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Lady Ino Nara was a lady of great intelligence and sensibility for all things related to the workings of the mind. She had seen what she had expected to see in Captain Hyuuga's face, and yet she was not satisfied. She stood by the windows of her bedroom, watching as the Captain hurried, hunched shoulders, under the rain to the hired coach awaiting him.
"I worry," Lady Ino trailed off as the driver helped the Captain with his trunk.
Frowning, she bent her head farther toward the window, her pale fingers holding up the curtains. Her gaze followed the coach as it raced forward, swaying and halting every time it hit a puddle.
"Hmm," Lord Shikamaru answered his wife from his writing table, in his usual noncommittal ways.
Lord Shikamaru was not as perceptible as his wife, but he knew when his opinion was warranted.
"Don't you find it strange, my dear, these circumstances?" Ino said slowly once the coach had disappeared. "Captain Hyuuga loses his rank, regains it, but his family shuns him."
She turned toward him, frowning. He stopped writing. Slowly, he cocked his head to the side, in an attentive gesture.
"I always wondered why Lord Morino would give Neji back his rank," he admitted and lazily he continued his correspondence. "If the old man was truly opposed to a match between Lady Tenten and Neji, why give it back at all? He could have sent him to another fleet at least."
While Lady Ino's mind reeled on the inner workings of men and marriage, Lord Shikamaru's own mind was preoccupied by the logical and lawful aspects of the Captain's inheritance.
"If Tenten asked for clemency..." Ino thought aloud. "Then why disappear, altogether? A lady in the middle of a scandalous engagement retires from the city and settles elsewhere for a time. It is expected, but Tenten cut off all of her ties with England... It doesn't make any sense."
Meanwhile Lord Shikamaru was whispering to himself: "I thought the rank was given back because of how easier it is to make a body disappear at sea, but Neji has come back. Hmm."
"What if..." Ino bit her lip, then delicately shook her head.
She had seen the emotions on the Captain's face. She had seen no guilt. She had seen longing and sadness. She sighed, massaging her temples.
"If Lady Tenten had retired from society in a particular situation," Lord Shikamaru was now muttering to himself, startling his wife. "Lord Morino would have gutted him on the public square."
Lady Ino reddened, blinking at him. How could he suggest such a thing!
"How curious is your mind!" she cried out. "Lady Tenten was never that scandalous, and Captain Hyuuga... Well, he..." Her blush spread down her neck, and she couldn't resist laughing a little, viciously. "He's a prude!"
The Captain was uneasy in situation broaching impropriety. Her laugh turned to a sad smile as she recalled Lady Tenten's vivid description of his reaction at the harbour when he found her.
Lady Ino turned back toward the window.
"I worry, because it doesn't make sense," she said softly.
"I wonder..." Lord Shikamaru stopped and grimaced, his fingers stained by ink.
Distracted, he shuffled his letters in the right order, then looked for his seal.
"I wonder..." he repeated, waving his hand about.
Lady Ino approached him, smiling to herself, and retrieved the seal from its hiding place. She handed it to him, with an arched eyebrow, bemused. Her husband was chaotic in his manners and thoughts, but he somehow always managed to trifle through and find the answer.
"Yes, my dear?" she prompted him.
"I wonder if it has something to do with the recent fire on Willows street," Lord Shikamaru answered and Lady Ino gaped at him, confused.
'What a curious mind he has!' she marvelled once more inwardly.
Near a cliff, in Wales, a castle excited much gossip and speculations. The inhabitants of the nearby village knew the castle to have belonged to a dead princess whose name and lineage were forgotten. That was why when a carriage and domestics arrived mysteriously in the middle of the night, the ladies and gentlemen of the village could barely contain their surprise and excitement. They lived in a fairly uneventful village, among prim and a conventional sort of society among whom strangers were scarce. And now, a royal person had joined their community.
The most distinguished and well-bred of the known noblemen tried to make it known to the mysterious occupants of the castle that if they needed anything, anything at all, they should call upon them, but each invitation was refused and each sender rebuffed, firmly and politely. No one caught a glimpse of the mysterious occupants. The domestics who were sent to town could not be persuaded to give any information, so the masses turned to the Uchiha brothers.
