A Night I Couldn’t Be Honest - Chapter 3.2

When life grew difficult, the estates went unmanaged and the people of the land began to show signs of rebellion, the Emperor had moved quickly, almost as if he had been waiting for it, taking back the territory he had granted and installing his own officials to run it directly.

To those already using noble houses’ difficulties to strengthen imperial authority, the Brisserne household’s collapse was nothing but a tempting prize.

‘It would have been better if we’d never had the title at all.’ Looking at her father, still lost in a dream he hadn’t woken from, Azelin thought the name of noble had become a shackle with no meaning left in it.

“Sister, don’t worry. I’ll definitely return with a promising business opportuinity this time, I promise.”

“That’s right! Every person has the work and place that suits them best.”

Her only younger brother declared he would restore the family’s fortune and spent his days trailing after the heirs of other houses from party to party. Their father praised him, and he swore they should just trust him. Azelin found all of it nothing but laughable.

There was no sane person who would offer a decent deal to the son of a house as notorious for its fall as Brisserne. Anyone making that kind of offer was invariably a swindler after whatever was left.

And indeed her brother, claiming he needed to attend parties and then needing to invest in someone he’d met at one, began not just running through what little remained of the family’s funds but also began adding to the debts.

Azelin was the only one in that deteriorating house who had truly reckoned with reality.

Azelin was like a flower cultivated prettily in the manor, but she brazenly decided to write off her family name and treat it as nothing. She went out into the streets and did every job available, whatever came to hand, the same as any ordinary woman.

She had no skills to speak of at first and was often scolded and laughed at, but the humiliation mattered far less than the coins placed in her hands at the end of the day.

Cleaning. Mending clothes. Greeting customers. Running deliveries.

With each year that passed, the list of things she could do grew longer, and her clothes and appearance drifted further from who she had been as a noble’s daughter.

“Look at the state you’re in. How do you expect to marry into a decent family looking like that?”

Her father clicked his tongue and blamed her for her tied-back hair and her plain, practical clothes. In the mirror her reflection was shabbier than girls her age from well-off commoner families, but she didn’t care.

‘I don’t care if I never marry.’

Marriage, parties, none of it meant anything to Azelin. Staying pretty as a dressed-up doll until someone bought her was far less worthwhile than earning her own way and surviving another day.

The girl who had once been too shy to hold a conversation learned, by degrees, to hide the emotions on her face. She learned to lie. She learned to smile pleasantly and endure being laughed at.

The moment she understood that she didn’t have to simply wait prettily to be chosen by someone else, the world that had been made of nothing but ‘you can’t’ began to crack.

As the list of things she could do grew longer, she could sketch out a little more of her future by herself. She could no longer go back to the lavish manor life, but Azelin’s world had become richer and wider for it.

She told herself that if she held on a little longer, her father and brother would see the world for what it was now and stop chasing fantasies, and she held onto the wish that she might one day leave this pointless enormous house and find a small, warm home where the three of them could live quietly.

And then her father and brother put a contract in front of her, an engagement to a wealthy, much older Baron.

Azelin’s world went gray. Her chest went numb and tight, and breathing was hard.

She sat stroking her own cheek blankly. She felt like she wanted to cry. Strangely, no tears came. Like being dragged back to those days when she couldn’t do anything without her father’s permission.

She was supposed to go back to the hotel where her father and brother were staying, but her steps grew slower and slower, sinking as if through heavy mud.

The Baron had offered to call her a carriage when they parted, kindly, but she’d refused with a weak smile. She didn’t want any help from him, not even something as small as that.

‘And yet an enormous dowry has already been agreed upon…’

A figure no carriage ride could compare to, and yet here she was, being petty about a carriage. She knew it was absurd even as she thought it, but ‘not yet, not yet’ wouldn’t leave her head.

Maybe she was ashamed of herself. Maybe insisting she hadn’t accepted the money yet was meaningless self-justification, a way to deny a reality she didn’t want to face.