The Abandoned Duchess Seems to Want a Peaceful Life - Chapter 9

Chapter 9: A Conversation Between the Duchess and Her Handmaiden

The carriage was filled with heavy air.

Marie, as ever, showed no emotion and kept her mouth closed.

The carriage rolled along gently, much more slowly than on the way there. He must think she was downcast, she supposed. That Rad, who was driving, was being considerate came through from that alone.

"...Marie, do you think I'm wrong too?"

No matter what anyone said, she had no intention of changing her actions.

Melfina's life had been one hardship after another from the start. So many things had gone unrewarded. Now that her memories had returned, she had thought she wouldn't care how others viewed her.

Even so, she had not considered that others might be hurt because she was trying to push through her own stubbornness. Melfina was a thoroughbred noble daughter, who had hardly ever lived in a territory and had never had a close friend her own age. She had often visited orphanages, and no one around her had ever criticized her for mingling with the orphans there.

It was clear that, as a noble, she had far too few patterns for interacting with people who weren't nobles. It wasn't enough that she herself didn't mind. In exchange for Melfina going unchastised, a young boy could be attacked.

"In my position, I have no right to comment on Lady Melfina's actions, but if you will allow my personal opinion."

"Yes."

"Lady Melfina is not wrong."

Told so plainly, she turned her eyes, which she had averted out of awkwardness, toward Marie. Marie was also looking straight at Melfina.

"This is simply a matter of rank order. Lady Melfina is the lady of the ducal house, and has become the lord of the Enkar region. No one is in a position to rebuke how Lady Melfina conducts herself within her territory. If anyone has that right, it is His Grace, but even that is not as lord, only regarding her conduct as the Duchess."

Her voice continued without hesitation. Marie seemed to have firm convictions on this matter.

"How a territory is managed, what kind of land one wishes to develop it into: deciding that is the exclusive authority of the lord. And, if you will forgive my disrespect in saying so, even the royal family only rarely interferes in the management of a noble's territory, unless it is greatly inhumane. To do so would invite defection by the nobles, and anyone who knows even a little of noble society should be aware of that."

"Yes... you're right."

Nobles, setting aside the new nobility created by the royal family, traced back to the local powerful families of the provinces.

Among them, one especially powerful house was called the royal family, and the relationship between the royal family and the nobles was fundamentally one of alliance and loyalty exchanged under contracts between houses.

Even while paying respect to the royal family, noble houses were by nature equal to the royal family; their territories were each equivalent to a country of their own, and tax rates and local laws were left to the lord's discretion, so meddling in them was taken as interference in domestic affairs.

It was because they could preserve their territories' independence without being invaded that provincial nobles looked up to the royal family as their sovereign.

In fact, in times when the royal family was weaker than now, it had been common for regions to break away and become independent as duchies or marquisates, which was part of the education Melfina had received.

Nobles look up to the king, yet are not the king's bailiffs.

What kind of territory to make was for the lord to decide, and Melfina, now the official lord of the Enkar region, could behave like a king here without anyone rebuking her. It was a mistake to rebuke a lord's conduct, Marie was saying.

"Moreover, for a bodyguard knight to interfere in the words and deeds of Lady Melfina while she is visiting her territory as lord is the very thing that ought to be rebuked. Therefore, to the question of whether Lady Melfina was wrong, I answer that she was not."

"Mm..."

Marie's words helped her gradually sort out the problem between her and Cedric.

Cedric was treating Melfina not as "the lord of the Enkar region" but as "the Duchess of Oldrand."

That was why, if he found something odd in her conduct as a duchess, he would frown, and if someone of unknown background came near, he would act to protect Melfina. As a knight, there was not a single mistake in that.

"Thank you, Marie. I feel a bit clearer."

"I am glad if I have been of use. And..."

"Yes?"

"I have a younger brother. I was sent into service early, so I couldn't look after him much, but in my own way I thought he was cute. I feel I want a boy of that age to laugh without a care."

Marie turned her large eyes toward Melfina and smiled, just a little.

"So I was glad that Lady Melfina cared for that boy."

Feeling a kinship with Marie, who wore the face of an older sister, she smiled back without meaning to.

Melfina too had had a younger brother. She had complicated feelings about the brother who, from birth, had been showered with the parents' love that she had never managed to obtain, but she certainly held in her heart the feeling that the brother who had adored her as his older sister was dear to her.

"I need to talk properly with Cedric."

"Yes, please do."

Marie fell silent again, as though she were done. But the silence in the carriage felt lighter now than before.