Lord Itachi Uchiha and Mr Sasuke Uchiha, whose residence was the closest to the castle, were pressed for information from all sides by their peers. Never had they received so many invitations to private balls and strolls and hunts. 'Who are they?' they were asked constantly about their neighbours. Ladies established that it was surely a rich gentleman of foreign royal lineage. 'A Russian lord, surely,' they whispered behind fans. Gentlemen did not have enough imagination to match the ladies' assumptions, but the eligible ones hoped that it was a rich lady.
The Uchiha brothers were not sanguine enough to give in and admit that they, themselves, were most baffled and intrigued by the presence of their neighbours after so many years of finding the castle empty. They were certainly never to admit that their calls had been politely declined like everyone else's. And they could scarcely explain the sound of firearms going off at various hours of the day and night, or a carriage leaving the castle every night.
No, that would not do, they both agreed. Mr Sasuke's impending marriage to Lady Hinata Hyuuga should go forth without the indication of bullets and violence and scandal so close to their lands.
Yet, there were times when suspicion and curiosity throbbed at the back of their heads. It would happen when Lord Itachi would walk along the woods separating the two lands. The thought would then seize him that the occupants of the castle were surely escaping some scandal. For Mr Sasuke, his own private thoughts and fears would arise, sinuously, when he was writing to Lady Hinata. He would pause, wondering how she would react to such neighbours with her gentle nature.
'How peculiar,' thought both men, but they soon regarded their neighbours with disinterest as weeks passed, and still no news arrived from the castle.
Mr Kiba Inuzuka only one man in the village who grew more interested in the castle and its occupants, as his peers grew resentful and disinterested. For, Mr Inuzuka had a nose and instinct for romance, and like a dog with a bone, he never relented in the pursuit of his ambition.
His new found ambition was acquiring the mysterious lady of the castle.
Near a cliff, in an old castle of Wales, Tenten awoke in the middle of the night.
Carefully, she pushed aside the curtains of her bed and reached for her dressing gown. She moved quickly across the room, securing the dressing gown over her night dress.
Tenten peeked through the door of her bedroom with only a candle as a source of light. Long shadows quivered across the wall and floor of the hallway, its end still lying in thick darkness.
The household remained silent.
Tenten eased the door wider open, holding the candle farther in front of her to illuminate her path. Family portraits, holy paintings and mirrors captured and reflected the small flame.
'Oh my god,' Tenten thought with irony, staring back in the dull painted eyes of the Lord. Her late grandmother had taken great pain in furnishing the castle to reflect her most devout endeavours. Had she been still alive, Her Highness would have certainly disapproved of her endeavours.
With one hand, Tenten slowly closed the door after her, her eyes shifting back to her mother's rooms farther down the hallway leading to the other family rooms. She paused, straining to hear any movement, before prowling toward the staircase. With each step, the flame swayed, and the floor creaked. More saints and holy pictures and dead kings and queens pathed her way.
On the ground floor, Tenten walked past the closed doors leading to the parlour and dining room before making her way to the kitchen and servants' quarters. There, she stopped and glanced over her shoulder, the back of her eyes prickling. The late King sternly stared back at her. She gulped. 'Oh my king,' she thought blankly.
Tenten turned away from the painting's gaze, her teeth clenched. She was the stranger in her family's home. She was the daughter sentenced to live in retirement.
Inhaling sharply, Tenten rapped at the door of the servants' quarters.
"Ayame," she hissed as loud as she dared.
After a moment, she heard the sound of careful steps.
"There is no letter, my lady," a sleepy voice answered through the door. "There's never any letter now."
Tenten nodded slowly, closing her eyes as she leaned back against the wall. She wished it was easier, to hide and bury pieces of herself. She wished it was easier to live as someone of her rank, undivided between the lady and the pauper, between her mother and her father.
And she had been so foolish. She could admit it freely to herself; she had been impulsive and arrogant, and she was saved by the notion that her secret was far at sea.
"Do you figure Mr Shosoryu is dead, my lady?"
