The breakfast table at Priestley Manor always seated exactly two people. In most cases, that meant Benjamin, as head of the household, and Wilhelmina, who rose far earlier than was typical for a noblewoman.

“This is really something.”

Benjamin grumbled as he always did, reading the newspaper the butler brought him.

“What is? What happened?”

“Our Prime Minister has issued a remarkable new statement. Care to read it?”

Wilhelmina took the neatly pressed newspaper from Benjamin’s hand.

“The official conclusion of the national period of mourning… the time has come for everyone to summon their strength and return to daily life?”

Hm. Wilhelmina handed the newspaper back to her brother and spoke.

“This is about the late king’s passing?”

“What else would it be about?”

Benjamin clicked his tongue with an uncharacteristic cynicism.

“Well, for all we know, he may have been privately mourning the hunting dog he lost not long ago.”

“Telling people to wrap up their grief is something only Her Majesty the Queen herself would have the standing to say.”

“My point exactly. Her Majesty simply needs a regent for a short while. She is not a child who cannot speak for herself.”

In the current climate, with parliament’s fierce power struggle over the regency bill turning Winstor’s political scene into a mudpit day after day, the intent behind this statement was plain.

Spreading orange marmalade over a slice of crisp toast, Wilhelmina spoke.

“It amounts to a brazen declaration that the cabinet and parliament intend to run the country as they please, cutting out a fifteen-year-old queen entirely.”

“Ahem.”

Benjamin cleared his throat with an uncomfortable expression. It was his characteristic reaction to ‘when his siblings say something outrageous that is nonetheless accurate and sensible.’

Wilhelmina probed carefully.

“What will you do now?”

“What is there for me to do? It’s not as though we need to negotiate with Fleurans or Esparona. If our Prime Minister spouted this nonsense to a foreign ambassador, there might be room for me to step in, but.”

Benjamin shook his head after his cynical grumbling.

“Good grief. At this rate they’ll be proposing a ball next.”

“Why wouldn’t they?”

Wilhelmina said it as though it were the most natural thing in the world, and took a large bite of her marmalade-spread toast. The crunch was wonderfully crisp.

“Surely not.”

But Benjamin stared down at the newspaper with an expression that had lost all appetite and muttered.

“Even blinded by ambition, would they really go that far?”

Toward Benjamin, who could not quite let go of his last thread of hope in humanity, Wilhelmina scoffed and declared.

“If anyone at the Obsidian Club proposes a wager on this, put every last penny of your fortune on an invitation arriving within three days.”

And just a few days later.

A splendid carriage glided smoothly through the thick night fog of Winstor.

Inside the carriage, Benjamin sat with a displeased expression, tapping the toe of his shoe against the floor in an irritable rhythm.

“I may not have been the late king’s most devoted subject, but I never thought there would actually be a ball at a time like this.”

“That’s why I told you to bet everything you own.”

Across from him, Wilhelmina half-hid her smug smile behind a fan. Benjamin pressed a hand to his forehead and let out a pained groan in reply.

“It can’t be helped.”

Wilhelmina shrugged.

“If I’m the only one absent from a ball where all of Winstor gathers, what do you think people will say? It will only reinforce the conviction that the rumors are true and I’m in hiding.”

“As if I don’t know that.”

Wilhelmina shook her head at the grumbling Benjamin.

“If you were so reluctant, you didn’t have to come, you know.”

“Please don’t say such dreadful things.”

Benjamin answered through what was nearly gritted teeth.

“If I sent you and Angeline off alone into that pack of wolves, it wouldn’t be the person behind your scandal in Francesca’s crosshairs come tomorrow morning. It would be my own head.”

“Don’t worry, darling. There’ll be no need for a shotgun.”

Duchess Angeline, sitting demurely beside Benjamin and gazing out the window, smiled gently and joined the conversation. She stroked her husband’s arm and said warmly.

“Because I’ll have kicked you out of the carriage before it comes to that.”

“…How very reassuring, Angie.”

Benjamin answered with a look of resignation, and Angeline smiled back with warm, crinkled eyes.

“Think nothing of it.”

That graceful tone and the charming smile that rounded her cream-soft cheeks.

Angeline, with her golden hair like an angel’s halo, looked utterly lovely even to Wilhelmina, a woman herself.

‘If someone were to sculpt a porcelain doll in the image of a great lady, it would surely look like that.’

Lost in the thought, Wilhelmina turned her head and quietly studied her own reflection in the dark, rattling glass of the carriage window. The figure looking back at her was, by any measure, far from the ideal of a great lady.

That was not to say she was not beautiful. Her deep, reddish-brown hair rippled in a captivating wave, and her eyes shone with a subtle light, a soft amber like almonds, rimmed in green like freshly sprouted leaves.

But in those eyes, not a trace of the typical feminine virtues, warmth or gentleness, could be found. The two clear, sharp eyes only made her look like a clever bird of prey.

“…No one in Winstor tonight will be able to deny that you are beautiful, Mina.”

Just then, Angeline spoke, almost as though she read her thoughts.

“That may even be part of why the scandal spread so quickly.”

Wilhelmina smiled and replied.

“Who would want to hear a scandal about a woman who isn’t beautiful?”

“If only I had enough time to teach you how to speak properly.”

Benjamin glanced at his pocket watch and sighed. Regrettably, in just a short while they were due to arrive at the venue of tonight’s most irreverent ball in the world.

The host who invited them, Count Wilbright, was a man who was, in every respect, thoroughly ‘adequate’ in Winstor’s social circles.

The two ladies stepped down from the carriage one after the other, steadied by Benjamin. Climbing the steps into the ballroom, Angeline, arm linked with Wilhelmina’s, whispered from behind her feathered fan.

“A family of adequately long lineage, adequately storied history. An adequate income drawn from the estate each year. An adequately large number of relatives useful to have around, and two daughters who are… well, adequately beautiful.”

“Truly.”

Wilhelmina received the stares of the crowd with a perfectly composed face and replied.

“I can’t think of anywhere that embodies the virtues of the Kingdom of Brighton quite so faithfully.”

“The trouble is that those two adequately beautiful daughters have gone through two social seasons without receiving so much as a single proposal. One wonders what peculiar reason there could be for that.”

“I’m not particularly curious about the reason, but I think I can guess why the count was in such a rash hurry to host a ball this improper.”

For parents with no son to inherit their title and estate outright, two unmarried daughters were as heavy a burden as any. Angeline gave a light nod of agreement.

“Count Wilbright is likely determined to marry off both daughters this social season, whatever it takes, even if it means staking the family’s survival on it.”

“But that can’t be the whole reason this banquet was pushed through so hastily.”

In truth, Wilhelmina thought, the fact that this gathering was rushed into existence owed a great deal to the count’s position in the upper house, where he stood alongside the Duke of Kingsley Edward in the royalist faction, effectively serving as Edward’s instrument.

Just then, Angeline leaned toward Wilhelmina once more. She glanced over to confirm that Benjamin’s attention was drawn to the crowd around them, then asked.

“My dear Wilhelmina, what amusing thought are you having right now?”

“I wonder.”

Wilhelmina gave a perfectly nonchalant shrug, but Angeline’s knowing smile did not fade.