Chapter 54 – Needlessly

Robert stared at Sasha’s retreating figure as she limped into the hotel, apparently uncomfortable in her shoes.

“Raoul, what would happen if I were to want that woman?”

“From whose point of view are you asking?”

At Raoul’s counterquestion, Robert only then straightened his posture again and looked ahead. No answer came back.

“There would be no effect on you at all, Your Grace.”

Swallowing dryly, Raoul offered his advice with care. Under ordinary circumstances, his employer was not a man he would presume to advise. But at least in matters like this, there came a moment when anyone needed another’s counsel.

“On me?”

Robert asked.

“On you, and on Princess Deborah, who is to marry you, there would be no effect.”

“Then would I become a disaster for Sasha?”

Robert did not bother to hide his sneer. Contradictorily enough, in that open mockery Raoul saw hesitation.

“To be honest, I do not really know. In Laurent, women who become a man’s mistress generally fall into one of two categories. Either they make clever use of a wealthy patron and gain fame, or else they return to their hometown broken in both body and heart.”

Pausing for a moment, Raoul cast his eyes toward the back door of the hotel through which the woman had disappeared, small and delicate and beautiful as a butterfly.

“Perhaps Miss Vinoche, like Madame Eleonore, may succeed as an artist in Laurent. You would know better than I which of those two Miss Vinoche would be, would you not, Your Grace?”

Robert was silent for a long while. A faint scent lingered in the coat she had left behind. It was in that moment that a question suddenly came to him. Why did that girl carry the same scent even after leaving Manolie? And in this city, how long would she be able to go on carrying that same scent unchanged?

“Return to the apartment.”

The Duke, setting down the cigar case he had been idly handling, gave the order evenly. The lake after the ripples had ceased returned, as though nothing had happened, to its original flawless state. Feeling the air grow calm again, Raoul turned the wheel toward the Duke’s apartment.

* * *

Back at the apartment, Robert looked at the painting hanging in the bedroom. It felt as though he could hear the sound of waves again. If he closed his eyes, it rose unresisted before him. Sasha coming out across Manolie beach, through the sound of waves breaking white upon the heated sand, in a red swimsuit like rose petals.

Needlessly.

In Robert’s life, every deviation, every anomaly, every reckless flight, or every variable that might have become such, always came down to that one word. Should he really do it. Even if it meant betraying the expectations around him and refusing his duty, even if he had to bear all the losses that would come of it?

Robert had judged that there was no reason to go that far. He did not go out of his way to step off the path laid out for him. And because of that, he often wondered. Was it that he was less daring than others, or simply that he possessed better self-restraint?

And it was also a useless worry. Because there was no way to verify the result. That worry was no different from a locked box whose key had been lost. Robert might have remained forever without knowing the answer. If he had not impulsively gone back to Manolie on the day last summer began.

When he realized that the bold little girl he had dismissed as someone who could never truly affect him, that troublesome girl who had irritated him like spring pollen, had become the greatest reef in his life, Robert also came to realize that he himself had become the most dangerous reef in hers.

Needlessly.

If there were a woman he wanted even at the cost of betraying the expectations around him and refusing his duty, even at the cost of bearing every loss that would come of it. He felt as though he had lost his senses, and at the same time, he even thought that this was not altogether bad.

And yet Robert respected Sasha. Because she was the painter of the picture that had given him comfort back when he had first become Duke and inherited the business, in those days when he had been weary without even realizing how weary he was. It was respect for the painter who had painted that picture for him, and respect for the time they had spent together in Manolie.

Desire and respect.

Sasha, who awakened at once emotions that could not coexist, crossed that boundary several times in a single day. Each time, his reason thinned, and irrational desire would invade its territory now and then. Just as it had today.

‘What am I to do with you.’

Ultramarine, viridian, and a little gold. The sea she painted possessed colors this beautiful. Trapped in the beautiful sound of waves that was also like a prison enclosing him, he accepted the emotions crashing over him like a raging sea. The woman who had run from him that day across the sand, leaving wet footprints behind, had passed on after leaving an eternal trace he could never erase from his life, not through countless attempts, not through any effort.

Robert stood there for a very long time. Even as he faced wave after wave of approaching feeling, he remained standing upright. Even knowing it would change nothing. What he had realized would change nothing. It would simply remain there. Robert repeated it to himself. Everything to its proper place. To the place where it ought to be. Running in parallel lines.

* * *

After returning to Hotel d’Ecran from the charity concert, Sasha received a card several days later. It was a letter inviting her to the racetrack, and it had come from Mr. Robert.

‘I don’t know.’

