?!”

“It is too big of a change, I’ll admit,” George agreed.

Most people only had that one image of Rachel, so this was more than just letting her mask slip a little to reveal her true character. It was such a complete and total switch that some among them had lost all trust in women entirely.

“I banished her from polite society to save Margaret, whom she was oppressing! So why do I have to spend every waking moment thinking about Rachel, Rachel, Rachel. I can’t even sleep for worrying about what she might pull next! Her face is burned into my mind twenty-four seven, and I can’t get it to go away!”

Seeing the way this whole situation had consumed the prince’s life, Sykes winked and snapped his fingers, striking a pretentious pose that didn’t suit the buff lunkhead at all.

“Your Highness, that’s what they call...love,” Sykes declared.

Elliott chucked a vase of flowers at Sykes’s face, then ignored his moans of pain as he turned to the rest of his minions.

“Call it what you will. Does no one have any idea how we can teach her a lesson?”

The assembled men looked at one another, already sensing failure from the way their prince was talking. Still, they offered what ideas came to mind.

“How about you smoke her out?” asked one young man.

“She already did that to me,” Elliott noted.

“Then why not put something that stinks in there?” asked another.

“She already did that to me.”

“You could get other people involved and have them harass her.”

“She already did that to me.”

“Or what about spreading nasty rumors about her?”

“She already did that to me.”

Elliott glared at the young men. “You people... Did you come here today to mock me?!”

“Nooo?! We never imagined you’d have failed so much...”

Though they shook their heads and denied it, the young men didn’t realize that they were only kicking Elliott while he was already down. Fortunately, one man was there to tell them off for it.

Standing beside his emotionally scarred prince, George countered by saying, “Listen up, all of you. His Highness has not failed. His opponent simply beat him.”

“I don’t need your corrections!” Elliott snapped. A firm boot to the butt sent George tumbling face-first into the table and left him sprawled on the floor.

“Still, to get back to the topic at hand,” a young man seated to the right said, raising his hand. He was the son of a count. “Sir Ferguson, it seems her personality has changed considerably since she was sent to prison. Is it not inevitable that all our prior predictions no longer pan out?”

“Oh!” Elliott blurted. “You could say that, yes.”

The woman who’d once demurely followed behind the prince had, even if only while she was in the dungeon, turned into a crazy woman who got carried away doing whatever she pleased.

At this point, the air in the room changed, filling with excitement. Speculation was easier than offering concrete proposals.

“What if that one’s a replacement, and the prince has already killed her?” said one young man.

“If I’d killed her, why would I hold a meeting like this?!” Elliott protested.

“Or maybe she’s a body double, and the original’s skipped town,” suggested another.

“Who chooses a fake who’s crazier and has more personality?”

As the discussion shifted from a strategy meeting to a debate on whether the young lady was a fake, one young man, the eldest son and heir of a viscount, raised his hand.

“Let’s set aside the question of her authenticity. What’s got me curious is... Well, I don’t know how to say this, but...don’t you think Rachel’s gotten sexier all of a sudden?”

“You said it!”

Elliott’s minions all nodded in agreement. Even Elliott, who was watching with exasperation as the meeting went off the rails, had been feeling the same way. Her hairstyle had remained the same, and she still barely used any makeup, but...her face was highly expressive, and even though she only wore loungewear, she gave off a much more sensuously enchanting aura now.

The young men talked about her excitedly.

“It’s like her every gesture is filled with sexuality.”

“Yeah! Is it because her face shows more expression? There’s something vibrant about her, like she was a black and white sketch that’s been colorized.”

The pubescent boys’ conversation continued on in this vein, but...

“You know, if she’s changed that much, maybe being His Highness’s fiancée was really hard on her?”

“Oh. Now that you mention it, she got a whole lot more cheerful as soon as their engagement was broken.”

“She seems so full of life without a fiancé weighing her down.”

The conversation was heading in a weird direction again. In between their sympathetic whispers, they glanced with furrowed brows at their leader.

