Chapter 29
To everyone's surprise, it was gentle, timid Evelyne who dared to speak first. With a determined gaze and slightly flushed cheeks, she turned toward Camélia with disarming sincerity.
"Miss Camélia… how are you feeling?" she asked, her voice soft yet steady.
A silence followed, accompanied by a faint shiver in the air. Even Camélia was caught off guard. She had not expected the reserved Evelyne to show such… boldness.
Camélia blinked, concealing her surprise, then replied with a half-smile tinged with melancholy.
"Thank you, Evelyne. I am quite well, truly…" she said, lowering her eyes slightly, as though an invisible weight rested upon her shoulders.
No one around the table was fooled. Courtesy was one thing; truth was another.
Then, in an unexpected surge of courage, Evelyne continued—and this time, the entire table held its breath.
"Have you had the opportunity to speak with the prince in recent days?"
The shock was immediate—almost visible. A few spoons stilled in their teacups. Fans fluttered nervously. Glances were exchanged beneath half-lowered lashes.
Camélia delicately tightened her fingers around her porcelain cup. Her face remained composed, but her eyes shimmered with restrained emotion.
What Lia had told her the other day echoed in her mind like a cruel refrain. So many efforts. So many years spent shaping herself into the perfect fiancée… for what? To be replaced by a capricious girl who had barely arrived in the capital? She had tried so hard not to believe the rumors—and yet.
Was she still in love with Edgar? No. Not really. Not after this.
"No," she replied evenly, without raising her voice. "He appears to have been quite occupied… visiting other young ladies."
The softness of her tone only sharpened the sting of her words. Every young woman at the table understood. The prince had openly shown himself at another woman's residence—one to whom he was not even betrothed. A public humiliation.
A shocked murmur rippled through the gathering. Unspoken thoughts immediately wove themselves beneath the surface, like serpents in tall grass.
Camélia raised her teacup to her lips with feigned serenity, studying her guests, weighing their expressions, measuring their reactions.
Then, in a lighter tone, she added,
"I suppose some commitments weigh more heavily on certain shoulders than on others…"
A chorus of flattering, false sympathy rose around the table.
"Some fickle hearts struggle to recognize the worth of a true jewel," one bolder young lady remarked, never naming anyone directly, "especially when they are dazzled by the glitter of stones without real brilliance."
"Or when they prefer the intoxicating scent of a seasonal bloom to the quiet strength of a centuries-old oak," another added slyly.
Camélia allowed herself the faintest smile. She no longer needed to say anything. Her guests would speak for her.
And soon, the entire capital would listen.
Later, one by one, the young ladies departed the garden, carefully escorted by the Greenwood household staff. The sun was slowly sinking, stretching long shadows across the rose-lined paths.
Their departure had been hastened by Camélia's sudden discomfort. Her complexion had gone pale, and she had excused herself in a barely audible voice. Alarmed, the guests had risen at once, their sorrowful expressions betraying equal parts surprise and compassion. No one had expected to see falter the woman sometimes called the Steel Rose.
"She keeps everything inside, the poor thing…" one whispered as she climbed into her carriage.
"She looked so fragile all of a sudden. Did you see how her hands trembled when she set down her cup?"
"And her eyes… it was as though she were fighting not to cry."
The murmurs spread like ivy. The heart of the nobility thrives on discreet dramas and quiet tragedies—and this scene offered exactly that: elegance, sorrow, and a heroine worthy of a novel.
Whether unintentionally—or with surgical precision—Camélia had just orchestrated a brilliant reversal of her image. The once-distant, haughty young lady became, in everyone's eyes, the silent victim of a shameful betrayal.
The cold fiancée had become the betrayed fiancée.
And in the shadow of the budding scandal, another, softer whisper began to circulate:
"She isn't so cold, you know… She was only hiding her heart." "What strength, not to break down. She is worthy of her house." "I've never seen her smile so gently as when she spoke to Evelyne."
Tongues loosened. Stories grew richer.
Meanwhile, in her chamber bathed in the golden light of dusk, Camélia stood straight, her gaze fixed upon her reflection. She slowly removed her gloves, revealing slender, ice-cold hands.
A joyless smile brushed her lips.
"Let the dance begin," she murmured to herself.
