My Youngest Keeps Bringing Home Male Leads - Chapter 70

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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 70
In truth, she had not told Alfred the full story.
She had wanted to keep him from becoming entangled in complicated affairs.
Yet when she considered it from another angle, surely no one knew her father’s business better than Alfred did.
Agnes paused, weighing her thoughts.
It was difficult to judge how much she should reveal.
As she hesitated, Alfred nodded slowly, his expression grave.
“It was less a matter of acquaintance, if I recall, and more that he held my master in high regard. He wished to maintain close relations.”
“He did? Why?”
“I cannot say for certain, but I believe it was at the recommendation of someone named Stefan Ritter.”
“So they did have some connection then. Have you ever met him yourself?”
“No. But I remember that whenever my master returned from meeting with him, his expression would be brighter.”
“Then why did his younger brother, the current Earl of House Valdemar, inherit the peerage?”
“Miss.”
As Agnes watched concern cloud the middle-aged man’s face—his hands folded respectfully before him—she realized she had revealed far too much.
“What prompts you to wonder about such a thing?”
Agnes let out a sigh.
She could tell Rupert anything, yet something made it difficult to speak openly with Alfred, and she could not quite understand why.
The two men standing side by side bore no resemblance save for their considerable height.
Alfred had a gentler cast to his features, while Rupert’s were sharper and more angular.
Alfred had never married.
Perhaps Rupert’s mother had been his first love and his last.
What must Alfred have felt when she left, taking only the child with her?
And then to have spent his entire life beside Rupert, watching over a face that surely echoed hers, with no chance to escape that daily reminder.
‘I don’t want to wound him needlessly.’
If Alfred learned that her father’s downfall might have been orchestrated by Valdemar, the shock would devastate him.
Her father had been the master Alfred had served his whole life, a friend in all but name.
‘And Alfred has no one to confide in even if his heart breaks.’
Alfred, who had walked every step of his life alongside House Laberose, could not have emerged from all those storms without feeling their weight.
Yet he had always stood at their side with an untroubled face.
In that regard, he was truly just like Rupert.
So Agnes made her decision: she would not tell him this time.
“I’ll tell you once matters are somewhat resolved.”
“Miss.”
“We’ve had a sudden influx of visitors, and there’s so much to manage regarding the fiefdom. Rupert is already lending his help, so it’s manageable.”
A flicker of hurt crossed Alfred’s face for a moment, but Agnes deliberately let it pass unacknowledged.
After a brief silence, Alfred began to share what he did know.
“I cannot claim to know all the details, but I have heard that the current Earl of House Valdemar’s elder brother committed some grave transgression. As a result, he was entirely removed from consideration as heir, and the then-second-in-line inherited the title.”
“What could he have done that was so serious?”
“That I cannot say, though I recall my master saying, ‘He is not the sort of man who would do such a thing.’ He was deeply troubled by it, but evidently the matter was too grave to undo.”
“‘Not the sort of man’……”
“In any case, before that time, my master assisted House Valdemar frequently. Afterward, however, his visits to House Laenheim became far more frequent.”
“Did he distance himself, or was he distanced?”
“Even I cannot say for certain.”
How much she would give to hear her father’s account of it all.
But that would have to wait for Silmare’s return.
At least she could perceive now that what Kesenor had told her was crucially important.
She would need to speak with him again.
As she stepped into the hallway, the door opened as if he had been waiting—and there stood Kesenor.
He was dressed neatly in his usual dark shirt and trousers, evidently having risen early.
“You asked me to come early yesterday, so I hurried over, but you weren’t here. I suppose you were out procuring something delicious and were delayed?”
“I’m sorry. Have you been waiting long?”
“Indeed. I thought you would return shortly, but you didn’t appear until very late.”
“I had investigations to conduct through the night.”
Agnes looked so exhausted that Kesenor could tell she was not lying, and he accepted this with a quiet nod.
“Have you discovered anything?”
With that, Kesenor gestured for her to step into his room.
As she hesitated briefly at the threshold, he moved past this moment lightly, and as the door closed, he muffled the sound of the outside world.
Whatever passed between them, it would be unpleasant for any eavesdropper to intrude.
“It’s nearly time for a meal. Will that suit you?”
“Is this story going to be long?”
“A little, yes.”
“I’m happy to hear all of it.”
Seated across from him on the comfortable sofa, Agnes relayed to Kesenor everything she had learned yesterday, along with what Alfred had told her.
“As it happens, Aser came to see me yesterday.”
