Free Web NovelChapter 225: Swap Handmaids!
Before leaving for Baschurten, I’d requested personnel support from the Crown Prince, and apparently he’d sent troops right away. Most were levy soldiers from Rosenheim, but since the purpose was guarding rather than combat, I was very grateful.
Ted and Oscar were overseeing them personally, so they weren’t here at the moment.
August was currently receiving a progress report from Viktor and Fiel.
"So, any problems?"
"Ugh, don’t get me started. Those noble prisoners keep throwing fits, demanding private cells!"
The captured nobles had apparently been hounding Hans, the most easygoing of my men, to give them individual rooms. The Feuzen jail wasn’t some Breisburg duchy prison. There was no way we could provide such comfortable accommodations.
"Put up with the crappy conditions for now. Once we collect the ransoms, I’ll give the guards a big bonus."
"Ooh, that should be enough to keep the men motivated!"
I patted Hans on the shoulder as he beamed with an innocent smile. It felt like just yesterday that I’d met Hans when he was still a pauper. Now he’d risen to become the guard captain of the most famous and prestigious lord-knight in the duchy.
After I’d matched him with Priscilla, a former handmaid of the Steiner count’s household, Hans, who’d once been insecure about his lowly birth, had grown into a guard captain trustworthy enough to be left in charge of both the manor and Feuzen.
How times had changed.
Hans was the very model of a success story.
He was still lacking in combat skills, but being a guard captain was all about trust. And since the guards would be armed with firearms eventually, not knowing swordplay wouldn’t be a flaw at all.
With Sabine and Priscilla’s help, I stripped off every piece of my plate armor and experienced an incredible sense of liberation. I’d heard that women take off their bras at home for the same feeling of freedom.
Now I understood completely.
After handing the armor off to the two handmaids, I sank into a hot bath. It felt like all the hardship was being washed away. Rose-scented bath salts had been added, filling the air with a subtle, distinctive fragrance.
I’d just finished unwinding and was eating a meal Sabine had prepared when Angela came bursting into the dining room. She had the face of someone who’d just been swindled out of everything by the world’s greatest con artist. Did someone scam her out of a billion?
"There’s no way that’s the Crown Princess! You were hiding the real one, weren’t you, my lord?"
"Hungry? Want to eat with me? There’s plenty."
I looked at the teary-eyed Angela and casually took a bite of schweinshaxe, crispy on the outside, juicy on the inside. Nothing beat a good German pork knuckle. Pair it with beer and it was a masterpiece.
"So what’s your impression of Lily from your first meeting?"
"I never imagined a lady like that! The moment she saw me, she told me to hold a pose and started drawing! A woman drawing pictures! She was shamelessly doing something that could get her in serious trouble!"
"She was drawing too? Looks like Aachen has been teaching her."
After the French female author Christine emerged, women writers had gained more visibility, and attitudes had loosened somewhat. Still, male scholars didn’t look kindly on women involving themselves in literature.
And the art world was even worse. The painting schools in particular were more rigid than the nobility itself, holding the prejudice that women had no understanding of art whatsoever and despising any woman who tried to enter the field.
The fact that Lily had been allowed to draw in the church proved that neither Father Andreas nor Aachen was that kind of person.
Most people I could understand, but Aachen was a bit surprising. Then again, he’d accepted Arzt, a former executioner, as the attending physician, so something must have shifted deep inside him. He’d become a misanthrope, after all. freeweɓnovēl.coɱ
Eventually, I called everyone to the lord’s study. Angela was glaring at Lily with a sulky expression, and Lily stared back at Angela quizzically before turning to me.
"Brother, this cute girl says she’s my handmaid, but why does she hate me so much?"
"She expected an elegant, beautiful edelweiss, and instead she got the girl in white. Can you blame her?"
"There you go calling me that again! I hate that nickname!"
"The fact that you hate it fills me with immense satisfaction. Even I have to admit I outdid myself with that one."
That was the whole point of a nickname. The more the target hated it, the better it was. Hilda, smiling quietly, sat demurely on the sofa sipping rose tea. She’d completely given up alcohol since becoming pregnant.
We hadn’t announced the pregnancy to the townspeople yet. Father Andreas was planning to officially proclaim it himself during the liturgical event at the end of the month, together with the Lord’s blessing. Apparently, this was the proper procedure for a noble pregnancy announcement.
