My Youngest Keeps Bringing Home Male Leads - Chapter 46

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 46
The next day.
Agnes was busy from morning.
After dressing simply but neatly, she hurried downstairs and inspected the luggage being loaded into the carriage.
A chest full of gold coins, a beautifully wrapped gift box — everything was an item Agnes had carefully chosen.
After checking that nothing was missing, she climbed down from the carriage.
Pavel and Lilia were already waiting in front of it.
“When will you leave?”
“Very soon now.”
Agnes answered with a smile, glancing up at the second-floor window.
Kesenor would surely be in his room and out of sight.
After etching his words once more into her heart, she set the carriage in motion.
After traveling through fertile plains for some time, the distant silhouette of the Valdemar Mansion came into view.
Between endless walls, a grand arched gate welcomed the carriage.
Beyond the ornate gate, a road appeared densely paved with large and small stones.
On both sides stood neatly arranged cypress trees, and beyond them stretched a beautiful garden.
In the center of a blue lake, a fountain shot water skyward, and beside it stood a white pavilion like something from a painting.
It was utterly unlike the Laberose Mansion, which had only a single two-story building standing alone.
Pavel and Lilia gasped in wonder at the sight unfolding before them.
After driving further for a long time, the carriage came to a halt before the mansion.
“Agnes!”
The moment she stepped down from the carriage, two children rushed at her and clung to her skirts.
“Why did you take so long!”
“We waited forever!”
Their eyes were already glistening with tears.
Though taken aback, Agnes smiled gently at the two of them.
“Cedric, Leonard. Have you been well?”
“Been well?”
“How could we be well without Agnes?”
“We thought you weren’t coming back at all!”
“You said you’d be back soon!”
“Do you know how bored we’ve been without you?”
“There’s no one to chase us when we run away, and the new tutor is the worst!”
“So stubborn, and when we ran away, he just beat Ronnie — can you believe it?”
“He kept hitting him with a switch, it was horrible, so we told Mother!”
“Even an animal doesn’t get beaten like that!”
“You know Ronnie’s shins got torn open? He kept hitting the same spot over and over — it was disgusting!”
“So we drove him out. Mother said no at first, but we both threw ourselves on the floor and refused to move.”
“Now we’re stuck just playing with each other, and it’s so tedious……”
“Yeah. Even reading books is a chore.”
“You always used to read to us!”
“We really thought you were gone to get married! You’re not leaving again, are you? You’ll stay here forever, right?”
“Don’t go, Agnes!”
“From now on we’ll really listen to you!”
Ah……
She felt as though blood might pour from her ears.
With shrill voices assailing her from both sides, her head began to spin.
Though she could roughly gather what had happened.
Evidently, Agnes had been more important to these two children than she realized.
A new tutor had arrived, of course — a strict one, judging by the hire — and since he couldn’t very well beat the Count’s grandchildren, he must have taken it out on the servants instead.
Given that the children were hardly obedient sorts, the servant’s shins must have been brutalized beyond recovery.
‘Ronnie… he was such an innocent boy.’
She recalled he was twelve years old.
Seeing the twins speak so matter-of-factly about how “horrible” and “disgusting” it all was, when it was someone else who had actually suffered, filled her with frustration.
“So where is Ronnie now?”
“What?”
“Where is Ronnie now?”
“Why? We haven’t seen him in a while since then.”
“His shins were torn open because of you two, and you haven’t even checked on him?”
At that, the twins looked at each other.
It was clear she had never given it a thought.
Even as she felt that shock, a crushing sense of her own negligence overlaid it.
All those years she hadn’t bothered to wonder how the people in the village lived.
In that time, the children of the territory had grown gaunt from lack of proper food.
The memory of their faces made it unbearable.
“Where is the lady of the house?”
“Mother’s with the guests.”
“Ah, then it’s tea time. That should give us a little while.”
Agnes smiled brightly and asked the two children.
“Would you two like to come along?”
She left Pavel at the carriage to unload the luggage, while Agnes set out with the two children and Lilia to find Ronnie.
When she asked the servants, they told her that Ronnie was in the back room of the Servants’ Quarters, where the younger children mostly stayed.
Knock, knock.
At the knock, a young boy poked his head out from the narrow room. He had bright red hair and his cheeks were covered in freckles.
“M-Master?”
Seeing not just the young masters but their tutor standing there too, Ronnie hurried to make excuses.
“I’m s-so sorry! Walking is still a bit difficult for me…!”
He clearly thought they’d come to scold him for his absence.
Agnes sighed.
“If you don’t mind, could you show me your legs?”
“Oh, no! I’m all better now!”
