The Isolated Marchioness Just Wants to Make a Living - Chapter 8

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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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Chapter 8

“Those kids know about it too. They’re just pretending not to. Since it’s not exactly a proud expenditure, I’d appreciate it if you’d pretend not to know either.”

I said indifferently.

“It’s money spent on my engagement five years ago. Since it was behind-the-scenes work, they deliberately didn’t write it in detail.”

Langsi nearly tumbled off his chair.

Shock and disbelief flashed across his eyes.

“What? Miss’s engagement?”

“That’s what I said.”

“No, what, does it even make sense to get engaged at seven years old?”

He added with a groan mixed in.

“And spending such a fortune on it, good heavens, what kind of insane person would do such a thing…”

“My mother led it.”

Langsi, who had been speaking correctly, violently slapped his own mouth.

“Wendy briefly possessed me.”

He must have been quite panicked.

I delivered an even more shocking statement.

“Anyway, the engagement was broken off. I handled everything, so you don’t need to worry about it. On the day Alpheus became marquis, an annulment request came.”

Langsi grabbed the back of his head.

“Don’t tell me they immediately wanted to break off the engagement since Miss was no longer Sears’ heir? Does that make sense?”

“It makes less sense to continue being engaged when the conditions don’t match.”

“No, who on earth calculates everything so meticulously and gets married without losing anything at all!”

“Our parents.”

I explained calmly.

“Mother was a princess of a fallen kingdom with no dowry, so she had no choice but to marry a divorced man ten years her senior. Father, as you know, always openly said he wanted to ‘pass the marquis title to his missing eldest son,’ so he couldn’t marry a proper Imperial noble lady.”

It was truly a political marriage formed on equally undesirable conditions.

“It was also the perfect union of two people with no substance but only name value. Condition-wise, there was no way to determine who was superior.”

“B-b-but…”

“Besides, well, anyway my fiancé…”

I muttered bitterly.

“He wasn’t particularly keen on the engagement with me from the start. The conditions were heavily tilted from the beginning, and I didn’t expect it to go smoothly to marriage.”

Langsi caught his breath and barely managed to ask.

“M-M-Miss… are you… okay?”

I frowned slightly. The question felt unfamiliar.

Only after some time passed did I realize that no one had ever asked me “Are you okay?”

The maids didn’t ask me such questions. They didn’t dare say such things.

And my parents…

“Everyone dislikes whining children, Langsi.”

I answered calmly.

“When a child isn’t okay, adults find it bothersome.”

In fact, I wasn’t okay on the engagement ceremony day either. I just couldn’t tell anyone about it.

“Let’s end this topic here. What else do you want to ask?”

“I suddenly don’t want to ask anymore. I do have some tact, you know.”

“Then you should also have the tact to realize that if you don’t make that request now, I’ll feel disgusted by being pitied and won’t let you off easy.”

“B-but if I make the request like this, I’ll feel too uncomfortable in one corner of my heart…”

“That ultimately means you’ll feel comfortable in many corners of your heart if you make the request, so hurry up.”

When I replied mercilessly, Langsi sighed once and spoke carefully.

“T-then, Miss, I’m truly sorry but… could you please… educate the maids?”

I could feel him desperately choosing his words, worried about hurting my feelings.

“The maids of the Marquis Manor are currently disrespecting Master Alpheus and those of us who serve him far too much.”

The fact that he brought up such a request could be seen as acknowledging me.

“The situation where the person they served was pushed out from being heir overnight… we now understand that wouldn’t be pleasant. But from our perspective, we can’t look kindly upon maids who only talk nonsense about worldly matters despite being buried in debt.”

Langsi said this much and briefly watched my reaction.

I slowly held up two fingers.

“About what you said, I’ll tell you two things. First, my maids are indeed ignorant of worldly matters.”

“You already knew? Good heavens!”

Langsi’s eyes widened.

I spoke coldly.

“But that’s why they’re still here. If you checked the budget, you’d know how much their wages are overdue, wouldn’t you?”

Langsi looked like he’d been hit on the head.

“The ones who knew worldly matters have all left already. Only the maids who value the pride and honor of serving the last bloodline of the Riente Royal Family more than their wages remain.”

The Riente Kingdom was destroyed by the Sebon Kingdom before I was born.

Just before the kingdom’s fall, the King hastily sent the youngest 5th Princess to Marquis Sears, a great noble of the Empire. He hoped at least his youngest daughter would survive.

Even that Mother passed away. So now, officially, I was the only direct bloodline of the Riente Royal Family.

“Riente’s history is longer than the Empire’s. But Riente long despised practical learning and only valued luxury and empty formalities.”

“I-is that so? But that shouldn’t be right, should it?”

“That’s why it fell.”

I calmly exposed my maternal family’s disgrace.

“Still, to those girls, my every move is the honor they must protect. I know you might find it ridiculous.”

I was their pride.

That was worth more than any wages I could give them.

That was why they weren’t foolish. They were people from Riente who came with Mother.

“Still, wouldn’t it be better not to easily mock a person’s consistent beliefs? So, second.”

Staring at Langsi with his mouth slightly open, I continued calmly.

“Tell me when you can pay all their overdue wages. Then I’ll properly educate them as you requested.”

It meant if he was going to make demands, he should give me money.

“A single coin in your hand is more precious than the unwrinkled hem of skirt of your master.”

“…No, it isn’t.”

The budget manager’s answer, who had been silent, came quickly.

“For now, Miss’s unwrinkled hem of skirt is much more precious to all of us.”

Thus, Langsi decided to unite her soul with the maids.

“Alright.”

I generously accepted Langsi’s change of heart.

“I’ll be going now then.”

Since there seemed to be nothing more to say, I quietly stood up.

* * *

Langsi even forgot her rage.

This clever child knew the price of the fine clothes she wore.

She wasn’t the leader of the nonsense-spouting maids. She was earning her keep, forced by the Marquis House’s debt.

If there were no maids right now, who would do the work of this mansion?

“I, I’ll escort you.”

Langsi hurriedly stood up and followed behind Brisa.

However, as soon as she opened the door, she encountered a maid who was waiting for her.

The maid who had observed Brisa’s face immediately whispered to Langsi.

“Miss looks bitter. Did you perhaps talk about the annulment?”

Like a ghost. How did she know?

It was when Langsi was blinking her eyes.

“Don’t pity our Miss. Miss didn’t just secretly handle the annulment letter. Along with the annulment, an anonymous bouquet arrived.”

The maid spoke proudly.

“Receiving a marriage proposal from that Young Master soon will be nothing at all.”

Langsi opened her mouth.

“Rather, she might build marriage ties with a family of even greater status!”

Surely she’s not calling that consolation right now.

Langsi sighed inwardly.

She could roughly guess what had happened in this household.

While the clueless maids poured out misguided love, the child had matured early all alone in the midst of it.

If Alpheus knew this fact, he would wail for three days and nights. Because Alpheus was also a child who matured early.

“Brisa must have missed family too. She gave me this.”

Before leaving for the capital, Alpheus had proudly shown him a single withered herb.

“She’s just shocked today, but she’s surely a gentle and kind child who takes after me. I want to meet her again soon and play with her, blowing balloons in the garden. She’d probably like it if I brought soap bubbles as a surprise gift from the capital, right?”

What Alpheus had worried about so much when he left was Brisa maturing too early.

“I don’t want my little sister to become an adult too quickly…”

But sadly, one thing was certain.

‘My lord, I’ll have to pop the soap bubbles by myself.’

Even if he made a hundred concessions and they were both present at the scene together, it was obvious that it would be closer to Brisa playing with Alpheus.

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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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