14. May 2025

AVSAIE 30

Chapter 30

***

Christine Peildon had not appeared. The flustered host called out again.

"Now, please welcome her with more enthusiastic applause. Miss Christine Peildon!"

More applause echoed through the ballroom, but the stage was empty without the star of the show. People began to stir. Cecilia's eyes narrowed as she searched the ballroom for Arthur, who had disappeared into the drawing room. An unpleasant assumption flashed through her mind.

No way-----

Cecilia shook her head. Arthur, who had built up such a noble image, would never do something so reckless for a woman. The heroine of a cheap scandal was not for him.

Princess Charlotte was puzzled and gestured at the butler, and at the same instant, the turquoise drapery of the gilded curtains parted to reveal Christine Peildon. Breathing a sigh of relief, the worried announcer shouted briskly.

"Let’s begin!"

The gentlemen's hands shot up in the air at the same time with the host’s shout.

"One hundred!"

"One hundred and fifty!"

The images of the gentlemen raising their arms to claim the woman flowed unrealistically in waves. The ballroom heated up with nobles eager to donate their spare change. Through the din, Cecilia watched the scene unfold.

"She's unusually beautiful today. Miss Peildon seems to instinctively know how to command attention. She's deliberately late, and she's taking her time."

Dressed in a gown of deep red rose lace over silk, Christine Peildon was mesmerizing, and as if to prove it, her bid was skyrocketing.

"Five hundred!"

"Six hundred!"

Six hundred pounds. The equivalent of three years' salary for a civil servant.

Christine looked at the man raising the stakes with despair. He was one of the gentlemen who had come backstage after every performance and insisted on meeting her.

What he wanted was a midday lunch. What man wants a midday lunch with a woman?

In a moment of desperation, someone shouted.

"Seven hundred!"

It was Count Gabriel Gounod.

Her stomach lurched.

"The rumors must be true."

The ladies nodded, exchanging glances.

"Seven hundred and fifty!"

The second son of the Count of Bryan, his moustache delicately trimmed, seemed unwilling to give up. Sweat soaked the inside of his thin silk gloves as his eyes met hers. He was burning with determination. The glint in his eyes was frightening.

"Eight hundred!"

It was now Count Gounod's fight against Count Bryan's second son.

If only this were all over.

It was a good thing the Crown Prince wasn't participating in the auction; he wouldn't be able to appear in public in his current state.

Disheveled hair and a loose bow tie. The front of his shirt unbuttoned, exposing his chest.

Christine remembered him gasping for breath as she held his hand. A man whose eyes were open, wandering through a nightmare.

I wonder if he's okay...............

At the sound of him calling out for her, she left the solarium, but she couldn't help but worry about him.

"Who............. are you?”

Suddenly, Christine felt a hand on her wrist. It was hot, as if on fire.

"One thousand!"

Count Gounod's voice snapped her back to reality.

A thousand pounds.

Stunned, Christine stared at Count Gounod.

There was a murmur of admiration around the room.

"At this rate, the pediatric ward will be built by Count Gounod."

"Isn't that an open admission that he's her lover?"

The conservative ladies fluttered their fans and clicked their tongues. The spirited ladies who had their eyes on Count Gounod grew cold.

"A thousand pounds! A thousand pounds, it's out, is there anyone else?"

Excited voices swirled quickly through the room.

"If there are no more, the dinner ticket with Miss Christine Peildon is-."

The double doors swung open, breaking the highest price in the history of Deimos's charity auctions, and a low, clear voice pierced the ballroom.

"Three thousand."

There was a moment of silence, and the gazes shifted from Count Gounod to the highest bidder of all time. Christine's gaze slowly shifted to the man walking toward her. Their gazes tangled in the air.

"Uh, oh, my!"

Amid the flustered ladies and gentlemen chattering, a man dressed neatly in a royal gown entered the banquet hall.

The man with the blue insignia shining from his chest was the Crown Prince of Bern.

His impeccably groomed appearance exuded his usual commanding presence. With a stride that was neither slow nor fast, Arthur made his way toward the auction block. His eyes were fixed on Christine Peildon in the red dress.

Cecilia's green eyes darkened.

With a strange sense of defeat, Cecilia etched the sight into her mind.

***

Christine Peildon had overtaken Cecilia Deimos as the most talked-about woman in the theater.

The new star of the Gounod Opera Theater, the most expensive woman, and the Crown Prince's lady.

With so many nicknames, it was safe to say that she was the luckiest woman in Bern this year.

Her popularity was also hindered by her status as a commoner, not a member of Bern's great noble families. Among the commoners, who were not particularly interested in opera, the title of Crown Prince's lady seemed to be a dazzling honor.

"For the first time in the history of the Kingdom of Bern, we might have a Crown Princess from the common people."

Whenever people got together, the talk was met with hopeful anticipation from the lower classes and deep concern from the nobility.

The repercussions were heightened by the Crown Prince's usual stoicism.

When the royal family was represented at charity events, they usually led by example with the largest donations. Despite not bidding, Arthur had steadfastly continued that tradition.

So it was to everyone's surprise that the Crown Prince made an unexpected move.

"I told you, it was love at first sight."

"Shhh. Daisy, it wasn't like that."

Christine lowered her voice so as not to be heard by the people in the hat shop. Even so, customers continued to stare in her direction as she pretended to pick out a hat.

Daisy was right, a hat with a veil was urgent. Her face was known, thanks to the inflated news in the cheap tabloids and the photographs of Christine that had been published without the Gounod Theater's permission.

Probably it was the work of the Duke of Deimos. Christine guessed.

"No matter how high status a person, it's all the same between men and women, and a rose is always beautiful to all eyes."

"Please, Daisy. Keep your voice down."

Unsurprisingly, people were more enthusiastic about the lowbrow gossip than they were about the articles in the daily papers. The next move with the woman the Crown Prince had just spent three thousand pounds on was sure to titillate and embolden the gossips. It was a real predicament.

"Where are you going to have lunch?"

"I haven't gotten word yet. I'm sure it will be where His Highness wants it."

While Christine agonized over a hat with a black dot veil and a rose veil, the heavy tolling of bells outside the shop covered the gray sky over Grita like a silver curtain.

It signaled the start of the memorial service for the late Crown Prince, Ehiri Luciano Maximilian.

Christine turned her head and gazed through the display window, the cathedral's bell tower rising among the tall and low buildings.

“Ehiri................”

The Crown Prince had called out his dead brother’s name in his delirious moment when he saw Christine enter the solarium that day.

There was no sign of the perfectly arrogant Crown Prince she had seen at the lavish palace banquets, only a man with his broad shoulders hunched over, trembling with fear like a child after a terrifying dream.

"Forget about today.”

The Crown Prince's aide said in a warning tone.

But it wouldn’t be easy to forget.

Somehow, she felt like she had gotten a glimpse of the Crown Prince's private part.

"I'll take this one, Daisy, and you, have you chosen?"

Having paid for Daisy's bonnet, Christine tipped her black hat just right and pulled her veil down to the tip of her nose. There was a sense of relief as the dense mesh draped over her.

She and Daisy left the shop.

It was already snowing as they walked through the crowd of people dressed all in black. Footprints and carriage treads crisscrossed the white snow toward the cathedral. Twenty years later, the fervor of the memorial has not abated.

The death of the young crown prince had been just as shocking.

Christine lifted her head and gazed for a moment at the cathedral across the Downer River through the fluttering white snow. A winter breeze from the river stirred the dense veil lightly.