The Isolated Marchioness Just Wants to Make a Living
Chapter 10
I had been out in the potato patch since dawn when a kitchen maid came running up.
“Milady, what should we do?”
She blinked rapidly in a flurry of panic.
“I went to the produce shop on Jejel Street, and groceries are outrageously expensive! Out of nowhere, they’re asking five times yesterday’s price for strawberries! Strawberries were expensive enough as it was!”
An unstable warp meant an unstable distribution network.
What was more, it wasn’t just the warps; monsters would soon begin appearing along the fief’s borders as well. In other words, food prices skyrocketing even further was an absolute certainty.
‘It’s finally starting…’
At least it was fortunate I had bought up the seed potatoes as quickly as possible.
‘In a month and a half, the new potatoes will be ready to harvest.’
Potatoes would serve as a vital source of carbohydrates and vitamin C.
Digging out my last remaining emergency funds, I pressed the coins into her hand and spoke.
“Martha, there’s something you must go buy right this moment.”
I had been waiting for the exact moment the supply chains began to fracture. There was something that could be bought at a steep discount right now.
‘I’ve secured enough grain from the merchant. Even with the increased headcount, we can hold out for a month.’
It was just after I had finished giving Martha the relevant instructions.
“Milady!”
The gatekeeper came rushing over in a hurry.
“Lady Dahlia has arrived, asking to see you right away!”
At the name Dahlia, the maids’ faces all froze.
The knights planting seed potatoes all wore expressions that asked, ‘Who is that?’
My eyes narrowed.
“…Dahlia? Right now?”
Dahlia Sears Hawin.
She was my cousin, who shared the Sears family name.
My father had a younger brother, which made him my uncle.
That uncle had achieved military merits, received the Hawin Fief, and established a new branch as Baron Hawin.
Yet, unable to let go of the Sears name, he had cemented it as a middle name.
Middle names were typically reserved for high nobility or royalty, so he was openly mocked behind his back, but he kept it nonetheless.
And the Baron Hawin household…
‘Took most of our marquisate.’
On the day of my father’s funeral.
Thanks to a contract my father had mindlessly signed trusting blood ties, the Beron Fief and Jejel Street had fallen into the hands of Baron Hawin’s house.
In other words, Father had entered into such an outrageous contract with his own brother.
‘Brothers born and raised together in this fiefdom.’
That was likely how he could cherry-pick the prime assets of the Marquisate of Sears: Jejel Street and the Beron Plains.
Above all, losing Jejel Street—the central distribution hub of the Central region where the markets were concentrated—was a catastrophic blunder.
The various shops there would be holding plenty of useful seeds and preserved foodstuffs, which would have been an immense help during our isolation.
Baron Hawin hadn’t even offered me his condolences at Father’s funeral. He had merely sought out Alpheus and pressed him to fulfill the contract.
Alpheus, not even knowing the man was his uncle, probably just thought of him as a debt collector.
But for his daughter to come instead of the uncle himself…
‘Why is she here?’
Dahlia came to see me in the original story as well. But that was supposed to be about a month from now.
In the novel, she visited me and the maids when we were exhausted from starvation.
“I heard Alpheus even kicked out your butler! Goodness, if you stay there, those knights won’t look after you. You’ll be the first to starve to death. Come to our house quickly. That butler is at our place, too.”
She wasn’t just anyone, but my own cousin, so I had followed her along with the maids…
Only to be loaded straight onto an illegal human trafficking ship.
“Goodbye, Brisa.”
Dahlia had personally shoved me onto the boat and said:
“I always hated you.”
It was an unexpected remark.
Hate or not… we barely even interacted, didn’t we?
Behind her, Baron Hawin was receiving sacks of wheat as our ransom. They, too, had been suffering from the severed distribution networks.
But the situation was different now. Severe starvation hadn’t even begun yet.
“Let’s go for now.”
I stood up, taking the maids with me.
The maids grumbled, chiming in from behind.
“I hate that young lady.”
“Hmph, she’s clearly jealous of our Lady Brisa’s noble bloodline.”
