The Eldest Daughter Walks Down The Flower Path - Chapter 21

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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The Eldest Daughter Walks the Path of Flowers Episode 21

“…Your Lordship.”

However, Eve Russel didn’t seem to be in a situation to welcome her right now.

He stood blocking the door with a somewhat troubled gesture.

“I left a message with Allen. That I would summon you.”

“I heard, but I have something to discuss…”

“Hmm, right now I’m a bit…”

At that moment, a clear, ringing voice came from inside the door.

“Eve Russel, you’re still as ill-mannered as ever. When a guest arrives, you should naturally introduce them to me and have them pay their respects!”

Eve Russel’s lips twitched and crumpled before smoothing out again.

He forced a smile and opened the door.

“Come in, Radis. Let me introduce Lady Meriel Russel, the great-great-great-grandmother and my grandmother, the former Marchioness. You may address her as Great Lady.”

In Eve Russel’s drawing room stood an elderly lady dressed so elegantly she seemed to have stepped out of a painting.

Meriel Russel, wearing a large golden wig on her head, radiated majesty like a queen.

The corners of Eve Russel’s mouth twitched and rose slightly in spasms.

“This is Miss Radis Tillord.”

“Miss?”

Meriel shook her head at Eve as if he were talking nonsense.

“Eve Russel, it seems you’ve learned how to joke.”

“…”

“…”

Radis stood with her legs in David’s trousers pressed together as much as possible.

Seeing their expressions, Meriel realized that Eve hadn’t been joking.

A flustered Meriel said.

“Good heavens, why is a lady dressed like that?”

Radis answered politely.

“I’m sorry. I don’t have many clothes.”

Whoosh.

It felt like a midwinter north wind was blowing between them.

Radis, who had often found herself in such situations, was unfazed, but the embarrassment belonged to Eve and Meriel.

While Radis kept her eyes downcast, Eve and Meriel were busy sending reproachful glances at each other.

“Oh, young lady!”

Meriel’s voice rose slightly from embarrassment.

“The problem is you being here at this hour dressed like that! Eve Russel! How do you conduct yourself!”

Eve sent a pleading look for her to stop and said to Meriel.

“She is my guest. Great Lady, about that, I’ll explain separately…”

“What? A guest? You…!”

Meriel’s eyes widened in shock.

For the past few years, Meriel Russel had only one interest.

The marriage of her grandson and current Lord Russel, Eve Russel!

Today too, she had graced this place with her presence to urge Eve Russel to marry.

For her to discover a woman at the Russel Manor, it was perhaps natural for her thoughts to develop this way.

‘Eve has been hiding a woman!’

Meriel’s gaze quickly swept up and down Radis.

She couldn’t believe it.

While Eve Russel wasn’t exactly the most popular type of man in high society, he was a marquis.

The title of marquis, vast estates, overflowing wealth, youth.

It was impossible that there wouldn’t be women who liked Eve Russel, who possessed all of that.

Most of them were beautiful women from families worthy enough that Eve would consent to marry.

But that child…

‘Tillord?’

Meriel could barely drag the House of Tilrod from the depths of her buried memories.

The only reason she could remember the name Tillord at all was because of Alexis Tillord, the founding hero known as the ‘Sword of Flame.’

A family with nothing memorable except for an ancestor from 500 years ago – their circumstances were obviously pitiful.

‘And why? Why is she here looking like such a tomboy?’

Radis was looking up at Eve with a troubled expression, and Eve Russel was moving his lips wordlessly toward her.

Seeing the two of them exchanging glances like that made it even more suspicious.

Meriel screamed inwardly.

‘No, no, no! I absolutely cannot allow this!’

Then she had to crush their spirits from the start.

To the point where they could never set foot in the Russel Manor again!

“Was it Radis?”

At her call, Radis looked at Meriel with widened eyes.

“Yes, my lady.”

“Whatever relationship you two have is your business, but for an unmarried and unengaged woman to stay at another family’s house at this hour doesn’t look very good.”

Meriel spoke in a tone where cold winds whistled through.

“Did you get permission from your parents?”

Permission, indeed.

Her parents were the ones who had practically sold Radis for money to Lord Russel.

