“Well, I have never heard anything special about it. ”
“I see…”
Marianne looked down with a little sigh. The petal she was touching was quickly torn in half.
“Then I’ll ask you something else.”
“Please go ahead.”
“I’m afraid to say this, but I know very little about the previous emperor and empress, power struggle within the cabinet, and the rumors about noble families. I’m trying to read official bulletins or seek advice from Mrs. Charlotte, but it’s not easy. So, I asked somebody about one thing impatiently, but I haven’t heard a clear answer yet…”
Her eyelashes under her dark green eyes trembled nervously.
“Was there any bad blood between my father and the late emperor?”
“… ”
“What I want to know is if there was anything that could have estranged them.”
Mrs. Renault did not immediately answer.
She was not sure whether it was Duke Kling or Eckart that she asked out of impatience.
Regardless of who he was, she could probably not hear any frank reply.
Love was not necessarily in contact with the truth.
Sometimes love became a veil that blinded the harsh truths and sometimes it turned into a desire not to lose somebody, which often fettered the involved parties in a false world.
“As you already know, your father Duke Kling was extremely reluctant to get involved in central politics from the late emperor’s days. He even refused to take one of the top cabinet positions that the late emperor offered to him. I think the late emperor, who had weak power, must have felt a great regret because he needed Duke Kling’s help.”
Mrs. Renault did not love or value Marianne like her own life.
That’s why Mrs. Renault refrained from replying to Marianne’s appeal until now, not deciding whether to get involved in her matter.
“…”
As if she felt something strange in Mrs. Renault’s reply, Marianne looked a bit uncomfortable while listening to her.
It wasn’t because she already knew about what Mrs. Renault said, but because Mrs. Renault understood her question in the opposite way.
What Marianne wanted to know was not why the late emperor avoided her father, but why her father avoided the late emperor.
Namely, she wanted to know the reason why her father came to think of her marriage to the current emperor as unfortunate.
“Is that really it? Well, I know it because I read about it in the bulletins. I could hear the same thing if I stopped any maid at my mansion and asked about it.”
“Lady Marianne, there are books you haven’t read yet that are better than the ones you have already read. I mean, those ooks that you read over time and completely understand rather than hearing somebody reading them to you without understanding much.”
“Are you saying I’m so stupid that I’m not qualified to read them?”
“…”
Mrs. Renault frowned slightly as she sharply retorted. She sat closer to the rim of the bathtub and grabbed the countess’s hands.
Petals on the surface were swept away by the water.
“Please don’t leave me out anymore. They always give me insufficient information. How do you cut an enemy with a dull sword? How do you fix a patient who doesn’t show his or her wounded area?”
“…”
“You know my father and the current emperor well, right? Will the time come when I can tell both of them about it?”
“Lady Marianne…” Mrs. Renault fumbled.
“If the time doesn’t come, or if it’s a long time later, if you jump into the enemy camp without even knowing your ally, will it help you any more?”
Her gentle voice turned furious in an instant. At that moment, she tightened her grip on the countess’s hands forcefully.
“I have already told you I would be your ally. Even a spy who doesn’t even know which way the wind is blowing will definitely be deceived by the enemy’s sweet talk. If I’m in jeopardy, no one else can take my place. Absolutely nobody!”
Mrs. Renault still hesitated to reply, with her hands desperately grasped by Marianne.
Her pleading was more like a threat, but she felt sad rather than threatened.
That was true. No one could replace this woman. She was the only woman with whom Marquis Chester was so obsessed and desperately tried to woo, while the current emperor was all out to defend her even at the risk of breaking the imperial rule.
Marianne was a catalyst that aroused the desires of the two. Although what the emperor and Marquis Chester were trying to get from her might not be the same, they seemed to share the same desire for her. It was a different kind of love that aimed for a highly pure and sure desire, but their purposes were different.
Regardless of the types of love, there would be no better practical card for the emperor or marquis to pursue.
“… Okay, then. Let me tell you an old story.”
Mrs. Renault nodded as if to soothe her. Then, Marianne’s strong grip on her hands loosened like frozen snow melting under the spring sun.
“How much do you know about the late empress?”
Asking the question, the countess leaned her to the side. Mrs. Charlotte came up and sat beside her. She soon felt Mrs. Charlotte gentle combing between the strands of hair.
Led by their hands, she naturally closed her eyes. Ironically, her random question gave her a chance to reflect on the life of a figure.
Marianne said, “As for the late empress, I read something about her in a book. That’s all. As far as I know, she was the last royal family member of the ruined Lennox Empire, the current emperor’s mother, and she had allegedly blonde hair and blue eyes like the sea. Unfortunately, she died of Kinnis that spread in Milan.”
Kinnis was an epidemic that swept Milan five years ago. It was an incurable disease with no available medicine for treatment. It was the curse of the ashes left behind by the fire. When people were afflicted with Kinnis, red spots formed all over their bodies, and the spots soon decayed their skin, causing oozing and bleeding. Patients usually died in less than two weeks while rubbing their decaying bones and internal organs. The scabs of their decaying wounds scattered into ash powder like pieces of burnt wood.
Eckart was a tragic hero who lost both his father and mother at the same time because of that epidemic. He would have been succumbed by Kinnis too if he had not gone to the new winter villa in Ornus at the request of the empress that winter when the epidemic broke out.
“That’s correct. Empress Blair was the seventh princess of the Romanov family, and Lennox, ruled by the Romanov family, was an ally of Aslan. Lennox collapsed in an instant due to the intense power struggle for succession and invasion of the rebels, but it was originally a powerful empire that was comparable with Faisal.”
Right after Mrs. Renault explained, Mrs. Charlotte gave her an additional information kindly. “And Nova, the center of the empire as well as the capital of Lennox where the Imperial Palace was, is now the Castle of Lennox. That’s exactly where you grew up.”
Marianne said, “I know. I hear that the Lennox Mansion is a renovation of the old Lennox imperial palace. So, the garden is very large and its architecture is a little different from other castles. I really like the mansion. Although I stay here at the beautiful Elior Mansion, I often miss it.”
Marian drew a picture of her old home in a dark vision.
An annex filled with only her favorite things, and an elegant back garden large enough to play hide and seek, deer and rabbit, dog and cat roaming on the green grass. And the old familiar faces who always smiled at her brightly…
“Nova was soon transformed into a colony, along with other territories. The first person to be appointed as the chief of the Lennox Castle was Grand Duke Bertrand.”
Mrs. Earl did not wait for her to be lost in old memories. Her stern voice telling the cold truth broke Marianne’s idle thoughts.
Bertrand was a late prince of Frei IV. The brother of Emperor Joseph’s grandfather, Emperor Joseph, stayed close to his young nephew, late emperor Cassius. Although he led a somewhat dissipated life, he was not foolish enough to be stigmatized as an incompetent lord.
Marianne remembered seeing his name faintly in the royal genealogy.
“But Lennox lost its master again. Grand Duke Bertrand died after three years because of a horse-riding accident. Naturally, everybody paid attention to who would emerge as the next ruler.”
That was understandable. Lennox was the territory that bound the most vital areas of the Nova region. Of course, lots of powerful nobles coveted those territories with mines or farmland-rich lands, but possessing the capital of the ruined empire was what they valued most.
In addition, Lennox was full of the ruined nobles, migrants who returned after the war, and estates that had not yet been sorted out, and abandoned treasures. As a result, possessing Lennox was to get them all.
“The candidate who could own Lennox was narrowed down to three: Duke Hubble, Marquis Chester, and Grand Duke Christopher.”