Chapter 44

Chapter 44

“What do you mean something happened in the Great Forest?”

“I don’t know the details either. That’s all the letter says.”

“That’s all?”

Thompson’s face twisted in frustration. He had been relentlessly pressed to bring back a reply no matter what.

Had he known the letter contained nothing more than that, he wouldn’t have knocked on the Marchioness’s door so early in the morning.

“Shall I go to the hotel and bring the messenger here? He might know something.”

“There’s no need.”

Leonard took a sheet of paper and a fountain pen from a servant and immediately began writing his reply right where he sat.

Just as the letter he’d received was brief, so was his response. It said only that he was too busy with work to make time for a visit.

“Which hotel is the messenger staying at?”

“One on Velvet Street… But, Count, are you sure it’s all right to send such a reply?”

“It’s fine.”

After summoning a servant and instructing him to deliver the letter to the hotel where Marquis Waindal’s messenger was staying, Leonard gave a casual shrug.

“If Marquis Waindal has even a shred of conscience, he won’t dare treat the Marquis’s consort carelessly.”

After all, the only one who had helped with the conquest of the Weinberg Great Forest, which had once seemed utterly hopeless, was the Marchioness Blair…

‘…Wait.’

As far as he knew, Irenea had invested so heavily in the conquest of the Weinberg Great Forest because she wanted to establish a trade route there in the future…

‘Could it have been because of me? Because I was there?’

But Leonard soon shook his head.

‘No way.’

He didn’t know the details, but he was aware that the amount Irenea had invested in the conquest of the Great Forest was enormous.

Surely she hadn’t poured all that money into it just for his sake. It had to be for the trade route. After all, a land route would be more convenient than a sea route.

Having reached that conclusion, Leonard dismissed the thought.

Never once suspecting that the unlikely possibility was, in fact, the truth.

***

Meanwhile, at that very moment.

After having a light breakfast, Irenea arrived at her office. Seeing the vase of hyacinths decorating her desk, she couldn’t help but smile.

“Ah, this is the life.”

Flowers freshly picked every morning by the man she loved.

Irenea filled her lungs with their fresh fragrance, then took her seat, determined to make the most of another day.

And less than an hour later, she was looking utterly miserable.

“I’m going to die. Seriously…”

She had far too much work to do. Even after delegating every wedding-related task she could to others, aside from the matters she absolutely had to oversee herself, she was still swamped.

And that was despite having canceled every meeting she had scheduled in advance because the Empress had ordered her to remain confined to her estate.

“Marchioness, someone from the Count Matthias household has arrived. They say they’ll do anything you ask if you’ll withdraw the complaint against the newspaper.”

“Then have them publish a huge apology on the front page of the Lotus Press, and bring me forgiveness from Ray and Jenis. I’ll withdraw the complaint if they do that.”

“Marchioness, someone from the Viscount Calio household has arrived. They say Lady Fiona has fallen gravely ill and won’t be able to attend the wedding.”

“What a convenient excuse. They’re certainly making good use of their only daughter in every possible way. I’ll write a letter wishing her well, so send it to the Calio estate along with some medicinal herbs that are good for her health.”

“Marchioness, a messenger has arrived from the Imperial Palace.”

“HER Majesty the Empress won’t be attending, and His Highness the Second Prince will be coming in her place? She’s hardly someone who would offer us her congratulations wholeheartedly… Well, there’s nothing we can do.”

Because of the confinement order, the nobles who couldn’t visit in person had sent letters instead. Irenea spent three or four hours simply writing replies to them.

That included the time she spent responding to replies to the wedding invitations.

“Oh? Marquis Waindal says he can’t attend the wedding?”

“That’s a little unexpected… I thought he would definitely come to the capital, if only because of the trade route.”

“Exactly. Besides, I heard the young Marquis Waindal is making his debut in high society next year… There couldn’t be a better opportunity to make an appearance before then than my wedding.”

Two major construction projects were currently underway in the Weinberg Great Forest.

One was the construction of a road to secure a trade route to the Kingdom of Milos, and the other was a development project to cultivate rice paddies and fields and build houses for the territory’s residents.

However, fifteen days ago, news had arrived from Marquis Waindal’s territory. An unexpected accident had brought the construction work to a halt.

“Ah, come to think of it, I heard earlier that a messenger from Marquis Waindal had visited.”

“Another messenger, besides the one who delivered this letter?”

Irenea asked, waving the letter in her hand. Daymond gave a slight nod.

“I don’t know the details, but judging by the fact that he arrived with today’s guest, I believe he had business with the future Marquis consort.”

“With Ray…?”

Marquis Waindal. Leonard.

Ah. Come to think of it…

‘Could it be happening at this point in time?’

Much sooner than she’d expected…

‘That’s right. In this timeline, Ray has already repaid his debt to Count Miles’s family.’

In the past, Leonard had been unable to raise the money needed to repay his debt.

So the members of the Iron-Blooded Mercenary Corps had sold stolen goods they’d taken from a noble household long ago in order to raise the money.

The magic artifact they’d stolen from the Count Matthias household.

But they had only managed to sell it for five million larks, and Jenis had been taken away to become Harry Miles’s bride.

The Count Miles household, however, had failed to keep its promise to wipe out the entire debt in exchange for her dowry.

As a result, the Elpiers family ended up undergoing bankruptcy proceedings.

