The Maid With a Child - Chapter 58

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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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58. My Person
One could hope that the rumor, once it spread, would naturally fade with time. But if she were to appear alongside her master again, the whispers wouldn’t disappear—they’d only deepen.
Was there any way to quell the gossip by going together?
“What rumor?”
“Well, it’s just… at the Party Venue. The rumor that you and I are in… that sort of relationship.”
“Ah. That.”
Racalte answered as though it were nothing of consequence.
Perhaps it had been nothing then. But now it had become something.
Adlen pressed a hand to her chest.
“That rumor has spread like wildfire through the servant ranks now. People stop me everywhere asking about it!”
“Is that so?”
“Is that so? That’s not what matters, sir. The fact that what happened at the Party Venue is being discussed by servants who weren’t even there means all the household masters are gossiping about it. Naturally, that means every other household’s servants know about it too.”
“Well.”
……
It was consolation, yes—but the sort one learned from books, dry and lifeless.
“…Sir, did you perhaps learn that consolation method from some etiquette guide or social convention?”
“How did you know?”
……
With that single remark, he had proved conclusively that his heart was not in it.
She and her master inhabited entirely different positions, held entirely different thoughts.
“You might not mind the rumors because His Majesty will find you a wife no matter what, but for me, it’s a crisis. All the men will run away.”
“Why?”
“Why? The moment people hear ‘the maidservant attached to the master,’ they form a prejudice instantly. A shameless woman, a seductress, all those things. She won’t look at ordinary men, won’t consider a fellow servant human, she’d bankrupt a household buying gifts—that’s what they think.”
Adlen was grave, but Racalte laughed outright. He seemed to think it was a jest. Adlen’s eyes hardened with resolve. He was laughing now?
“My marriage prospects are being destroyed! How can you treat this so lightly, sir?”
“If someone who sees you in person still thinks that way, the fault lies with their eyes.”
“When prejudice blinds them, there’s nothing to be done about it. They’re human, after all.”
“Shouldn’t you find someone without such blindness if you want to be happy in marriage?”
Though Racalte harbored no desire for marriage nor expectations of a spouse, neither was his judgment of people entirely absent.
At the very least, keeping someone at one’s side who wavered at every rumor was no wise choice. If that held true for an adjutant, how much more so for a husband?
“That’s some rainbow-bright fantasy world you’re describing. Where would such a person exist in this world? Everyone is weak and easily shaken. It’s not about choosing a good person—it’s about meeting someone who loves me.”
His view of marriage was like a fantasy above the clouds, yet his philosophy on human nature was strangely, sharply practical.
But there were parts she couldn’t entirely agree with.
“I’ve always thought—you worry far too much. It’s excessive.”
Worrying about attacks, blood, blades—those were understandable enough.
But to fret preemptively over making mistakes, over failing to meet a good person, over happiness never arriving—this he couldn’t fathom. By Racalte’s reckoning, it was entirely wasteful.
“Especially your worry about men.”
“Because that’s the most important thing in my life……”
“Still, you needn’t think so lowly of yourself, need you?”
“Me?”
Adlen pointed at herself.
Me? Was I? I was only speaking of objective facts, wasn’t I?
“Yes. You’re beautiful.”
“…I beg your pardon?”
All of Adlen’s motion and thought froze at once.
Racalte uttered the words without any awareness of what he had done.
“You’re beautiful enough that no man would refuse you, and your temperament is gentle besides. You’re good with children and perceptive. Except for your station, there’s nothing to fault in you as a marriage prospect.”
It didn’t end with beautiful. That was only where it began.
Under the cascade of praise that followed, Adlen’s face bloomed the color of a ripe tomato.
“That’s… that’s only because you see me favorably, sir……”
“Me? You? Deliberately? Why would I think to see you favorably?”
“Well, it’s because I’m useful to you, sir……. And because… I’m your person.”
……
Racalte had been loading his rebuttal at the word “useful” when the words that followed drained all his will to speak.
He had been taught that a master and a general owed it to those who called themselves theirs to cherish and nurture them. In practice, he had seen this prove its worth time and again, so it was a principle he upheld rigorously.
To take responsibility for those who would lay down their lives for him seemed obvious.
Yet never before had the fact of someone belonging to him stirred his heart.
My Person—that had always been duty.
But Adlen made it feel like possession.
My Person.
Mine.
‘Is this right?’
Racalte was startled by the sudden surge of feeling that rose unbidden in his chest.
He was confused.
The conversation ended up trailing off without resolution.
Neither of them received an answer to the question they harbored about the other. Yet neither found the courage to ask again.
It wasn’t even such an enormous question. But they both sensed instinctively that hearing the answer would transform it into something enormous.
* * *
Adlen decided to trust her master’s solution and give it a try.
For now: stay silent and wait patiently.
But as time wore on, the rumors didn’t subside — they spread like wildfire, growing fiercer by the day.
“Miss Adlen, we’ve come to……?”
“Yes?”
The knights entered the room, bowing and scraping.
Their manner, their tone, even their form of address — everything was different from usual. There was more than one thing amiss.
“What…… are you teasing me?”
Adlen caught on immediately, her eyes hardening.
But the knights only jumped back, exchanging glances among themselves.
“No! Teasing! It’s just — we heard that Miss Adlen might actually become a countess…….”
“……What did you say?”
Adlen’s head spun; she gripped the back of her neck.
Just then, Racalte was entering as well.
“Master! You have to take responsibility!”
“What…… an heir too?!”
“No?! I mean, not that kind of responsibility!”
Adlen bounced about as if she might lose her mind.
Racalte grasped the situation at once.
“Seems you’re free enough to go around picking up idle gossip.”
At Racalte’s sharp tone, the knights snapped to attention like wooden boards.
“Sir, no!”
“Playing with children won’t be enough to test the Sigelion Knights’ stamina. Let’s have a proper go at it today.”
“Please, have mercy!”
“I won’t kill you.”
And immediately a barrage of brutal training orders poured down.
True to his word, it was the sort that could push them to the very edge of collapse.
Their attempt to preemptively tread carefully because the rumor sounded so credible had backfired spectacularly. They’d meant no harm at all. The knights left the room weeping bitterly.
“……Master. It seems the rumors aren’t the kind that will die down if we simply stay quiet.”
Adlen too had regained her composure.
Finding a countermeasure was now the urgent priority.
“What should we do?”
“Hmm…….”
Racalte settled onto the sofa and pressed his fingers to his temples.
He hadn’t anticipated the rumors would spread this far.
Adlen was right — they probably needed to take some action. But he couldn’t think of a way to defuse the situation outright. And he certainly wasn’t going to hold a knife to people’s throats to stop them spreading false rumors.
Adlen, watching him ponder, ventured to throw out the solution she’d been holding back.
“Master, what if you pursued a marriage proposal with someone other than Maeltina?”
“……A marriage proposal?”
“Yes, as you said before — if one of you two actually married, it would settle this once and for all.”
“…….”
Racalte fixed Adlen with a gaze full of unspoken words.
A maid who made such audacious demands of her master deserved a blow to teach her place — and yet because she spoke with such confidence, he found he had no inclination to do it. He was simply at a loss.
“Marriage isn’t something that comes together in a snap.
“Well, an engagement, then.”
“Personally, I’m not keen on marriage.”
Adlen blinked at this confession of Racalte’s true feelings, heard for the first time.

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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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