“I’m not here to scold you. It’s all right.”
Ronnie’s fearful face watched as he slowly pulled up the hem of his trousers.
Agnes drew in a sharp breath.
Behind her, Lilia gasped before quickly covering her mouth.
Ronnie’s legs were truly a horrific sight.
Just as the twins had said, he’d been struck again before the old wounds could fully heal—his calves were a patchwork of ruptures and scabs, wounds overlapping wounds.
And here and there, infection had set in.
‘I was gone for only a month.’
She glanced sharply back at the two children, who pressed their lips together and watched her nervously.
“B-but Mother gave him medicine!”
“Yeah. She said it was really good medicine!”
The two children offered their feeble defense, but Agnes could easily guess what had become of that medicine.
She had been a servant of Valdemar House herself, after all.
‘Working, you get hurt constantly. If something’s expensive medicine, they’d share it among themselves.’
Agnes turned to the two children with a stern look.
“You should have been paying attention.”
“Why, why?”
“Because he was being punished in your stead for something you did wrong. You should have been watching to make sure he was getting proper treatment.”
As she reproached the two children, Agnes took the Emergency Medicine from Lilia.
Since Agnes rarely got injured, she’d brought it along for Lilia and Pavel.
She measured out a portion he could apply himself, then whispered to Ronnie.
“If you don’t apply the medicine, it will scar. Make sure you use it properly. And if you run out, tell the steward or the head maid.”
“B-but… what if she gets even angrier with me for that?”
Agnes sighed.
“It’s all right. I’ll speak to the lady properly about it.”
Having given those instructions, Agnes stepped out of the room.
The children, who had been clinging to her with complaints at not seeing her for so long, now pouted sullenly.
“You came and just scolded us.”
“We were happy that Agnes came.”
Her chest tightened.
She knew it already.
She was no longer the children’s tutor.
She had told them by letter that she was stepping down, and the lady had accepted it, so she and the two children had no further connection.
And yet Agnes could not simply let it pass.
“Whether others do or not, you two can’t. You two are going to inherit the Count’s house.”
“Who cares about that?”
“Cedric and I are going traveling later!”
“We can just leave the territory to Father like Mother does!”
“Agnes, didn’t a giant come to the house? Is he really big? What does he look like? Is his face all red?”
“I want to see too! Can I go to Agnes’s house?”
Agnes sighed and looked down at the two children.
There had been a time when she’d pitied them.
Study didn’t suit their nature, yet the weight of expectation resting on their small shoulders was far too heavy.
The two children were Valdemar’s Heir Apparent and insurance against the unforeseen.
Everything that Count Valdemar—a pillar of the Empire and confidant of the Crown Prince—had built over a lifetime, these two were meant to inherit as a matter of course.
The Southern Region governed by Valdemar House was enormous, incomparably vaster than the Laberose fiefdom.
Whether the children excelled or stumbled, one of them would have to bear that burden.
At that thought, Agnes found she couldn’t keep silent.
“No.”
“What?”
“Why?”
During the five years Agnes had neglected the Laberose fiefdom, children born in the Village had gone without proper protection.
Five years, which for them meant a lifetime.
If the two children were to abandon the Territory and wander beyond its borders, the ripples would slowly spread outward from Valdemar’s edges.
Wicked men like Baren would begin committing wrongs for their own gain, and then the lives of ordinary, humble people would slowly crumble.
‘Like Kania, who doesn’t even know where her brother is.’
Their lives too were never light when measured against these children’s.
She wanted to prevent such things from spreading across the vast expanse of Valdemar’s domain.
“If that’s how you feel, then the first step is to give up the privileges you enjoy.”
Speaking such words made her feel like a coward.
Here she was laying out a lecture to these children—to whom she’d taught for merely two years—words she’d never dare speak to anyone else.
Could she even say such things before the Countess?
And yet she couldn’t stop.
‘We’ve done what we could! No matter how hard it got, we paid our Tenant Tax every year. That’s our courtesy to the gracious Lord who governs us!’
The words Baren had spoken came back to her.
Apart from his actions, what she couldn’t forget was this: it was the truth.
No matter how difficult things became, if they paid their taxes without fail, they believed a Lord would protect them in times of crisis, would help them.
That belief alone was what sustained them.
Even in history itself, how many times had the people risen against a Lord who failed to protect them?
So Agnes appealed to the two children with desperate urgency.
“The money you spend—who earned it in the first place? You’d abandon your responsibility and freely spend the blood-price taxes they’ve paid?”
It was also a question to herself.
To her younger self, who had refused to take responsibility for the Territory’s people, and instead of repaying debts with their taxes, merely scraped by paying interest.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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