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Chapter: 8
“They know, too. They’re just pretending they don’t. It’s not something to be proud of, so I’d like you to pretend you don’t know either.”
I replied indifferently.
“It was money spent on my engagement five years ago. It was all done under the table, so I deliberately didn’t record the details.”
Langsi nearly tumbled out of his chair.
A look of utter disbelief crossed his face.
“W–What? Young miss’s engagement?”
“I told you so.”
“No, I mean—does it make any sense to get engaged at seven years old?!”
He added with a groan,
“And on top of that, spending such an enormous sum—good heavens, what kind of lunatic would do something like th—”
“My mother led it.”
Having spoken the truth, Langsi slapped his own mouth hard.
“Must’ve been possessed by Wendy for a moment.”
He was clearly in a state of panic.
I went on to drop an even bigger bomb.
“It was broken off anyway. I handled everything, so you don’t need to worry. The request for annulment arrived the day Alphiers became marquis.”
Langsi grabbed the back of his head.
“Don’t tell me they wanted to break it off the moment you stopped being the heir of Seers? That makes no sense!”
“It makes even less sense to stay engaged when the conditions no longer match.”
“But who in the world calculates everything so precisely and gets married without losing a single thing?!”
“My parents.”
I explained calmly.
“My mother was a princess of a fallen kingdom with no dowry, so she had no choice but to marry a divorced man ten years her senior. And my father—like you know—openly went around saying he wanted to pass the marquisate to his missing eldest son, so he couldn’t marry a proper noble lady of the Empire.”
It was a political marriage formed between two equally undesirable conditions.
“There was no real substance, only a prestigious name. A perfectly exact match, you could say—there wasn’t even the slightest imbalance.”
“B–But still…”
“And besides, my former fiancé…”
I muttered bitterly.
“He never really wanted the engagement in the first place. The terms were already skewed, and I never expected it to lead smoothly to marriage.”
Langsi gasped for breath before finally managing to ask,
“Y–Young miss… are you… all right?”
I frowned slightly. The question felt unfamiliar.
Only after a moment did I realize that no one had ever asked me that before.
The maids never did. They didn’t dare.
And my parents…
“No one likes a whining child, Langsi.”
I answered calmly.
“When a child isn’t okay, adults find it bothersome.”
Truthfully, I hadn’t been okay even on the day of the engagement ceremony. I just couldn’t tell anyone.
“Let’s end this topic here. What was it you wanted to ask me?”
“I suddenly don’t feel like it anymore. Even I can read the room.”
“Then you must also realize that if you don’t ask now, I’ll feel disgusted at being pitied—and I won’t let you off easily.”
“B–But if I ask just like this, my conscience will feel awfully uncomfortable…”
“That just means you’ll feel more comfortable once you ask. So hurry up.”
At my blunt response, Langsi sighed once and spoke carefully.
“T–Then, young miss… I’m terribly sorry, but… could you perhaps… train the maids?”
I could tell he was choosing his words desperately, afraid of offending me.
“The maids of the marquis’s household are openly looking down on Lord Alphiers—and on us, his people.”
The fact that he even brought this up showed that he acknowledged me.
“Having the person they served pushed out of the line of succession overnight… we understand now that it can’t be pleasant. But from our perspective, it’s hard to look kindly on maids who talk nonsense without understanding the situation, even when the household is drowning in debt.”
Langsi paused and glanced at me cautiously.
I slowly raised two fingers.
“I’ll address that in two parts. First: yes, my maids really are ignorant of the world.”
“You already knew?! My goodness!”
Langsi’s eyes widened.
I replied coolly.
“But that’s precisely why they’re still here. If you checked the budget, you’d know how many months their wages are overdue.”
Langsi looked as though he’d been struck in the head.
“Anyone with sense has already left. The only ones remaining are maids who value the pride and honor of serving the last bloodline of the Liente royal family more than their pay.”
The Kingdom of Liente had been destroyed by the Kingdom of Sebon before I was born.
Just before its fall, the king had hurriedly sent his youngest daughter—the fifth princess—to the Empire’s great noble, Marquis Seers, hoping that at least one child might survive.
Even that mother had passed away. Officially, I was now the only direct descendant of the Liente royal family.
“Liente’s history is older than the Empire’s. But for far too long, Liente scorned practical learning and cared only for luxury and empty ceremony.”
“R–Really? But that’s not right, is it?”
“That’s why it fell.”
I exposed my maternal family’s shame without emotion.
“Still, for those maids, every move I make is a matter of honor they must protect. I know it may look ridiculous to you.”
I was their pride.
To them, that was worth more than any wage I could offer.
That was why they weren’t childish. They were people who had come with my mother from Liente.
“But isn’t it better not to ridicule a person’s consistent beliefs too easily? Which brings me to my second point.”
Staring straight at Langsi, who stood with his mouth slightly open, I continued evenly.
“Come back when you can pay all the overdue wages. Then I’ll train them properly, just as you ask.”
In other words, if he wanted to boss them around, he needed the money.
“A single coin in your hand is more precious than an unwrinkled hem of your master’s skirt.”
“…No.”
The budget officer’s reply came quickly, breaking the silence.
“For now, young miss’s unwrinkled skirt is far more precious to all of us.”
And with that, Langsi chose to share his fate with the maids.
“Very well.”
I accepted his change of heart generously.
“Then I’ll be going now.”
There seemed to be nothing left to say, so I stood up quietly.* * *
Langsi forgot even how to be angry.
That clever child knew the cost of the fine clothes she wore.
She wasn’t the leader of foolish, babbling maids. She was someone paying the price of her own meals—forced upon her by the marquisate’s debt.
If the maids were dismissed right now, who would run this estate?
“I–I’ll escort you.”
Langsi hurriedly rose and followed Brisa.
But the moment the door opened, a maid waiting outside came into view.
After checking Brisa’s expression, the maid immediately whispered to Langsi.
“Miss looks a bit bitter. Did you talk about the annulment?”
Sharp as a ghost. How did she know?
Langsi blinked.
“Don’t pity our young miss. She didn’t just quietly handle the annulment papers, you know. An anonymous bouquet arrived the same day the engagement was broken off.”
The maid said proudly.
“She’ll have no trouble receiving a proposal from that young lord soon.”
Langsi’s mouth fell open.
“She could even form a marriage alliance with a family of even greater status!”
Surely that wasn’t meant as comfort.
Langsi sighed inwardly.
He could roughly guess what had happened in this household.
While the clueless maids poured out misguided affection, the child standing among them had grown up alone, far too early.
If Alphiers knew this, he would weep for three days and nights. He, too, was a child who had grown up too fast.
“Brisa must have missed her family. She gave me this.”
Before leaving for the capital, Alphiers had shown him a dried herb with pride.
“I was just shocked today, that’s all. She’ll definitely be a gentle, kind child—she takes after me. I want to see her again soon, play with her in the garden, blowing balloons for her. She’d like it if I brought back a surprise like soap bubbles from the capital, right?”
What Alphiers feared most when he left was Brisa growing up too quickly.
“I don’t want my little sister to become an adult too fast…”
But sadly, one thing was certain.
‘My lord, you’ll have to burst those soap bubbles alone.’
Even if the two of them were present together, it would clearly be closer to Brisa indulging Alphiers than the other way around.
