The Maid With a Child - Chapter 24

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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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24. A Maid with a Child
“She is a maid, Your Majesty.”
Lacalt answered on her behalf.
Since the question had not been directed at her and she had not been given leave to speak, Adlen merely bowed her head in greeting.
“My, what a beautifully dressed maid you’ve brought along. ……Or perhaps not? The dress is rather plain, isn’t it? I suppose her face is so lovely that it simply shines regardless.”
Adlen could not conceal her startled expression.
First the master, and now this woman too.
Could it be that this woman’s own beauty had so warped her sense of aesthetics that it had become utterly divorced from reality?
The master’s standards had been ruined by war, perhaps, but this woman seemed to have spent her entire life surrounded by beauty. Why would she speak this way?
Maeltina gazed at Adlen and winked with one eye, like a ruffian smitten with a young lady.
When faced with someone so beautiful, the heart truly does ache. Adlen grasped at her sinking heart and hastily lowered her eyes.
“We were in haste to enter the palace, so I borrowed an ancestral dress from home. If the attire ill-suited her station and caused discomfort, I apologize.”
Lacalt spoke in Adlen’s stead.
“That’s not what I meant at all—I was simply saying she’s beautiful.”
“I see.”
“Is she not beautiful?”
Lacalt’s gaze turned toward Adlen.
The king’s eyes followed in the same direction.
With everyone now looking at Adlen, even the Child turned his eyes toward her.
“……”
A waterfall roared to life down Adlen’s spine.
Why.
On me.
This gaze and attention.
I only wish the Child could receive such warmth in gentle indifference.
“She is beautiful.”
After a brief silence, Lacalt spoke his answer.
Adlen’s eyes widened as she kept her head bowed.
She had not expected him to give the same answer even here, before so many people and before this woman from whom she felt such a peculiar current.
“Oh my, oh my! Did you hear that, Your Majesty?”
Maeltina clapped her hands with delight at an answer that clearly pleased her.
“I’m telling you, that’s not it. Just because you push something doesn’t mean it sticks. What era are we living in? A political marriage? You’re actually trying to arrange one?”
A marriage?!
Adlen had been bewildered by the conversation, which seemed to skip ahead and loop back, leaving her without context.
Now she understood: the missing words were marriage, courtship, things of that nature.
‘So this angelic woman is a candidate for a spouse that His Majesty wishes to pair with the master?’
Adlen looked upon Maeltina anew.
Knowing her true identity, the woman seemed to shine even more brightly.
Could this be her? The future lady who would save Sigelion. If she were such a lady, Adlen could serve her by grinding away both body and soul.
Though Maeltina herself seemed adamantly opposed, for reasons Adlen did not know. Still, she hoped it would be resolved well.
Adlen quietly moved to stand on the king’s side.
“Is that what you’re doing—making excuses not to marry?”
The king’s nose wrinkled as he glared at Maeltina.
“Excuses? I simply thought if there were a woman already in Lacalt’s heart, I should protect you from making a mistake.”
“You think Lacalt could have a woman on his mind?”
“……Tch.”
The king let out a derisive snort at Maeltina’s words.
Why did no one believe that our master’s heart might hold a woman?
Though to be honest, Adlen could not quite believe it herself.
……Our master?
The man in question, Lacalt, nodded calmly as if the matter had nothing to do with him.
“That’s correct. I have no such person.”
“See? Since you don’t, why not try to make things work between you two? At least meet. Hearts can grow once you do.”
“It won’t happen.”
Maeltina finally showed her irritation.
Adlen felt a surge of respect for Maeltina’s spirit—a defiant nature that would not yield even to the king himself.
Indeed, such strength was what Sigelion needed.
A talent to covet……or rather, lady material.
“Maeltina, you’re hopeless. Lacalt, why don’t you at least try to make an effort?”
“Yes, Your Majesty. I understand.”
He said I should meet him even though my heart wasn’t in it, that he’d make an effort to cultivate feelings that didn’t exist.
It was a loyalty so fierce it was almost frightening. It seemed all the affection and romantic inclination that might go toward a woman had been diverted into devotion instead.
‘How must one be raised to reach such extremes…’
Adlen was known far and wide to have servitude bred into her very bones, yet even she didn’t compare to him.