“Whose side are you people on?!” Elliott shouted, a vein pulsing on his forehead. They all ducked their heads, none of them uttering another word. “The change in her goes well beyond just being more cheery! We need to acknowledge that she’s a snake that’s been hiding her true nature up until now!”

Elliott looked to his left and right. “Honestly, you people. Why are you letting Rachel deceive you this late in the game?”

“Sorry, sir...”

“Who cares that she’s gotten more cheery! Haven’t you noticed anything else while watching her?” Elliott asked.

No one dared point out that the prince had had more contact with her than anyone else.

As the young men thought about it, the son of a marquess raised his hand.

“There is one thing that’s caught my attention,” he said.

“What is it? Speak up!” Elliott demanded.

“Yes, sir.” The marquess’s son looked to each of the others, making sure he had their attention. “Miss Rachel...actually has a pretty impressive figure, wouldn’t you say?”

The room fell silent. However, there was a definite shift from a meeting on how to handle Rachel to something more like a boys’ trip after the lights went out.

Unable to bear the silence, one of the men quietly said, “I dunno... Didn’t Miss Ferguson always have those proportions?”

The marquess’s son shook his head. “You know that ladies normally wear a corset when they go out in public. Rachel did too, of course, but now that she has claimed the dungeon as her own private space, all she wears is loungewear. Meaning...she’s not wearing a corset.”

Those words, spoken in hushed tones, sent the largest tremor yet through the crowd despite their low volume. These sorts of details about a young lady they were acquainted with were the sexiest things young boys in puberty like them could imagine.

The count’s son pinched his nose. “What the hell? That’s hot!”

“What are you saying, so soon? I haven’t even gotten to the main issue yet!” the marquess’s son stressed. “Miss Rachel feels like she’s in her own room and is wearing the least guarded clothing she ever will. Now, with that in mind... Are you following me?”

They were the only ones in the room, but the boys huddled close, trading furtive glances before nodding.

“She looks like that without having to do anything to dress herself up! Do you understand?! She’s not using a corset to shrink her waist, or to push up her breasts. And because she’s not showing off, she’s not stuffing her chest with those infernal fake pads! Without any artificial assistance, she’s managed to maintain that hourglass figure!”

“Good lord!” exclaimed one of the young men.

Excited murmurs rushed around the table. The young men were losing their minds, as if this were the revelation of the century. They whispered rapidly among themselves about this shocking discovery.

At some point, even Elliott had gotten caught up in the excitement, idly mumbling to himself, “What a brilliant deduction. I should have expected no less from the heir to the Booblansky family, a family that has produced scholars generation after generation!”

“Your Highness, my family name is Wolanski,” corrected the marquess’s son.

“Wait, wait! Hold on!” George cried, throwing cold water on their excitement. He was the one man who couldn’t get behind this discussion. “Maybe my sister does have an impressive figure, but you people aren’t planning to abandon Margaret for her just because of that, are you?!”

Snapping back to reality in an instant, Elliott and the others quickly denied it.

“No, hold on. Those are completely separate issues,” Elliott explained. “I didn’t choose Margaret for her figure! We have a more, uh, spiritual connection, you could say. She soothes me.”

Sykes nodded. “Yeah, His Highness is right. I’m not expecting anything from Margaret’s figure. I think her curve-less, no, um, I mean slender... No, that’s not it... Her realistic proportions have their own charms.”

“No, I was saying her heart was more important than her body...” Elliott grumbled under his breath, shocked that Sykes had somehow ended up with a warped and off base interpretation of what he’d been arguing.

“Sir Ferguson,” the marquess’s son continued. “It may be true that Madam Margaret loses out to your sister in terms of the ideal figure. However—”

“Yeah, you tell him, Booblansky!” Elliott cheered.

“It’s Wolanski.”

Wolanski, who’d just finished extolling his praises for Rachel’s body mere moments ago, stood up and raised his fist to give an impassioned speech.

“Being from a common background, Madam Margaret certainly hasn’t been able to ‘build’ her body in the same way. Even clothed, you can tell she lacks noticeable curves. Her breasts, though not non-existent, aren’t particularly big. While her arms and legs are not fat, neither would we call them slim.”