Tenten startled, her eyes fluttering open. Slowly, she turned her head toward the door of the servant's quarters. After a moment, her chest shook with silent laughter, flecks of light thrown mindlessly across the tight hallway. The late King's stare flickered in and out of darkness, holding on to her gaze.
'Am I dead?'
Tenten touched her cool throat, resting her hand over her heartbeat.
"My lady?" Ayame prompted again in the silence that stretched. She dared to half-open the door. Tenten instantly dropped her hand. "Should I prepare some hot milk for you?"
Tenten shook her head and gave her a strained smile.
"Good night, Ayame," she said softly, her lips barely moving.
"Good night, my lady," the girl curtsied, stifling a yawn. Carefully, she closed the door again.
Tenten felt numb. She never imagined the price of her impudence would be so steep. Her parents would have easily forgiven a secret engagement. They could not as easily forgive or comprehend the existence of Mr Shosoryu without fearing for her future and the future of their house.
When her candle was close to dying out, Tenten lifted herself off the wall to return to her rooms. The flame gleamed meeker, paler, her shadows shorter.
'Oh my king,' she thought at the bottom of the stairs.
'Oh my god,' she thought, later as she opened the door to her rooms.
Behind the castle, Tenten closed one eye, cocked her head to the side, evaluating the distance. She puffed out white sharp air. She puffed out rage. She puffed out loss.
Briskly, Tenten motioned for the servant girl to move back with the jars. The girl huffed, her lips mouthing words Tenten was too far away to hear.
Her hand stiffened around the firearm, her heartbeat, her breath still calm, despite her choking rage, her crushing sadness.
The servant girl stopped again. Tenten smiled, cold and hard, and nodded to herself. She kicked at the frozen ground as the servant placed the jars. Once it was done, the girl ran some distance from the jars.
Tenten held up the rifle, aimed and fired. One, two, three. One after the other, the jars exploded. The smoke rose, puffed out, then rolled off the cliff.
The servant girl yelped at each bullet, her hands pressed to her ears. Silence settled over the hills, ragged by the sound of the sea and swallowed by the grey skies. Tenten panted, her chest heaving, her gloved hands tingling and burning up. She lowered her arm. Her rifle grazed the ground. She wished there was more to destroy.
In the distance, a horse neighed.
The sea rose with the wind.
Tenten whirled around, taut. She could hear the sound of a carriage pulling over the castle.
Cursing under her breath in a most unladylike manner, Tenten gathered her skirts and hurried to cover her grandfather's weapons with a blanket of wool. Wildly, she gestured for the servant girl to run back to the castle. She turned back and froze.
Her mother weighed her up coolly. The Duchess still wore her dress of black velvet, her dark hair secured under a matching elegant hat.
"What are you doing with my father's firearms?"
"Mother!" Tenten exclaimed between pants.
She curtsied with an innocent smile.
"How is our dear bishop?"
The Duchess of Redwood held up one hand to stop her and turned her head back toward her servants, waiting mutely behind her.
"Take everything back and lock it. Again."
The Duchess stared back at her daughter, her face as unreadable as always. A servant bowed and hesitantly took the rifle Tenten was holding. She let him, but she still narrowed her eyes at the way he held it.
"What did we say about my father's firearms?" the Duchess asked tonelessly.
"That they should be of use?" Tenten suggested, her eyebrows raised.
Tenten's smile quickly vanished before the Duchess' unreadable expression. She clenched her now empty hands at her sides.
"I'm bored and restless," she whispered, staring back expectedly at her mother. "It harms no one."
The Duchess still didn't react, waiting.
"We said no more firearms," Tenten added dully and turned her head toward the sea, her face stiffening.
"You'll become deaf. Or I might. No more firearms."
"I merely thought it would be a shame to let dust gather there."
The reply fell flat between them.
"Oh," the Duchess said with the same even cool voice she employed when they were discussing trivial things. "The long bow has already scared half of our staff away, and now the cook wishes to find a more peaceful household. Can I not step out of this house without your aiming at everyone within a four hundred yards radius? What are our neighbours to think?"
Tenten cocked her head to the side, still watching the sea. The waves rolled and sank back, dipped in white sunlight.