Radis’s lips began to tremble finely.

Seeing her expression, Eve Russel spoke on Radis’s behalf.

“Of course we received permission.”

“You received permission?”

Even more shocked by those words, Meriel looked back and forth between Radis’s trembling lips and Eve’s rigidly hardened face.

When she saw Radis biting her lower lip with her front teeth, she almost softened, but Meriel steeled her heart.

She had to be strong now.

“That can’t be! What parents in the world would send their unmarried daughter to a man!”

Meriel looked at Radis with sharp eyes and said.

“How worried your parents must be! You should return to your home immediately. If they knew you were doing this, it’s obvious your parents would be heartbroken. Driving nails into your parents’ hearts is neither a child’s duty nor human duty!”

Each and every word from Meriel felt like hammering nails into Radis’s chest.

Radis glared at Meriel with reddened eyes and opened her mouth.

“Your words are harsh.”

“What?”

“You may not understand, my lady, but there are people in this world who don’t deserve to be parents.”

At Radis’s words, the drawing room became as quiet as if cold water had been poured over it.

Now it was Meriel who began to tremble her lips.

“Such arrogance… Miss Radis, that’s a terribly wrong way of thinking. No qualifications are needed to become a parent. The bond between parent and child is a connection made by heaven – what qualifications could be needed there? Miss Radis’s mother gave birth to you through labor pains, and your father raised you to be like this!”

Meriel sent anger-filled gazes alternately to Radis and Eve and said firmly.

“You’re a child who doesn’t know gratitude. Even if parents have faults, even if they committed treason, a child must forgive their parents’ faults!”

Radis’s face hardened as she kept her head down.

She muttered.

“…It would have been better if they had committed treason.”

She meant it.

If Margaret and Jade had committed treason instead, forgiving them would have been much easier than this.

Radis raised her head.

“You’re right, my lady. I thought so too. So I tried. More than you could ever imagine…!”

A cold smile spread across Radis’s lips.

“But my lady, sometimes there are parents who drive nails into their children’s hearts. Strangely, people don’t question such parents about duty. Is that okay? Are there only children’s duties and no parental duties?”

It felt like something that had been festering in her chest had burst out.

After saying those words, Radis stood there blankly for a moment.

It didn’t feel like words that had come from her own mouth.

It felt as if a large thorn lodged in her chest had burst out as words.

Her body began to tremble.

Radis couldn’t bring herself to look at Meriel’s face.

Meriel, who didn’t know Radis’s circumstances, had only said what people commonly say in the world.

Those words had simply touched her reverse scale.

“…I’m sorry. I was too harsh.”

She couldn’t stand there any longer.

Radis apologized while trembling all over, then turned around.

“Child… Child!”

Meriel’s startled cry quickly grew distant.

Radis frantically ran down the stairs.

She could feel the maids who saw her running stretch their necks in surprise as they watched her.

Radis was even afraid of the maids’ gazes.

“Miss Radis?”

She heard Allen, who was standing in the entrance hall, call out to her, but Radis ignored that too.

She pushed open the main gate of the estate and ran into the garden.

The coachmen happened to be unhitching the horses from the carriage.

Radis snatched the reins of one of the horses and mounted it recklessly.

“Hyah!”

And she galloped away like the wind.

‘Driving nails into your parents’ hearts is neither a child’s duty nor a person’s duty!’

‘I only made a decision for the future of the Tilrod Family and David!’

Meriel and Margaret’s words echoed in her ears like hallucinations.

For the future of the family and the future of her younger brother who was the pillar of the family, was it proper for the eldest daughter’s life, which no one wanted, to be crushed and crumbled beneath it all?

Was that a child’s duty and a person’s duty?

‘Then once would be enough. Why was I given a second life? If there is a god, and there was some meaning in making me be born as the eldest daughter of the Tilrod Family, then I should have been left to live and die that way. Why did you make me live again? Do I have to live like that twice? That’s too cruel!’

How long had she ridden?

Radis realized that the horse’s neck was soaked and damp with sweat, and stopped the horse.

Her face was frozen cold from the fierce night wind, but her body was drenched in sweat just like the horse.

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