‘Since things had come to that, I planned to rescue Jenis and flee to another country. But…’

The magic artifact they’d sold had led Count Matthias straight to them.

He had never forgiven the thieves who had stolen his magic artifact all those years ago. In the end, two of the three had died, and only one had barely survived.

Only Bin.

Of course, surviving hadn’t meant the ordeal was over. To escape the relentless pursuit of the Count Matthias household, Bin had wandered from place to place with Leonard.

And so, the name of Leonard, the former Count Elpiers, seemed destined to fade into obscurity.

That was until Harry, who had become Viscount Paylton, was brutally murdered.

The culprit was quickly identified.

His head had been laid upon Jenis’s grave.

Count Miles immediately accused Leonard, and Leonard became a wanted man. His crime was the murder of a noble—a grave offense punishable by death the moment he was captured.

But a month later, several witnesses came forward to testify that Harry Miles hadn’t simply been murdered by Leonard, but had died in a bloody duel.

The guarantor for those witnesses was Marquis Waindal.

After a fierce legal battle between Marquis Waindal and Count Miles, Leonard’s wanted status was finally revoked. In return, he resolved a troublesome matter for Marquis Waindal.

According to the timeline, that would happen roughly two or three years from now.

That was why Irenea hadn’t immediately thought of it, even after hearing that the road construction had been suspended.

The adorable little troublemaker she’d grown attached to before anyone else when she’d inadvertently become a member of the Iron-Blooded Mercenary Corps.

Kichi.

“…Marchioness? Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Oh, I was just thinking that the names sounded similar.”

Both of them were adorable in their own ways.

With that thought, Irenea let out a small laugh, then looked at the mountain of work still waiting for her and brought the matter to a close.

“I suppose they’re too distracted by what’s happening in the Great Forest to think about anything else. I’ll write back and tell them I understand.”

“Even so, shouldn’t we at least ask them to explain the situation in detail? We can set aside their inability to attend the wedding, but halting construction on the trade route is a serious matter.”

The reason construction in the Great Forest had been suspended.

Marquis Waindal hadn’t offered any explanation. He hadn’t said what efforts were being made to resolve the problem, how much damage it had caused, or when construction might resume.

Kiri passionately argued that the fact they were offering no explanation meant they were clearly hiding something. She insisted they should send an investigative team to find out what had happened there.

Irenea gently soothed her.

“I already know what happened there.”

“Really?”

“Yes. And I know how to resolve it, too.”

Marquis Waindal probably knew how to resolve it as well. That was why he’d sent someone to Leonard.

“Ah, that’s right. This might actually work out for the best. I should tell him I’ll go there myself later.”

“You’re going there yourself? When Marquis Waindal should be the one coming here to explain everything?”

“I want to see it with my own eyes, and there’s somewhere else I’d like to visit along the way. I might as well take care of both.”

Once the wedding was over, and the railway inauguration ceremony had been held, she could head down to the Marquis’s territory, introduce Leonard to her vassals, and then visit Marquis Waindal’s domain. The timing should work out fairly well.

She decided to discuss the exact schedule with Leonard later, then set about replying to the letters that had arrived that morning, including Marquis Waindal’s.

After sorting through the letters, she began reviewing the reports that had come in from various regions.

At least the domestic affairs reports from her own territory were easy enough. All she had to do was check the summaries prepared by her capable vassals.

The real problem was the reports coming from the branch offices of her trading company, hotels, and cruise ships scattered not only throughout the Empire but across several other countries as well.

If something happened within the Empire, she could somehow manage the aftermath through the influence of the Marchioness Blair. But abroad, a single mistake could easily lead to a permanent severing of ties.

After all, even the longest-standing business relationships in those countries had only been established a year or two ago.

To ensure that the hard-won trust she’d painstakingly built wouldn’t go to waste, Irenea personally reviewed the approval documents and reports arriving from abroad and issued instructions accordingly.

By the time she was done, the sun, which had once been high overhead, had already sunk halfway toward the western horizon.

Still, once the wedding was over, things should become less hectic than they were now. As she ate a late lunch of sandwiches and fruit, Irenea listened to Daymond tell her about the family.

“Lady Elizabeth has gone out to the busy shopping district, while Lady Charlotte is at the training grounds.”

“The training grounds? Wasn’t she there yesterday, too?”

“She seems to have taken quite a liking to the future Marquis consort’s training.”

Daymond spoke with a fond expression, as though he were talking about his own granddaughter.

“Ah, and the future Marquis consort has fit in perfectly with the knight order. I heard they’ve even standardized the knights’ form of address for him as ‘Commander.’ I don’t believe you need to worry about that anymore.”

“None of those idiots gave Ray a hard time just because he’s an outsider, did they?”

“Anyone who might have tried that was already set straight when Sir Hawk became vice-captain.”

If a knight from the slums could become vice-captain, then surely a former mercenary becoming the future Marquis consort’s commander was hardly worth making a fuss over.

The knights of House Blair had already reached a state of half-enlightened resignation. If Leonard had lacked the skill, they might have tried to use that as an excuse to object. But that wasn’t the case.

‘No matter how strong our knights are, they can’t beat Ray. Even Hawk can’t beat him.’

And that was aside from his extraordinary natural talent, the relentless effort he’d put into honing his skills, and his wealth of real combat experience.

In the Great Forest, where he’d earned the title of the Golden Lion of Weinberg, he had inherited ‘that power.’ So it was only natural that Hawk couldn’t defeat Leonard.