“Huh? Aren’t you insulting her?” Sykes asked.

“Shh! Shut up, Sykes!” Elliott hissed.

Wolanski continued, only growing more heated.

“However, that is fine! It is all good!” he asserted. “Born noblewomen will, at times, torment their bodies and hide their true features to make themselves beautiful. Here is what I want to ask: are we okay with that?!”

“But didn’t you just finish praising Miss Rachel’s beauty?!” the count’s son argued back loudly.

The marquess’s son nodded, as if that was exactly what he’d wanted to hear.

“What do Miss Rachel and Miss Margaret have in common?” he asked.

“In common?” the count’s son echoed.

One of them was a highborn young lady who’d been the natural choice for the prince’s fiancée, and who, despite not being especially flashy, had proportions that were well above average. The other was a common girl who’d lucked into becoming the lowest sort of nobility, and who had an innocent charm and a cute, child-like body. They were so far apart in both appearance and personality that everyone had to rack their brains to find something they had in common.

With a solemn tone, as if he were delivering a divine oracle, Wolanski said, “They are both natural. Even if you were to strip away everything they have, their figures would not change. The bodies that God gave us were not meant to be forcibly constrained or covered up with makeup! Yes, that is what I want to say. A woman’s beauty is natural!”

“Ohhhhhhhh!!!”

When he concluded his speech, Wolanski posed as if gazing up unto the heavens, and the boys hooted and howled with approval. Their discussion had come to an emotional finale. The meeting that Elliott had called ended on this high note, with the members adopting the Naturalist Declaration espoused by Wolanski. The participants left Elliott’s office saying things like, “We should work to create momentum to abolish corsets,” and, “Let’s make a speech to the king on the need to ban the use of deceptive makeup.”

Elliott felt like a weight had been lifted from his shoulders as he began sorting the paperwork.

“Hmm, yes, I think we had quite a productive meeting today. Now the problem has been resolved... Wait, what problem?”

Something was pulling at the back of Elliott’s mind. He tapped his forehead as he tried to think of what it might be.

“What was today’s meeting supposed to be about again?”

15: The Young Lady Shops

Looking up from her novel, a blank space on the wall suddenly caught Rachel’s attention.

“It’s a little drab...”

Her family’s mansion had paintings and vases of flowers placed all around it. Rachel’s own room had been the same, with a portrait of her and a landscape painting or two that she liked.

“Hmm...”

Getting up from her sofa, Rachel looked around. Obviously, the walls of the dungeon were made of nothing but piled stones, so they weren’t much to look at. The mural she’d painted the other day was the one point of color.

“If I plan to live in this place, I really should decorate it to my liking. Is that not the most satisfying part of moving house?”

This wasn’t something an ordinary prisoner would think.

“It would be fastest to have Sofia and the Black Cats of the Dark Night fetch me things, but I think I’d like to develop new trading partners in the hopes of finding some unique tastes I haven’t seen before.”

Rachel, a very abnormal prisoner indeed, clapped her hands as she pulled out her stationery set and began writing.

“Hey, Rachel,” Prince Elliott called.

His arrogant voice made Rachel reluctantly look up from the magazine she was reading. “What is it, Your Highness? I’m trying to read, you know?”

Rachel realized that Elliott wasn’t even looking in her direction. His eyes went over her head, to the opposite side of the prison.

“Was there always a painting there?” he asked.

The wall he was looking at bore a large framed painting, a beautiful riverside landscape with lilies in bloom.

“Oh my, Your Highness. Is your memory failing you at such a young age?” Rachel said with concern.

“Wha?! No, it’s not! Oh, but now that you mention it...”

“I put that one up yesterday,” Rachel explained. “To think you would be unable to recall such a recent change.”

“So you did bring it in recently, then?!” Elliott shouted, clinging to the bars with a scowl. “Hey, you must have it awfully easy if you’re bringing paintings in here. What is this, some attempt to show off that you even have these sorts of non-essentials prepared?!”

