The Abandoned Duchess Seems to Want a Peaceful Life - Chapter 178

Chapter 178: The Barber’s Request for a Private Talk

“My shoulders feel so much lighter. You really do have skilled hands, Tori.”

“Thank you. You’ve clearly kept up the careful care since last time. The quality of your hair has improved so much.”

Tori said so kindly, but the finish after a professional’s treatment was different all the same. If she only had something like a hair dryer, it might turn out even better.

“Just brushing properly with a good brush makes a big difference, doesn’t it? Brushed well, it gets glossy, and it’s become easier to manage. If only I could cut it short, it would be even easier.”

“As a barber, I can’t really recommend wigs. They aren’t very hygienic, they’re not easy to handle, and it would be hard to gather enough of them in a golden color as splendid as yours, Lady Melfina.”

“Well, I don’t have anywhere to go where I’d wear a heavy wig, anyway.”

Until she came to the Enkar region, Melfina’s world had been almost entirely contained within the townhouse in the royal capital, but even when she went out for charity work, she had never seen a woman with short hair.

Even the orphans had reasonably long hair. The women who served at the temple bound their hair and covered it with cloth, but it was only neatly braided, not shaved.

For Melfina, a high-ranking noblewoman, cutting her hair short would bring more trouble from curious stares than it would save in upkeep.

“There are merchants who deal in wigs in Romana, too. When lice spread widely in the royal capital of the Francesca Kingdom, furs were blamed, but some whispered that wigs were the cause.”

“Both sound plausible. ...We should air the furs out in the sun before winter properly sets in.”

“Yes, getting plenty of sunlight on them is very important. Another way is to put them in a wooden box and leave them untouched for ten days or more.”

That one was probably to starve the lice. Camphor would have been ideal, but compounds for repelling insects shouldn’t exist in this era.

Making essential oils from mint or lemongrass might turn out to be a surprisingly good product. The insect-repelling effect would be slight, but it simply smelled lovely, and it would be nice to keep it in a room and enjoy the scent.

“Lady Melfina, you’ve got that look on your face again, the one you get when you’re thinking about work.”

Marie, whose hair Tori was now brushing out after finishing with Melfina, said this with a slight air of exasperation.

“Oh, that’s a misunderstanding, Marie. I was just imagining how nice it would be to have such things.”

“I’ve seen with my own eyes, many times, how those things turn into enormous profits.”

“Isn’t making something not the end of it? Getting it to the people who need it matters too, doesn’t it?”

“That still leads straight back to work.”

At Marie’s wry remark, she thought, well, that’s true.

“Lady Melfina, you truly are very knowledgeable.”

“A bit more than most, perhaps. I grew up in the royal capital the whole time and had no friends, so there was nothing to do besides study.”

Fortunately, the Marquis’s house had given her every opportunity to learn that she wanted. Besides the things noblewomen are expected to learn, such as languages, dance, musical instruments, and embroidery, she had been able to study ancient languages, foreign languages, and arithmetic with specialist tutors.

Her present self probably had the same slight addiction to gaining knowledge as her past self. She had never once found studying painful.

“If you ever come across books on the customs and legends of Romana or the eastern lands, or history books, please sell them to me.”

“Are you interested in Romana?”

“Yes. I’d like to visit at least once, though it’s probably impossible.”

“Romana is warm all year round, so there are plenty of resorts for foreign nobles. They say that if you bask in the sun and eat fresh fruit, you won’t be bothered by the winter sickness anymore.”

“That sounds like a dream.”

Still, Melfina was the lord of the Enkar region, buried in work through the summer and snowed in through the winter. Knowing that monsters appeared in the northern winter, she couldn’t leave her territory for an entire season.

Besides, Romana was a country beyond the south, past the Crawford house that ruled her family’s lands. The status of Duchess Oldrand was too large to cross territories incognito. And while traveling by the eastern roads or sea routes wasn’t impossible, the thought of people spitefully gossiping that she was avoiding her family home was a heavy one.

――If I threw away my rank and position and became just Melfina.

Then she might have been able to live freely, traveling the world. Giving her name as Mel, since using her real one could draw trouble, she and Marie might have gone from country to country, city to city, without any ties.

She might have had a future of laughing together, eating and drinking each place’s specialties.

As she imagined this, basking in the lingering warmth of the hair treatment and massage, Marie’s treatment finished as well. Her pale blonde hair, a different shade from Melfina’s, now shone with a gloss like gold and silver silk threads blended together.

“I feel so refreshed. Thank you, Tori.”

“Not at all. Both of you have hair that’s easy to work with, so it’s rewarding for me too.”

“Please stay the night. We’ll have some tea and chat for a while. I’d love to hear stories from your travels, if you don’t mind.”

When she said this to Tori, who was putting away her tools, Tori stopped her hands and fell silent. The silence lasted only about ten seconds, but when she looked up, her eyes held a look of resolve.