In truth, he had visited frequently enough before, though she saw no need to mention that.
“Really? I wish I’d been able to see him.”
“He came on business and left shortly after. Since there are limits to what I can investigate from here, I asked Aser for help.”
Which is to say, he would use the authority of his rank as Marquis of Celesta to assist.
“Thank you, my lord.”
“Not at all. I haven’t often crossed paths with Earl Valdemar, but he’s proved irritating enough that I’m rather glad for the opportunity.”
“Have you?”
“He associates with a thoroughly troublesome man.”
Could Earl Valdemar be stirring up some scheme in the capital, Kavas, as well?
Agnes’s expression grew grave.
“What’s the matter?”
“It’s somewhat political in nature, but in any case, he’s involved in something that displeases me greatly. And it concerns not merely myself, but the stability of the empire as a whole.”
Agnes nodded thoughtfully.
If they could use this affair as a pretext to collar Earl Valdemar, it might delay whatever it was that Kesenor wished to avoid.
That would be of benefit to him as well.
She had worried he was troubling himself with trifles purely for her sake, but now a weight seemed to lift from her shoulders.
Kesenor crossed his long legs with fluid grace, his gaze drifting toward the window.
“He’s certainly a vexing man. From what I investigated at the time, the previous Earl Valdemar had three sons—the eldest was mild-natured, the second cunning, and the third weak-spirited.”
“And the second inherited the earldom.”
“Indeed. Moreover, the eldest is no longer living.”
“What?”
“So I’ve asked Aser to investigate exactly how he died.”
As he spoke, Kesenor’s lips curved into a smile, and he studied Agnes as though examining some fascinating curiosity.
“My suspicion is, of course……”
“That Earl Valdemar was responsible for all of it.”
“Precisely. If I were as much an opportunist as Earl Valdemar and coveted the peerage my brother would inherit, I would have done the same. Kill my brother, eliminate anyone in the way, and dismiss someone like a petty baronet as no more than an insignificant annoyance at my fingertips.”
The metaphor was crude enough that he thought she might be shocked, yet Agnes listened with surprising composure.
“But I cannot fathom one thing. Why did he help us? If he wanted to see our house destroyed, he should never have hired me as a tutor in the first place.”
That was surely the source of her confusion.
Until now, in her world, the House of Valdemar had been nothing but generous in its kindness toward her.
“Agnes.”
Without any formal address, Kesenor leaned forward and spoke softly to her.
His green eyes held a steady, unyielding quality.
Piercing through to her depths, Kesenor drew his lips upward.
“Do not trouble yourself trying to divine the intentions of a villain. If our suspicions are true, he is nothing more than an object of vengeance for you.”
As he gazed into her clear, earnest eyes, which focused entirely upon him, Kesenor found himself slipping into a peculiar sensation—as though he were her tutor, her guide.
Her innocent, fragile world that no one else could touch.
Only he could shatter it, and in its place inscribe the elegant, merciless grammar of nobility.
“So dismiss any consideration of his circumstances.”
She would become the head of Laberose House.
No matter how modest her house, she must become the bulwark that protects the lives and property that breathe upon her land.
Just as Kesenor was a lord who ruled and protected the Celesta Territory, so too was she the mistress of this realm.
A ruler must sometimes prune, more ruthlessly than anyone, those she holds dear.
Even if they were family, or disciples she had taught.
“Whether it was mere whim or meticulous calculation, never pity him. Not even if it means cutting short the breath of a child you once instructed.”
Upon hearing these words, the turmoil in Agnes’s eyes gradually subsided into stillness.
In that interval, she surely recalled Leonard and Cedric.
She did not reveal how she had come to terms with it, but Agnes slowly nodded.
And instead of her usual virtuous, gentle smile, she merely curved her lips slightly upward.
“Yes, I understand what you mean. Thank you, my lord.”
“What will you do next?”
“I’m not sure yet.”
But that smile she wore at that moment seemed somehow to mirror his own.
A smile that concealed dark depths within, offering only meaningless pretense to the world.
The way she grasped everything without speaking, accepting all through the current flowing in silence alone—that too was every inch a noble.
“You know as well as I do.”
Vengeance against Valdemar.
I’ll repay them in kind for what they’ve done.
Without needing to hear it spoken aloud, Kesenor understood, and he smiled silently across from her.
A world that no one else could step into—theirs alone.
She had decided, and he, the master of Celesta Territory and a marquis of the empire, would see it through; thus it would come to pass.

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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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