In her lavishly decorated room, Angela paced back and forth, her heels snapping sharply against the polished marble. The silk curtains billowed lazily in the breeze, but nothing could calm the storm raging within her.
"Idiots. Every last one of them," she hissed, casting a furious glance at her reflection.
She had just received a visit from a friend—or rather, from a young lady talkative enough to relay the whispers born from Camélia's tea gathering. Instead of admiring her and envying her for having captured Prince Edgar's attention, the other girls were murmuring about her audacity. Her presumption. Her nerve.
She—the prince's future favorite—reduced to a vulgar schemer?
"Me, a fiancé-stealer?" she spat. "Me? When he looks at me as if I were the only woman in this kingdom?"
Her fists clenched in the ruffles of her cream-colored gown.
"Camélia can faint from heartbreak all she wants—it won't change a thing. It isn't my fault the prince prefers living roses to flowers made of ice."
She whirled toward her maid, who stood silently by the door.
"And those fools taking her side?" Angela continued, her cheeks flushed with rage. "They should be bowing before me! I've captured Prince Edgar's heart—me, not her. It's not a crime to be loved!"
She hurled a cushion violently against the wall.
"One day they'll regret not supporting me. When I stand beside him on the throne, they'll crawl for my favor—and I won't even look at them."
Angela drew a shaky breath, her eyes shining with a mixture of humiliation and wounded pride. She approached her vanity and gently traced her reflection, murmuring almost tenderly,
"You are beautiful. You are brilliant. You are the one he chose. Not her."
Yet despite her outward confidence, a flicker of doubt slipped into her gaze. What if Edgar wasn't so sincere? What if the whispers grew louder than her charm?
She clenched her jaw.
"No matter. I'll silence them one by one."
The sun was sinking languidly behind the palace's gilded balconies, flooding the First Prince's study with amber light. The steward—a stern man whose features bore the weight of long service—stood upright before the young man lounging casually on a chaise, a glass in hand.
"Rumors, Your Highness. They are spreading quickly since the gathering at Miss Greenwood's residence. Concerning… your closeness with an unbetrothed young lady."
Edgar raised an eyebrow, barely interested. He swirled the golden liquid in his crystal glass, eyes fixed on its shifting reflections.
"Rumors, then," he repeated flatly, almost lazily.
He did not need to ask her name. Everyone knew. Angela.
Silence stretched between them. The steward waited—for anger, denial, a decision.
But Edgar merely sighed softly, almost amused.
"They understand nothing. Angela is far gentler than Camélia will ever be. More… human."
He said it as an obvious truth. As though he alone could see it. Camélia had always been impeccable—too much so. Perfect to the point of dullness. Calculated. Polished. Cold.
Angela, on the other hand, was unpredictable, sometimes clumsy, but alive. She laughed without restraint. She looked at him as if he were a god fallen from the sky. She wanted him. And Edgar loved being desired more than he loved desiring.
Yet there was one thing he did not like: seeing her sullied. He frowned slightly.
How does she endure it? he wondered suddenly. All those looks, those poisoned tongues… How has a girl like her lived with such suspicion, such criticism?
He had never truly considered it before. He merely plucked the flower, unconcerned with the shadows beneath its petals. It unsettled him now. Just a little.
His glass clicked softly against the lacquered side table as he rose and walked slowly to the window, gazing toward the horizon. Then, almost against his will, an image surfaced in his mind.
The veiled servant.
Always a few steps behind Angela. Almost invisible—though not to him. He remembered the breeze in the belvedere, the veil lifting, revealing a fragment of a face. A pale cheek. Lashes black as ink. A fleeting gaze, like a shadow trembling at the edge of the light.
Who is she, really?
He didn't know. And that irritated him.
She had no flamboyant charm, no coquetry. And yet she haunted his thoughts like a scent he could not name. A gentle strangeness—almost dangerous in its discretion.
It's nothing, he told himself, folding his arms. A passing obsession. Mere curiosity.
When he was done—because he always was, in the end—he would focus on Angela. On their future. On what needed to be done. It was a matter of status, reason, alliances.
He was not a weak man, guided by foolish fascinations.
And yet, a fragment of him—small but real—wished to see that veiled gaze again. Just once.
He would not admit it aloud.
Not yet.