“...Lady Melfina. I know it is presumptuous, but there is something I would like to ask of you.”

“What is it? It depends on what it is, of course, but go ahead and say it.”

“Could you give my brother a chance to speak with you, with everyone else sent away?”

Not only Melfina but Marie too was startled, and neither could speak right away.

“Tori, you...”

“Wait, Marie. ...Tori, by brother, you mean Raymond, correct?”

“Yes.”

“And you mean not as the head of the trading company and a duchess who is his client?”

Marie and her guard knight Theodor were always at Melfina’s side. Clearing everyone away completely was only possible in the bedroom, or at times like now, when her hair was down for a barber’s treatment.

“Of course I know that, with your standing, Lady Melfina, sending everyone away entirely is impossible. I will be present too, and as for you, Lady Melfina... if there is someone who may learn of your secret, you may have them sit in as well.”

At the words “your secret,” her heart skipped.

“Tori, mind yourself. Are you trying to threaten Lady Melfina?”

“I have no such intention whatsoever. This matter concerns my own fate, and above all my brother’s. I opposed, to the very end, my brother having a personal talk with you, Lady Melfina. But his resolve is firm... and if I hadn’t made this request in this way, it was clear he would have crossed an even more dangerous bridge.”

Hinting to a noble that you know their secret was extremely dangerous. However wealthy they were, Raymond and Tori, who held no noble rank, couldn’t casually say such a thing, and they were not people who wouldn’t know what could happen if they took even one wrong step.

“...My secret, you say.”

“Lady Melfina, you don’t have to listen. Just because you are kind, to commit such rudeness...”

“Marie, please, calm down. It’s all right.”

She took Marie’s hand, which was rarely so agitated, and repeated, calm down.

There weren’t many things that came to mind when she thought of her secrets.

That she didn’t behave properly as a duchess, or that she’d been shunned in the Crawford house, no one hid those, and Melfina herself felt no shame about them.

As for making ale and cheese, those had been almost entirely unveiled as public enterprises, so that couldn’t be it either.

The only thing left was something like having memories of a past life.

Even that, if Melfina played dumb, there’d be no way to produce proof, and pursuing it wouldn’t lead anywhere.

That left only two options: either there was something even Melfina didn’t know, or Raymond and Tori were mistaken in thinking there was.

――A secret of mine that concerns the fate of Raymond and Tori, huh.

It probably tied back to how she’d reacted to Raymond’s eyes at their first meeting, but however she looked at it, and whichever way it turned out, it didn’t seem like good news.

Yet she couldn’t imagine a great merchant like Raymond risking such danger to request a secret talk if leaving it alone would be enough.

Raymond and Tori had seemed like close siblings. Even if they had judged that Melfina wasn’t the type to cut down someone for rudeness, there was a chance she could have them detained for insolence toward a duchess. That Raymond had Tori serve as intermediary like this meant it had to be an extraordinary matter.

“...Very well. I’ll talk with Raymond.”

“Lady Melfina!”

“However, I’ll have my secretary present, and a guard knight outside the door. That is the greatest concession I can make.”

“Thank you, Lady Melfina.”

She stopped Tori from prostrating herself, and let out a sigh at the unexpected turn of events.

“Marie, will you stay by my side?”

“...Of course. I’ll accompany you anywhere. Even you, Lady Melfina, will not be allowed to leave me behind.”

She smiled wryly at those firm words, and nodded.

“It would be best to avoid the days Alexis and August are at the castle. The caravan will be leaving soon, now that the festival is over, won’t it?”

“They’ll be buying in the Enkar region and waiting for people from the Elban branch to arrive, so they should stay a while longer.”

“Then let’s make it the daytime, three days from now. Have Raymond come to the manor on the pretext of an ale negotiation, and tell him not to bring that frightening bodyguard.”

“――I will certainly tell my brother.”

After that, the mood no longer felt right for idle chatter, so she sent Tori to the guest room prepared for her, exchanged good-night greetings with Marie, and returned to her bedroom.

Lying down on the bed, a sigh escaped her.

It was supposed to have been relaxing time after the festival, yet somehow she felt even more tired.

“My secret, huh.”

Murmuring this, she thought that, now that she considered it, she’d done a great many things based on her past-life knowledge, yet no one had ever pressed her about it.

At first she had faced skeptical eyes, as a young noblewoman who knew nothing of the world suddenly starting things, but afterward they had trusted her, and probably, cherished her.

“Heh, only now noticing how grateful I should be at a time like this, how pathetic.”

She murmured to herself and closed her eyes.

She didn’t know what Raymond and Tori intended to say, and she expected trouble, yet she felt nothing like a sense of danger.

That was how deeply she trusted the people around her now.

As she reflected on this with deep feeling, she was reminded once again how much she had changed in just one year.