Just announcing it would have been fine, but no, they had to shoehorn it into some elaborate church event. I would never understand what went on inside the heads of nobles and church people. Everything involved spending money.
Hilda seemed to be looking forward to it, though.
"Angela, no matter how much you want to deny it, Lily really is the Crown Princess. She carries the sole bloodline of Princess Ingrid, the phantom princess who married into the Offenburg marquis household, and I’m protecting her."
"A girl like that is the future queen? Is this country really going to be okay?"
"The royal brothers are fighting each other for the throne. What difference does it make? I’m a victim of that mess myself."
Baron Valent’s ambush, in the grand scheme of things, was ultimately a consequence of this whole disaster. Understanding and accepting a Crown Princess who was nothing like the ideal would be Angela’s first task.
"It’s already been decided. If you don’t like Lily, you can go back. I’ll explain things to the Count for you. But don’t forget that it was you who threw away the opportunity."
"...How could I refuse? I was just upset for a moment."
Angela lifted the hem of her dress slightly and bowed respectfully to Lily. Lily blinked her big eyes, then glanced at Hilda and me nervously. She seemed a little deflated.
"Allow me to introduce myself once more, Your Highness. Starting today, I am Angela, your handmaid."
"It’s nice to meet you, Angela. Please forgive my rudeness just now."
"...I’m truly relieved that you can speak properly when you choose to."
She must have expected a flippant response.
Angela’s face was brimming with hope.
Despite appearances, Lily was a child who’d survived the Offenburg marquis household by hiding her true nature. Even I had been fooled into thinking she was a proper noble lady when I first met her. She’d shown her true colors on the way back. And in Feuzen, she was something else entirely.
"I can’t indulge Your Highness’s hobbies, but I will fulfill the duties my father entrusted to me. First things first, we’ll be correcting that flippant behavior. Brace yourself!"
"Eek! Brother! Can we swap handmaids?! Her eyes are terrifying!"
"You’ve been running wild long enough. This is the perfect chance to relearn some manners."
Lily screamed for help as Angela forcibly dragged her away.
"Hehe, aren’t they both adorable?"
"The future royal household is going to be a noisy place. But all I know for certain is that I can only pray that poison never seeps into those girls’ hearts."
"If they lean on each other, they’ll be fine. His Highness the Crown Prince is a just man, after all."
Hilda watched them with genuine adoration.
She said it reminded her of herself as a child.
"It was the exact opposite, actually. I was always the one being dragged around. You were the one who always insisted on dragging me everywhere, my lady."
"Oh my, did I really do that? That’s completely different from how I remember it."
"I remember it clearly. That’s why I ended up an old maid."
"...And that’s exactly why I arranged your marriage with Hans."
"I am grateful for that. But I did have chances to marry into the nobility, you know."
"I’m sorry about that, Priscilla. But are you unhappy with how things turned out?"
"Not at all. I’m grateful to you, Master. For properly reining in the lady who used to be called the Valkyrie and ran wild at the royal ranch. Truly a warrior of Christ! A saint of Saint Peter!"
"..."
"..."
Through their years of deep friendship, Hilda and Priscilla had reached the point of openly roasting each other. Well, this wasn’t exactly a new sight. In moments like these, the wise husband’s answer was no comment.
Ah, it was truly peaceful.
Even the bland rose tea tasted remarkably sweet.
Just being away from the bloody battlefield and the smelly, rough cavalrymen was healing enough. That night, lying beside Hilda, I gently placed a hand on her belly.
Her belly was still slender, but the fact that a life was growing inside it felt surreal. Priscilla had lamented being an old maid? If she knew that my past self in the modern world had chosen to stay a bachelor, what would she say?
After about two days of rest and resupply, I was preparing to head north when suddenly, several hundred cavalrymen came charging in from the east. Thank goodness the scouts spotted them first, or Feuzen would have been thrown into chaos.
"Ha ha ha! My lord, I hope you’ve been well!"
"What on earth brings you here?"
"I’ve come to aid you, on our liege’s orders!"
The man who’d arrived leading several hundred cavalrymen was none other than the commander of the Offenburg Knights. Just when I’d been struggling with a shortage of cavalry, the Marquis of Offenburg had sent me reinforcements.
Taking care of Lily had paid off.
