The Abandoned Duchess Seems to Want a Peaceful Life - Chapter 10

Chapter 10: Each Their Own Position

"Oh, Lady Melfina, you're back early!"

"I'm home, Ed. You're hard at work."

Ed, who had been sweeping in front of the gate in his servant's uniform, ran over to her. That he stopped some meters away was surely the fruit of Rad's and Cliff's training.

"Cliff says the gate is the face of the house, so it should always be kept clean!"

"Hey, Ed, take the horses to the stable. I'll take off the harness later, so just give them water and feed."

"Okay!"

Hearing him answer Rad so obediently, she felt a little lighter again.

She headed straight to the reception room rather than her private room, and Cedric followed in silence.

"Shall I prepare black tea?"

"No, let's get the talk done first. Marie, Cedric, please sit there."

The reception room was a private room where the master entertained guests. The lord's manor hadn't originally had one, so one of the spare rooms on the second floor had been fitted out in its place. The porter trio, when they gave up their rooms in the ducal capital and came back, had bought some furniture along the way, and the sofa set they had carried in, though of almost no value as a noble's property, was just right for this small manor.

"I cannot sit in the same seat as the one I serve."

Contrary to Cedric's stiff declaration, Marie sat naturally on the sofa opposite. He looked down at her bitterly, but seemed not to know what he should say. In the end, he stayed standing at attention, and Melfina let out a small sigh.

"First, I want to confirm something with you both. How much have you heard about me from His Grace?"

"I was told that you are a noblewoman received from the House of Marquis Crawford as the legal wife of the House of Duke Oldrand, and I was asked to guard your person."

"I was instructed by the head maid to serve as the handmaiden who looks after Lady Melfina during her stay with the House of Oldrand. She also said it would probably not be for a long period."

"Why is it assumed that the Duchess will not stay long? When my lord has finally married!"

It seemed that Marie, and the head maid through her, had read Alexis's thinking more accurately. That Cedric had not was probably because he and his superiors belonged not to the servants but to the knights, and had few chances to know Alexis's private side deeply.

From Cedric's point of view, Melfina must look like a young lady who, though Alexis, the head of a ducal house, had stayed single so long and had finally married, was wandering off right after the wedding, saying unworldly things like living in the provinces and becoming a lord. That was why he thought she should return to the ducal house quickly, and treated her not as a lord but as the Duchess.

Marie, though, seemed only to be following the head maid's instructions. Whenever Melfina did something a noble lady would not, such as cleaning or cooking, a surprise she could not entirely suppress slipped out.

Cedric, on the other hand, conveyed constant irritation toward her. It was as though he were wearing down his nerves, wondering what the eccentric, unconventional young lady would do next.

"Tell me, Cedric. Perhaps you know the rumors about me and my mother?"

He kept his expression from changing, the composed response of a bodyguard knight, but unfortunately his eyebrows twitched.

"No..."

"There's no need to dissemble. It's well known among the nobles of the royal capital, and the Carlisle family is a line of Counts Palatine, so it would be no surprise if you had heard rumors about me, who lived in the royal capital."

"...How do you know my family name?"

Since the time of the introduction, Cedric had been "Bodyguard Knight Cedric." Not every knight had a family name or a knight's title, so introducing himself that way had been no problem.

She knew his full name because she knew from her previous life that Cedric was a capture target, and the fact that the Carlisles were Counts Palatine came from the knowledge of Melfina, who had been born and educated in this world.

"Many people seem to want to believe I spent my time playing around in the royal capital, but don't you think it a bit of an underestimate to assume the House of Marquis Crawford has not gathered that much information?"

In truth, it was cheating, a place she could never have reached without her past-life knowledge, but when she gave him a suggestive smile, Cedric seemed to be convinced.

Maria of the Kingdom of Hearts was also known as a trivia-type otome game. Many settings were packed into it, and the parameters of the protagonist and the capture targets changed depending on the difficulty setting. And at Hard Mode, grasping the fine details became essential.

With her past-life knowledge of having cleared all the characters on the highest difficulty, and her present-life effort to be the finest noble lady, Melfina could see what would happen in this world from here on and what the optimal answer was.

It was only that she had forgotten how those around her would react to following that path, and that was a painful failure.

Just as with Alexis, she had never from the start thought of capturing Cedric.

This world was an otome game's world, a world for the heroine who would come two years later. Even if she struggled so that Melfina would not close her life in misfortune, all the good men belonged to the heroine.

She had no expectations of romance in this world.

"To you, I must have looked like the wife of an irresponsible noble house who throws away her family's duty and acts on her own interests, like my mother. And since you also know that in the royal capital I'm whispered about as a swapped child, perhaps you also suspected that I might do something like that to the House of Oldrand."