“That wasn’t my intention. I didn’t bring the painting from home, after all.”

Elliott turned to George and asked him, “Is that true?”

“Well, I’ve certainly never seen it around the house...” George replied. Not even he could tell where it had come from.

“Where did you pick it up?” Elliott asked Rachel.

“Are you stupid, Your Highness? Where would I be able to walk around and pick things up?”

“You’ve got a point...” The fact that Elliott accidentally missed being asked if he was stupid only went to show how much of an idiot he was. “You didn’t bring it from home, and you didn’t pick it up. Where did you get it, then?”

How had this painting just appeared?

As Elliott continued to ponder the situation, Rachel, eyes still on her magazine, casually replied, “I bought it.”

“Where does a prisoner buy things?!” Elliott questioned.

“Hey, Your Highness,” called Sykes, who’d been watching quietly all this time. He pointed at the magazine that Rachel was reading. “That literary magazine, it came out just this week.”

“What?!”

Although the recent increase in publishing companies had led to a rapid growth in books for entertainment, these sorts of magazines only came out when they’d amassed enough material, so their schedule was always irregular. None came out so often that it was impossible to tell one volume from the next. If Sykes could recognize it at a distance, then it must really have come out recently.

“Hey, Rachel! Where’d you get a new magazine from?!” Elliott barked.

“Now, why do you think I would ever tell you that? Everyone knows that this sort of entertainment spontaneously appears in a dungeon without the jailer knowing how.”

“As if I’d believe anything so patently absurd!”

“Something’s not right. Damn that Rachel. She’s been bringing new things in there somehow.”

Elliott’s grumbling was entirely justified. Rachel couldn’t go out, and he’d found no records at the gate that indicated any suspicious persons or purveyors to the ducal household had entered.

“What if there’s a spot where the wall opens up, and Miss Rachel’s been going out on shopping trips?” Sykes suggested.

Elliott glared at Sykes. “There’s no secret passage there! We checked beforehand, and Rachel can’t have had the time to rig something up.”

It would have taken an incredible amount of time to dig an underground passage. Even if Rachel had gained advance knowledge that he would be breaking off their engagement, it still wouldn’t have been near enough time to build one.

“Then how do we account for my sister bringing things in?” George wondered.

George was entirely perplexed too. His sister had always been hard to figure out, but now that it had come this far, he had no idea what she might pull.

“Anyway!” Elliott spat angrily, “I want a thorough check to see that nobody suspicious has been coming and going from the palace. Have the knights and gate guards do a detailed investigation on any visitors or merchants whose destination inside the palace seem suspicious.”

“Yes, sir!”

The head clerk of the Crown Company, a long-standing business that had been granted access to the palace for two decades now, checked to see that no one was watching and entered the rear gardens. Then he quietly descended the steps to the dungeon.

“Hello, and thank you for your business. I am with the Crown Company.”

Inside her cell, Rachel looked up from her book. “I’ve been waiting. No one saw you come in here, I hope?”

“No. Everything is fine. I was visiting the rooms of the court ladies to take their orders, so as long as I’m not seen here, I should be able to explain away anything.”

The experienced merchant began pulling items out of his pack that met the specifications of Rachel’s order.

“These are the items you ordered which had not arrived yet.”

“Okay, thanks.”

“Thank you. Also, in regards to the foreign stained-glass lamp you mentioned... Here is our catalog. If you find one you like, I will have it for you within a week, so please make use of our services again.”

“Sure, I’ll take a look. Sorry for always troubling you like this.”

The old clerk rubbed his hands together and bowed his head, saying, “Oh, it’s no trouble at all! We would very much like to continue this relationship in the future too.”

“Yes, I’ll speak to my father about allowing you into the ducal house.”

“Please do!”

The merchant bowed obsequiously, pleased by Rachel’s lip service, took down her next order, and left.

Between bites of one of the newly arrived cookies from a well-known shop in the castle town, Rachel said to herself, “Knowing His Highness, I’m sure he’s investigating the merchants who suddenly started coming to the palace recently.”