"The cook didn't appear to be bothered by my playing the harp, violin or piano," Tenten said faked cheerfulness and good humour. "He knows I'm a lady of many accomplishments. Now, our neighbours also share this intelligence."
Tenten rolled her head back and risked a small smile. In answer, her mother snapped opened her fan, a clear indicator of her displeasure. She held it tightly in front of her, immobile, gazing coolly at her daughter.
"You wish to hunt, child?" the Duchess smiled wryly. "Is that it?" she took a step closer to her, articulating slowly: "Then, hunt down a man and bring him back to me as a future husband."
"How could I do that in our current circumstances?" Tenten whispered, undeterred.
The Duchess straightened her back.
She turned her pale gaze to the servant girl hurrying back to the house. The servant girl held the pieces of the broken jars in a basket, her body bowed over it. She curtsied deeply once she was near the duchess.
The Duchess agitated her fan once, and Tenten grimaced. Her mother was not prone to loud outbursts like her father, but her temper exploded abruptly and unpredictably. There were signs indicative of displeasure, such as the agitation of her fan, but Tenten knew if the duchess were to readjust her hat or hair or tap her fan three times in her hands, the tempest would be loud, violent and take days to settle.
"How much did you pay this one?" the Duchess asked as she followed the servant girl with her gaze.
"She was happy to help," Tenten said lightly and turned away from the sea.
Her mother's face trembled, stiffening, then relaxed, impassive once more.
"Please, do refrain from making me break my composure," the Duchess said curtly. "This is my late mother's house. I should observe the decorum appropriate for her peaceful rest. As should you."
Gracefully, she snapped her fan close and slid it in her sleeves. She gathered her skirts and started walking back toward the castle.
"Now come along."
Tenten pinched her lips and hurried after her mother.
"A lady does not run," the Duchess reminded her impassively.
Tenten slowed down and grinned wickedly at her mother.
"How does a lady hunt then? Does she let her preys so easily escape her?"
The Duchess straightened her back again, a savage shadow crossing her face. She didn't return the grin.
"But you are not a lousy shot, child. We taught you better than to let anything survive your bullets. Did we not?"
Tenten bit back a sarcastic reply.
Before they reached the house, the Duchess stopped. Slowly, she took her fan out of her sleeves once more and raised her fan over her face. Tenten stilled and stilted under her mother's sharp side-glance.
"If we are still clear about the fate of Mister S., do not sneak downstairs at night anymore. The girl may not know how to read, but she may hear the name and understand how close this gentleman is to this house."
Tenten blanched and stared down. She wrought her skirts tighter.
"The servant girl was sent away to a convent," the Duchess continued in a murmur. "This is settled."
"Yes, Madam," Tenten said quietly.
"I hope you know this all for your own good. If someone was to find out... Your father will soon enquire whether we can resume our social activities without threat."
Tenten looked up then to meet her mother's gaze, the muscles of her jaw working.
"I'm sorry," she whispered.
Her mother stared back at her, expressionless. After a moment, she nodded once, and the fan disappeared once more. They entered the house, duchess and lady, as if there was no shadow of scandal in their footsteps.
The Duchess of Redwood was a lady of varnish and polish who praised herself in being absolute mistress of herself. To the Ton, she presented respectable English manners, an unreadable face, hands that were calm and graceful. One would speak, upon meeting the Duchess, of her dignified airs before insisting on her hairstyle and fashion taste as little about her emotions or thoughts could ever be perceived. Yet, ever so often, the line of her mouth would tremble and shift, the thin wrinkles around her eyes would accentuate, then, she would agitate her fan, and the façade would start to crack.
While this small shift in manners was often imperceptible to those unacquainted with the lady's violent temper, Lady Tenten immediately tensed at the first sight of her mother's fan, and her fork stilled on her plate. Slowly, she lowered it and put it besides her plate.
When the Duchess was angry, it was best to be devoid of obstacles that may impede one's escape route.
At the head of the breakfast table, the admiral carefully folded his serviette, instinctively aware of this fact. In normal circumstances, the admiral was thrilled to see his wife's rousing anger as he had fallen in love with the beast first, then with the woman. In normal circumstances, his wife's anger was not directed at him.