“The Princess educated her personally, and she even went to the Capital Academy. Of course she’s envious.”
Dahlia and I had rarely crossed paths.
Before leaving for the Academy, I stayed in the fief until I was ten, but I usually spent my time with Mother.
Mother had been my teacher in every subject.
“You can easily skip ahead two years. You’re my daughter, aren’t you? Let’s have you enroll early.”
When I took top honors at age ten on the entrance exam for the Capital Academy, an institution others entered at twelve.
I went to Mother’s grave and laid down the certificate of acceptance.
For while I was taking the entrance exam in the capital, Mother had passed away.
“Do not contact Brisa. It might disrupt her exam.”
“You… you truly are mad.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I am not mad.”
Those were Mother’s dying words, and Father—who had uttered that final ‘You are mad’—honored her wishes in the end and did not contact me.
And so, I couldn’t even attend Mother’s funeral.
Having lived like that, there had been no time to socialize with Dahlia.
Yet hearing her say ‘I always hated you’… perhaps the maids were right after all.
When I arrived at the drawing room, Dahlia was sitting there, her brown hair framing sky-blue eyes.
“Brisa, it’s been a while.”
Having not even shown up at Father’s funeral, she smiled brightly and spoke.
“I heard the news that you’re no longer the heir to the marquisate. What a pity. I heard you had your engagement broken off, too.”
My brow furrowed.
“Is it true? Wow, you really never know with life.”
The last time we had met was two years ago.
Dahlia had never picked a fight with me so openly before.
Only then did I realize that I had become someone she could ‘look down upon.’ And that Dahlia had been waiting for this moment all along.
“You know Luman of Count Joachim’s house, right? Unless something unexpected happens, I think I’ll be getting engaged to him. Father visited the Count’s estate yesterday, and it seems he received the proposal then.”
“Ah, Luman Joachim. Among all the nobles in the Central region, I always thought he was the biggest eyesore.”
I answered nonchalantly.
“Though starting today, it looks like I’ll have to pity him instead. Wow, you really never know with life—just like you said.”
A petty provocation like this was easy to brush off.
Nodding slowly, I continued.
“The Hawin Fief must have expanded quite a lot lately. Seeing as Count Joachim’s family, who never takes even the slightest loss, has finally begun considering you as a candidate for fiancée.”
“What?”
“At this point, shouldn’t you invite my late father’s ghost to the engagement party? He’s the biggest contributor, after all. If it were me, I would’ve at least asked him for a congratulatory speech.”
“Don’t act so arrogant.”
Dahlia glared at me, seething.
“After all is said and done, you’re nothing more than a parasite living off a marquis tainted with commoner blood.”
Gritting her teeth, she retaliated with everything she had.
“I wonder where that half-brother of yours will sell you off to? I’m dying to know.”
“Then you’d better stay on my good side.”
I lifted my teacup with poise and said:
“Because if I tell my brother to sell me off to Luman Joachim, that high-and-mighty engagement of yours is going to run into a rather serious ‘unexpected turn of events.’”
I had never once lost in a battle of wills like this.
It was simply tedious, so after taking a sip of tea, I cut straight to the chase.
“Why are you here?”
“…The warps went completely haywire yesterday.”
Had I not known the original story, this would have been news I learned belatedly through the knights yesterday.
Dahlia continued in a haughty tone.
“Father rushed around looking into the situation. Apparently, the Magic Tower has already announced that it’s due to a Monster Wave, so it won’t be resolved anytime soon.”
Perhaps wanting to build suspense, Dahlia mimicked me by taking a sip of tea. Then, with a smirk, she spoke.
“You guys don’t have much food, do you? Hand over the Erenta Region to us.”
Just as I thought.
It wasn’t for nothing that the head of the western grain merchants’ guild had specifically brought up the Erenta Region.
Baron Hawin’s house had surely approached him first—promising a handsome reward if he wrested the fishing rights for Erenta from Sears.
And the guild head, desperate for money, had taken the bait without hesitation.