When Rachel’s servants brought supplies into the prison, they also posed as merchants who’d been purveyors to the royal household for years. Rachel wouldn’t do anything that let that buffoon of a prince catch her, even when developing new trading partners. A long-standing purveyor to the royal household like the Crown Company still wanted as many new noble clients as they could get. No merchant would be satisfied just from a royal warrant of appointment. Because of Rachel’s position, major suppliers would be willing to take risks to do business with her, and they knew how to skirt around whatever rules were in place.

Having been born a prince, Elliott had no sense for this sort of thing.

“Although, I’m sure an ordinary daughter of a duke would have no idea what goes on inside the mind of a merchant either,” the abnormal daughter of a duke said to herself as she listened to the approaching footsteps and pulled out the bottle of wine she’d prepared for the guard.

16: The Young Lady Does Charity Work

As Sykes was walking through the palace, a priest came along with a bunch of small children in tow.

“Hello, mister!”

“Hi there, kiddo!”

“Hey, old man!”

“Don’t make me kill you, you brat.”

Once the procession of children had passed, something suddenly occurred to Skyes.

Huh? What are a bunch of kids from the orphanage doing walking around inside the palace?

He turned to look back just in time to see the children disappearing through a door one after another—a door that was already familiar to him, leading to the dungeon Rachel was in.

“Hey, something’s happening again...” Sykes murmured.

When they got the report from Sykes, Prince Elliott and the others leaped into action, rushing down the stairs to the dungeon. There they found...

“Once upon a time, there was a little country called the Flower Kingdom.”

The children were sitting on the ground outside the bars, listening to Rachel as she read a picture book to them. Yes, inside a cold stone room lit only by the dim sunlight, a girl framed by mountains of wooden boxes and a mural of a great valley excitedly read stories to small children who listened intently. Between them were a set of iron bars.

“What is this scene I’m looking at?!” Elliott cried out despite himself.

The children all turned to look at him, frowning and holding a finger to their lips to demand he be quiet.

Unconvinced, Elliott asked George, “Am I the bad guy here?” but George had no answer for him.

“It’s like a warehouse at a slave market,” Sykes casually remarked, an idle observation that earned him a scowl from Elliott.

If they were to go with that concept, then that would make Elliott the slave trader, Sykes his manager and bodyguard, and George the head clerk. Elliott would be the villain, and Rachel the tragic heroine. He could never accept a worthless story like that. Still, with no idea what they’d walked into, they had no way of coming to an answer on their own.

As the children booed them for interrupting their fun, George asked Rachel, “Sister, what exactly is going on here?”

Rachel looked like a saint as she cheerfully answered her foolish little brother’s unenthusiastic question.

“Oh my, I never thought you’d ask. You see, I had been visiting the orphanage every week to do charity work. But with the situation I now find myself in, I’ve had no choice but to stop. It makes me so happy that the children came to visit me.”

Her reply skillfully combined the question, “Have you even been watching your own sister?!” the criticism, “It’s your fault I’ve been forced to stop doing charity, you know?!” and the reprimand, “You’re forcing these innocent children to be so considerate!” None of them could say anything in response.

Ignoring them, Rachel turned back to the children with the smile of an affectionate mother and resumed reading.

“The Flower Kingdom had a prince. All of the girls loved him for his beautiful golden locks, but despite his dashing looks, the prince was rather dim, and also a hopeless womanizer.

“No matter how his servants chided him, he wouldn’t study or work. And though people made fun of him for it, the cheating prince was always wandering from one girl to the next. He spent every day just chasing after girls and fooling around.

“The prince never worked. It really troubled all the servants. The servants and the people both looked at him coldly, but the girl-crazy prince never noticed.

“Finally, the angry people seized the prince. They gave him a piece of their minds, but he never learned.

“Realizing the prince was unable to see the error of his ways, even his servants gave up on him.

“Now, what will become of the prince?”

The bright-eyed children who’d been listening to Rachel all answered, “Off with his head! Off with his head!”