The admiral met his daughter's eyes. He opened his mouth. Lady Tenten, more acquainted with being the object of the lady's anger, carefully shook her head. He immediately closed his mouth.
The admiral ventured a glance toward his wife. She was watching him with her unsettling pale gaze, her mouth stiff and flat. The fan shook once, then stilled. She didn't blink. With a wave of the hand, she dismissed the maid from the dining room.
"Are you hiding things from me, Ibiki?" she asked softly once she was certain they wouldn't be overheard.
"I'm just being cautious, Sora, nothing else. There are no secrets in this house," he insisted and Tenten tensed, holding her breath. "It's best if Mr Ebisu stays here and smooths out rough edges, and the likes."
The Duchess snarled, eyes and teeth flashing dangerously.
"You never part from Mr Ebisu."
"The things, I do for you, my love."
The admiral grinned at his wife.
"There is no other reason for you to leave him here?" she asked, and her arm moved languidly. She tapped her fan on the table. Slow and steady, then brutally until it broke. With a flick of the wrist, she disregarded the fan.
The admiral grinned, his eyes twinkling.
"Ah, you think I don't trust you," he said and reached across the table, toward her. "You're the only one I trust to take care of things, just as you trust me, yes?" His eyes travelled up her arm, to her slender, neck, to her eyes. "Little bird... now come."
The Duchess pinched her lips, unfazed. His fingers drummed on the table, then stilled, waiting. She didn't give him her hand. She had been raised at court. She knew better than to give in at the first sight of affection.
"Is the address gone?" she asked instead, and reached for her cup of tea.
He narrowed his eyes at her.
"Yes."
"And it seems like..." she trailed off, in a mere whisper.
"Like Mr S. burned everything down and fled to France once his last book was banned. That's what the harbour books show for passage to Calais," the admiral answered just as low.
"What of Captain Hyuuga?"
The admiral clenched his jaw, his own temper rising.
"He's preoccupied with his own family affairs," he snapped.
The Duchess' lips curled up in disgust.
"What a mediocre man his uncle is. The engagement is broken, and he is still not satisfied?"
"I'm still not satisfied," the admiral grumbled, and his eyes darted to his daughter.
"Hn. He would still be easier to manage if we let him have Tenten," the Duchess said delicately.
Tenten lowered her head, her heart deafening in her ears. 'I'm here,' she thought miserably, but couldn't say it.
Her head throbbed. Her heart throbbed. All of her throbbed, even if she had grown in a grotesque ghost. She haunted the hallways of an old castle, never to be seen. She often felt angry and scared, lost as to whether she could express her feelings. Whether she was allowed to have them at all.
The admiral snarled.
"I'm managing him all right, woman. I detained him one more week than expected on his ship, so Mr Ebisu could finish his work. The boy ought to have expected some form of punishment," he paused and extracted folded sheets of paper from the inner pocket of his coat. He read from the pages: "He visited his uncle, where he was not received. He lodged at the inn, then with his friend, Lord Shikamaru Nara."
"Hn. He suspects nothing?"
"If he did, he would be gone."
'I have ruined him,' Tenten thought, numbly. 'I have as well as shot him a thousand times over.'
"I would find it distasteful to resort to these means," the Duchess replied sharply. "I would rather pay the boy than dispose of him. Do we understand each other?"
"Perfectly," the admiral grumbled and folded the pages back before slipping them back in his pocket. "I'll take my leave now. A fleet can't leave without its admiral."
Discreetly, Tenten slipped out of the room. She closed her eyes, resting against the wall outside the morning dinner room.
"I want you to go back to the manor, and make sure no rumours are circulating," Tenten heard her mother say.
"I would have even if you didn't ask me to."
There was a moment of silence during which Tenten was certain her mother had relented and given her hand to the admiral. Then, the steps of the admiral echoed loudly on the floor, followed by the lighter steps of the Duchess. Tenten lifted herself off the wall. She joined her hands and waited for the doors to open roughly.
The Duchess waved her fingers and the butler stepped forward to hand the admiral his hat.