"I would never—"

Cedric was a serious, stiff character. In the game, too, though drawn to Saint Maria, he kept a certain distance as captain of the knights and behaved rationally, a character of high difficulty. Honest and faithful to his position as he was, Melfina did not really think he had suspected her that far.

It was only that being subjected by a superior to a baseless assumption you cannot produce evidence against, the sort of "surely you think this," is unpleasant. All the more for a serious person like him, who would not want to make excuses.

"First, let's clear up that misunderstanding. On paper I am without doubt the Duchess, but I am not His Grace's formal wife."

At those words, both Cedric and Marie looked puzzled.

In this world, becoming husband and wife meant swearing love and fidelity before god. Many attendees had seen Melfina and Alexis take their vows at the church.

But the "marriage" the church prescribed had one more condition.

"His Grace did not visit my room on the wedding night. He told me himself, plainly, that he had no intention of doing so."

"...That is very hard to believe."

Cedric forced the words out.

Marie, who ordinarily kept her feelings off her face, had also turned a little pale.

"Marie, in the drawer of the desk in my bedroom there is a bundle of parchment tied with a red cord. Would you fetch it for me?"

Marie followed the instruction at once. Melfina untied the ribbon and passed the bundle straight to Cedric.

It was the contract of marriage terms in Alexis's own hand. Two copies had been made, and they had signed, each keeping one.

It stated that he had no intention of having children with Melfina and agreed not to fulfill any duty of the night, and at the same time that he would not interfere with wherever she lived or whatever she did.

As already explained, the church basically did not recognize divorce, but exceptionally a divorce was possible for a "white marriage." Under church law, a relationship in which no act of producing descendants had taken place was treated as one in which the marriage had never been properly established to begin with.

In fact, in the game, when the story went down Alexis's route, Melfina was divorced two years later for precisely that reason.

"This... I knew nothing of this..."

"I think His Grace has no intention of divorcing me at the moment. He just wants to keep a minimum of watch on me so that I don't cause trouble."

She rolled the parchment up again and tied it with the ribbon.

"On paper I hold the title of Duchess, but under church law I do not, and His Grace has told me he doesn't mind where I live or what I do. That I don't refuse the staff assigned to watch me, even so, is a sort of sincerity on my part, for I bear the Oldrand name, if only nominally. Have I made myself understood?"

Cedric did not answer. It was disrespectful toward the one he served, but he probably could not take in so much information at once.

No, in the first place, the one he served was not her.

"Cedric. If you wish to return to His Grace, you may use me as the reason. If you say that when you were near me I had tantrums beyond control and you judged you could not fulfill your guard duty, no one will doubt it."

"I cannot do that."

"Without the reality of a duchess, without managing the ducal house's affairs, and with His Grace himself having cast me off to do as I like, I am not a fitting person for you to protect. Even if you guard me, it will not count toward your record as a knight."

"Even so, my lord commanded me to protect you."

"Then obey my orders, Cedric von Carlisle."

Having been told that she suspected him through tinted glasses, and having it thrust at him that the one he guarded wasn't a duchess in the true sense at all, Cedric must be badly shaken.

When people are confused, they cannot make sound judgments. If he kept threatening everyone who came near Melfina like this, she could not possibly keep him by her side.

He must either devote himself to the role of watcher, or, if he insisted on the role of a knight, leave here.

"I am obeying, I believe. But if I let inferiors whose safety has not been confirmed touch you, I cannot protect you."

Even if something happened to Melfina and Alexis did not blame Cedric, for a bodyguard knight to have something happen to the person he guards was the same as having his pride trampled underfoot. There would be no advancement beyond that, and he would feel even hoping for it a disgrace.

What was most desirable for Cedric was for her to quietly shut herself away like a proper noble wife at the ducal manor or the townhouse in the royal capital, spending a year or two peacefully until the handover to the next bodyguard knight.

But for Melfina, that was like being told to sit and wait for ruin.

"...Return to the ducal capital after all. If you can't say it, I will write to His Grace myself. I'll tell him not to waste a fine knight on me, and to send some adventurers hired at random."

She had no plans, in particular, to hide from Alexis and commit some wicked crime.

Above all, having Cedric, one of the capture targets, nearby made her uneasy.

Melfina's ruin applied only to Alexis's route, but if the heroine Maria appeared, Cedric was a man who would fall in love with her.

And as the captain of the knights, it would be a love he staked his life on.

She did not know what would surround Melfina when Maria appeared, but knowing that this would happen and keeping him close was obviously risky.