Rachel smiled at their cheerful chant. “Yes, that’s right. They dragged the prince into the plaza, and then off with his head! The bad prince was executed with the guillotine!”

“Yayyyyy!”

“Wait, whaaaat?!” Elliott exclaimed. He interposed himself between the children and Rachel, who was giving him a blank look from the other side of the bars. “What kind of book are you reading to them?!”

“Was there something strange about it?” Rachel asked.

“What do you think wasn’t strange about it?! It was way too dark! And I’m amazed you managed to find such a satirical book.”

“Oh, my,” Rachel said with a flawless smile. “Did something about the story hit home for you, Your Highness?”

“Urgh!”

Rachel, who knew exactly what she was doing, kept a smile plastered on her face, while the children, who didn’t know what she was up to, looked at Rachel and Elliott dubiously. Elliott couldn’t insult her while there were children who didn’t understand the situation present, so he jabbed a quivering finger toward Rachel through the bars.

“Forget about me! That book is clearly a bad influence on their education! Don’t you have anything better?!”

“Oh, but I was just reading them a very common story.”

“A common story?! With all that talk of cheating and guillotines, that book’s content isn’t suitable for children, and you know it!”

Rachel turned over the book in her hands. From every angle, it looked like a picture book for children.

“It seems perfectly normal to me. It’s a morality play, you know? I think this is precisely the sort of material that should be read to children.”

“There’s malice in your choice of book! It’s blatantly obvious that the prince was supposed to be me!”

Rachel met Elliott’s anger with a silly laugh. “Oh my, Your Highness, you were cheating on me? That does deserve the guillotine, yes.”

“Why you brazen... This is all because you bullied Margaret! You should be ashamed of yourself, instead of unduly resenting me for it, you witch!”

The blood had rushed to Elliott’s head, and he’d ended up shouting. Just as he realized what he’d done, he heard the children whispering.

“Who’s this shouty guy? He’s mean.”

“He’s kinda like the prince in the book, isn’t he?”

“Oh, now that you mention it. The prince was blond too, right?”

“Is he cheating all the time?”

“Off with his head.”

The children weren’t trying to be cruel, but the fact that they were just saying what they really thought hurt Elliott all the more.

“Damn it! I’ll have you know, I do work, okay?!” Elliott declared. “And I don’t fool around!”

“What are you making excuses to children for?” Rachel questioned.

“Excuses?! It’s the truth!”

“He sounds desperate,” one of the children said.

“Is it going to be off with your head too, mister?” said another.

Elliott backed away, sensing that he was at a total disadvantage here. Besides, he couldn’t go getting into arguments with children.

The children, who’d enjoyed the picture book, gathered around Rachel, squealing with glee as she gave them some large biscuits.

Why is the prisoner the one giving away snacks? Elliott wondered to himself dazedly.

No matter what he or his cohorts said, they couldn’t win with the kids here. Elliott and the others decided to call it quits and come back later. They were the righteous ones here. They couldn’t drive off a bunch of children just so they could go after Rachel.

Just as they were about to storm out in frustration, Rachel offered them the book.

“It would do you some good to read books like these, and practice being able to read them to others, you know?”

Elliott sensed the unspoken “Why don’t you do some volunteer work?” but not wanting to be humiliated any further in front of the children, he snatched the book out of her hands and left the dungeon.

He complained all the way back to his office.

“Damn that Rachel! Everything she does is so spiteful! She didn’t have to act like I never do any charity in front of the children...”

“Yeah, it’s hard for you to yell at her with the kids there. You’re always trying to make yourself look good, after all,” Sykes added.

“Shut up!” Elliott screeched.

As Elliott punched Sykes, George looked at the picture book.

“I’ve never heard of a story like this. What country is it from?”

Flipping quickly through the pages, he looked at the colophon in the back.

Did you enjoy the story? For Prince E, with love. Story/Art by R.F.

“My sister wrote this thing herself...” George muttered.

“Damn it! ‘A very common story,’ my butt! It totally was satirizing me!”

The howling of a sore loser echoed through the rear gardens.