Collapsing onto the overly large and soft bed, Sasha stared up at the enchanting painting on the high ceiling and thought. Thinking of him made her feel miserable. The more she liked that man, the smaller she felt herself becoming. It seemed as though her one-sided love kept shaving away at her self-respect and adding it to the feelings she had for him.

After much agonizing, Sasha decided not to attend the horse-racing event Robert had sent her an invitation to. She asked the manager to deliver a letter to the Duke expressing her refusal, but no reply came back.

On that day, Sasha decided instead to travel to a place as far from the racetrack he had mentioned as possible. She planned to go to a famous park on the outskirts of Laurent and make sketches there, then have lunch at a cafe Countess Dubois had recommended. And she intended to return to the hotel only around sunset.

But the plan she had worked so hard to put together was mercilessly shattered that very morning, the moment she stepped out of her room.

“Good morning, Miss Sasha.”

The man who greeted her, standing before her door as though he had been waiting there for some time, was Mr. Dawson, Mr. Robert’s secretary and lawyer.

“Good morning, Mr. Dawson. I hope you have a lovely day today as well. I was just about to go out, since I already have plans.”

Surely not, perhaps not. Sasha tried to ignore the ominous feeling and pass by him. Then Raoul, for her sake, since she clearly did not recognize at all what he was holding, kindly opened the lid of the box and showed her. Inside was an elegant, refined dress of the kind only ladies of Laurent society might wear.

The dress was the same green as the one Sasha had worn to the charity concert. But it was incomparably more splendid than the gown Countess Dubois had lent her, and accordingly more conspicuous. This did not suit her. Fearful, Sasha shook her head, refusing to take the box containing the dress.

“I clearly said I would not be going to the racetrack.”

When she had asked the hotel manager, he had clearly told her that Sasha’s letter had been properly delivered to Robert. Even so, since no response had come back from him, she had thought he would not be pleased, but she had never imagined he would simply ignore it cleanly as though it had never happened at all.

Raoul, though seemingly taken aback, looked at Sasha, who appeared angry, without a change in expression and said,

“It was ordered by His Grace.”

“Why? By what right?”

“The Duke of Guienne is the guardian and patron appointed to you by Her Majesty the Queen. He is only carrying out his duty and introducing you into Laurent society, Miss Sasha.”

“The Salon exhibition has not even begun yet!”

“The Salon exhibition is only the result. In society, everything concerning the Salon exhibition is decided before the Salon exhibition opens.”

Raoul spoke in an even tone. As though stating something too obvious to need saying. At that attitude, which made the listener feel ashamed without meaning to, Sasha grew subdued.

“Please do not defy Her Majesty’s command and put her in a difficult position.”

Placing the box with the dress into Sasha’s arms as though handing it off to her, Raoul asked politely. Pushed back into her room holding the dress box that felt utterly unlike anything that belonged to her, Sasha stood there in despair.

Believing she had yielded, Raoul sent in a maid to help her dress a short while later. When the maid entered, the owner of the room, already wearing the green dress, had the face of a woman resigned. She was carefully taking from her bag and arranging old things utterly unsuited to so beautiful a gown, a worn map, a sketchbook, a pen, and the like.

* * *

Waiting in the Duke of Guienne’s automobile, Raoul swallowed a sigh when he saw Sasha come out into the hotel lobby. The woman, dressed perfectly in the fashion of society, was more beautiful than any lady he had ever seen. If the Duke’s aim today was to make her the most conspicuous woman at the racetrack, then he would surely succeed.

At the sight of Sasha, Raoul felt unease stir quietly in him, but remembering the man whom the Duke had summoned to the racetrack today, he dismissed it as needless worry.

“Did Mr. Robert not come?”

As soon as she got into the car, Sasha looked at the empty back seat as though she had meant to protest at once, and her confusion was plain to see.

“Today the Duke will be arriving with Princess Deborah.”

At those words, a brief shadow seemed to pass over Sasha’s face, yet by the time one looked again, it had vanished as if it had only been an illusion.

“Is it all right to go to the racetrack without a partner?”

“It is not that. Usually, one absolutely brings a partner to such events.”

“Then is my partner today you, Mr. Dawson?”

“No, not exactly……. You will understand when you get there.”

At Raoul’s evasive manner as he took hold of the wheel, Sasha felt puzzled. He seemed strangely intent on changing the subject. If it had been a matter he could answer if asked, he would not have hidden it in the first place. Giving up on hearing a more detailed explanation, Sasha leaned herself against the window. As the wind brushed her cheek, she found herself missing her grandmothers, who would probably be walking along Manolie beach about now.