No matter the circumstances, shouldn’t love and marriage follow one’s own heart?
Being noble, a political marriage was an unavoidable duty to accept—but to speak of *cultivating* love as well? That was shocking.
“Ugh. Both of them are the worst.”
Adlen turned away from the two men with visible exasperation. Then, as if determined to look at only beautiful things, she bent down toward Adlen and the Child.
“Is this him? That crown prince?”
“Yes.”
“Hmm, he’s adorable. Poor thing, born so beautifully only to be dragged here as a hostage to an enemy nation.”
“What do you say? Interested? Want to marry him and raise him together?”
“No, thank you. I prefer just looking at children from a distance. I must respectfully decline.”
The King kept jabbing Maeltina in the ribs, while she defended herself with the rigidity of full armor.
“Well then, do your best for me, pretty maid.”
Maeltina flashed a bright smile at Adlen and took her seat.
Maeltina’s place was beside Lacalt. The King had deliberately arranged it that way.
Adlen watched the two sitting side by side. They were a pair so perfectly matched that no finer harmony could exist.
“Well, there’s no rush. See each other often enough and familiarity grows; grow familiar and affection takes root; and when affection takes root, feelings bloom in time. That’s human nature.”
“You heard that, didn’t you, Lacalt? So go out and meet plenty of people, get yourself smitten. That’s when I’ll find my freedom. No need to look far either—that pretty maid right beside you is available too.”
Why must she keep harping on me.
Adlen stared at the ceiling, eyes wide. She wanted to be anywhere but here. She wished she were merely furniture.
“Maid? That’s harsh language, Maeltina. How dare you attach a maid to my greatest confidant.”
Very true, Your Majesty.
“Ah, you’re too much, saying such things in front of the maid herself.”
You are not too much in the slightest, Your Majesty.
Adlen felt no offense whatsoever. From the start, her lord was a man from another world entirely.
She and her lord? It was the stuff of rats and tigers eating together.
Someone like Maeltina, whose rank and appearance matched his, was who suited her lord.
“It seems you’re selling off a man with a child far too easily now, Your Majesty.”
“!”
Maeltina’s carelessly thrown words flew like a dagger straight into Adlen’s chest and lodged there.
The heart that had remained unmoved by the King’s casual treatment of her lord, untroubled even by being called a lowborn maid unfit to be attached to a loyal servant—that heart now trembled violently.
‘With a child attached.’
If her lord became a man with a child, then she was a maid with a child.
A maid with a child.
The perfect title to seal off any marriage prospects.
* * *
Adlen sat leaning against the carriage door, holding the Child with arms that could scarcely bear the weight.
Life plans. The future. Everything had been upended.
As the carriage jolted just as chaotically as her future felt, Adlen’s head bumped against the window glass.
A glance.
Inside her, a storm raged, yet her lord sat serene, as if nothing were amiss.
Sitting with the same composed posture as when he’d entered the palace, gazing out the window, he offered no opening for her to speak.
Was this how it would be—bound by the King’s command to spend her life caring for this young prince, suffering constant attacks, living like a mayfly never knowing when death would come?
“Is there something you want to say?”
“!”
Lacalt spoke first.
After being struck by shock at “maid with a child,” Adlen had let the rest of the conversation drift past her, though the gist had been about Moren’s situation and the current state of affairs.
Preoccupied with thinking through Moren’s circumstances, she was slow to notice the desperate gleam in Adlen’s eyes.
“Ah, yes, um, my lord, I—is it true I’ll continue handling the young prince’s care forever? Always? For the rest of my life?”
“It is the King’s command.”
The Child’s circumstances were pitiful enough, but now her own had become even more so.
Faced with the prospect of her entire life plan crumbling away, courage she didn’t know she possessed suddenly surfaced.
“Couldn’t—couldn’t you, my lord, petition His Majesty once more on this matter?”
Lacalt stared hard at Adlen.
Why would I?
The fact that Lacalt would have to handle the Child remained unchanged whether Adlen stepped down or not.
If anything, continuing with Adlen, who had been doing well all this time, was the best solution.
Seeing the look in Lacalt’s eyes—one that would absolutely refuse—Adlen shifted her approach in a different direction.

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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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