Soon after, a carriage was brought forward in the courtyard.
Before Admiral Morino stepped outside, he spun on his heels and headed toward Tenten. He put his hand on her head like he did when she was a child.
Her shoulder shot up from the weight of his hand. She couldn't help her small smile in response to his grin. He levelled his eyes to hers, half of his towering height bent.
"When we make mistakes, we carry on, and that is all, yes?"
Her smile trembled.
"Yes, sir."
The admiral nodded stiffly, releasing her.
"Now, behave and visit the chapel once in a while just to please your mother. She keeps complaining and I can't rest in peace when she complains."
The scars around his mouth stretched in a grin, and the Duchess pinched her lips in response.
"And no more secrets, yes?" the admiral looked at his daughter sharply.
Her smile thinned.
"No more secrets," she repeated dully after him.
The Duchess and Tenten watched the carriage leave.
"This is settled," the Duchess said evenly.
LETTER FROM DUKE IBIKI MORINO OF REDWOOD TO DUCHESS SORA MORINO OF REDWOOD
Little bird,
I passed through town to make sure our affairs are still without threats as you requested. Nothing concerned me there, but something else did. I wouldn't bring this up if it weren't for the fact that it indirectly involves our daughter. Lord Sarutobi and his people spotted me through town and trapped me in the most boring exchange of empty pleasantries. While I assured him multiple times I was on my way to take care of pressing affairs, the man wouldn't stop talking. He inquired after Tenten's matrimonial status. I almost lost my temper and told him I would shoot him on sight if he thought of marrying her, that old goat. Our daughter ought to be 30 years his junior! His son would be no better match; he is young and a fool. I wouldn't trust him with as much as an ant. As I made those observations to myself, the goat had the indecency of asking me if Tenten and Captain Hyuuga had an understanding. I told him as crudely as I could that our daughter had no understanding with anyone, so he would finally release me.
Truth be told, I thought little of the incident at the time, if only that I hate those pompous earls. I know how they look down on me and incidentally, on you, and this alone, I could never forgive. I then met with Lord Kakashi and Lady Anko the following week, and I had to reconsider the entire unpleasant incident with His Lordship The Goat. (You know how our friends are the only company I can genuinely suffer in this town.) Lord Kakashi had under the upmost assurance that Lord Konohamaru had married Miss Hanabi – now Lady Hanabi. He knew this because he had handled the marriage certificate and the exchange of propriety between Lord Hiashi and Lord Sarutobi. I am utterly livid as I write this letter. That goat had asked me about Tenten's marriage to Captain Hyuuga then proceeded to steal the man's entire inheritance. Now, that goat is gloating around town, loyal to his specie; he had secured a future for his son and gained a rich daughter-in-law, and he only needed to crush a penniless boy to do so.
We have already discussed this; I do not like Captain Hyuuga for our daughter even less so in the circumstances in which you both left England, but I will murder the goat, the treacherous uncle and all members of that damned house next to ours if you allow me to. I can hardly refrain from mentioning the Lord's name in vain here, but surely you cannot dispute that it is a damned house. They call themselves earls and lords and such, but they are all ridiculous. I've met pirates with more honour than this.
I'll let you decide whether we tell Tenten about this.
Yours always,
Ibiki
I'm actually surprised no one has asked who is Mr T. Shosoryu. Huehueheuheuhue
Personal note: I thought a long hard time about how to say this because I don't want to share too much, but I feel like I need to share some sort of explanation for my long absence. Somewhere in June, I started to feel overwhelmed; I have written over 100k words this year, mainly for events. I was exhausted and burnt out. I wanted to take a break for a short while, just so I could reconnect with ideas that I had set aside because of all those prompts for various events I filled. I felt like I had lost touched with what I really wanted to write. Then, someone very close to me got very sick (not from covid). July and August were exhausting emotionally and physically. I was working all day, then I would drive to hospitals and clinics for my relative's tests and treatment. I had no headspace for writing. I only ask that you be a little patient with me and my updates. They will be erratic. I am often sad and angry. Some days are better than others. All I can do is promise that I won't kill any characters to blow off some steam.