My Youngest Keeps Bringing Home Male Leads - Chapter 85

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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 85
Still, when we met again, I thought persuasion would make him stay.
I believed that if I said I was studying well now, listening well, he would have a change of heart.
Because Agnes had always chased after us whenever we ran away.
But the Agnes we met again gave us no such opening.
‘If you came to care for me, it’s because I treated you with sincerity. But I’m human too, and if you try to manipulate me like that, I can’t love you anymore.’
Agnes said she didn’t love us. Didn’t love me.
Even though she scolded us daily, whenever we did well she’d watch us with warm eyes, and sometimes she’d hold us close.
She said that such love wasn’t a given—that it could only be earned through genuine heart.
I liked it when she’d say “Well done” and stroke my head.
When she’d tap the tip of my nose with her finger in that troubled way, it tickled.
When her face would break into that soft smile, I’d want to smile too, but I’d try hard not to show it.
I was too embarrassed.
Leonard understood very late that the reason we’d grown fond of Agnes was precisely because she treated us with sincerity.
In that moment, what he felt was terror.
In a life of barely ten years, had anyone ever treated him the way Agnes did?
Everyone had been kind to Leonard.
No matter how willfully he behaved, how much he tormented them, even if shame made their cheeks tremble, they pretended outwardly it was fine.
But he knew they cursed him behind closed doors.
Agnes was different.
She praised him when he did well, scolded him sternly when he did wrong, and was kind to him for no reason at all.
Was that what they meant by “sincerity”?
‘I miss her…….’
At first he was angry, but soon grief and injustice washed over him.
The first complete affection he had ever felt.
So he couldn’t accept that he’d lost Agnes.
He wanted her back.
He questioned those around him desperately, plucked flowers, wrote letters. But Leonard knew none of it mattered.
How could he change Agnes’s heart?
What could he do that she’d approve of?
If he could find such a thing, at least he could go see her, couldn’t he?
Then one day.
The opportunity finally came.
Dragged unwillingly into his mother’s study to learn estate matters as the future Count Valdemar, Leonard discovered something strange.
His mother had read a letter with a troubled expression, then stuffed it into the back of a drawer.
Having never seen his mother with such an expression before, Leonard’s curiosity got the better of him, and he secretly pulled out the letter to read it.
It was from his father, and the contents were deeply shocking.
‘Agnes is involved in a lawsuit……?’
Moreover, it said his father had sent her a falsified contract.
‘This can’t be……!’
He’d only recently heard that she was finally getting by.
His sister had come back, and they said the estate looked prosperous.
There was even a rumor that she was going to marry one of the men staying at the Mansion.
Above all, they were Valdemar.
There was no way Laberose could defeat them through ordinary means.
‘Could I help her? If I help her, will Agnes change her mind about me?’
But how could he help?
Leonard thought desperately.
The letter itself was excellent evidence, but if it disappeared, his mother might notice.
He needed something else.
A contract, documents, a seal…….
In the lessons Agnes had taught him, Leonard recalled similar material.
It had been less than a year ago.
Leonard had been severely scolded after dropping his mother’s seal while playing with it.
‘What’s so important about a seal? We can just make a new one!’
Shocked at Leonard’s outburst, Agnes had taught him with a serious expression.
How important a family seal was, how one must handle seals to build trust, and how to distinguish forged documents if they existed.
At the time, he’d thought it tedious.
He compared documents from his mother’s bookshelf—two years old versus recent ones.
‘Two years ago there was nothing, but recently scratches have appeared.’
If things went well, it might serve as evidence.
Leonard suppressed his racing heart and tore up one of his mother’s documents before sending it to Agnes.
‘I wonder if she received it. Will she understand why I sent it?’
Thanks to entrusting it to the dependable Ronnie in secret, it seemed the letter had arrived safely, but Leonard worried whether Agnes might have missed the significance.
Above all, he missed seeing Agnes.
The day of the trial.
Anxious beyond measure, Leonard finally coaxed a servant into taking him toward Calvern City.
“I’m going to visit Calvern City! Cedric, you’re not coming with me!”
In case Agnes had failed to notice, he’d stuffed another document into his pocket as backup.
After ordering the carriage halted near the Courtroom, Leonard immediately pushed through the servants and rushed toward her.
He’d surely face terrible scolding from his parents later, but it didn’t matter.
‘Mother and Father found us tedious anyway, every single day…….’
An heir obtained with great difficulty, yet burdened with talent that fell short of expectations.
Parents who had never scolded their two children harshly, even when they erred, had remained indifferent to whether they performed adequately or not.
Agnes was different.
That was why she felt so precious.
He wished Agnes would look at him tenderly just one more time.
He wished she would stroke his head and thank him.
He longed for her to praise him, saying she never knew he studied so diligently.
Most of all…….
From the first time they met, Agnes had always worn a weary expression.
After her youngest sibling vanished, she had even lost the ability to smile.
Yet when they met again after so long.
Agnes appeared as fresh as grass greeting the spring.
He thought she looked beautiful that way.
That was why he came here.
* * *
“I wish Agnes could be happy.”
He never imagined someone as exalted as the Crown Prince could exist.
Leonard wished with all his heart.
He prayed that Agnes would no longer sigh the way she did when teaching them, nor make those painful expressions from time to time.
He hoped she would smile at them again, carrying that happiness forward.
Leonard barely steadied his composure, swallowed the sobs rising in his throat, and raised his voice.
“I will not withdraw my testimony, Your Highness.”
For a moment, silence fell across the Courtroom.
A son defending his tutor instead of his father.
No one seemed to know how to accept this turn of events.
Agnes was no exception.
Leonard was a child of Valdemar, and Leonard’s parents were the enemies of her household.
Agnes worked to steady her breathing carefully.
Kesenor had told her never to sympathize with them…….
‘How could I do that?’
It was utterly impossible.
Agnes barely managed to hold back the sobs that surged within her.
It felt as though the heart that had been frozen solid, incapable of feeling the slightest emotion toward them, was finally beginning to thaw.
Though the clumsy children had been a burden, she could not simply cut them from her heart.
So she had tried to bury those feelings away.
Yet here was Leonard, returning as if answering Agnes’s own words about showing one’s true heart.
And in doing so, he was proving something.
That Agnes’s efforts had not been in vain.
That the children who always seemed to reject her had understood all along that she was giving her best.
The mere fact that those painful two years had been special to the children brought her solace.
‘Leonard…….’
Agnes felt a belated remorse wash over her.
Though the twins had been raised in a grand mansion surrounded by every comfort, they were still children.
‘It’s because I left so suddenly…….’
Perhaps that was why he had been so desperate.
In the flower field overflowing with Romanilla, she had wanted to actually hold him, yet she had pretended indifference—as if he didn’t need such gestures.
It would have been enough if she had simply told him he need not apologize, that she would never speak such words again.
Perhaps he had only been seeking one thread of affection, throwing a tantrum, and she had been too cold—far too cold.
Of course, Agnes knew she couldn’t indefinitely meet Leonard’s demands.
Agnes was not the children’s mother.
What Leonard wanted was something he ought to seek from his true parents.
Yet her heart ached for him.
When Amy was still an infant.
Whenever Agnes’s finger happened to brush against her, Amy would grip it as though it were a lifeline, refusing to let go.
Leonard was clinging to her now in much the same way.
She could see his small shoulders still trembling.
It broke her heart.
Every instinct screamed at her to run over and embrace him, but Valdemar Count stood across from her, his face twisted into a glare directed squarely at Agnes.
What was Valdemar Count thinking now, having been betrayed by his own nine-year-old son?

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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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