The Isolated Marchioness Just Wants to Make a Living
Chapter 27
It wasn’t until I reached the cabin where Mother lay that reality truly set in.
All the strength drained from my body.
‘The engagement will probably be broken off.’
Someone outside the Marquisate had witnessed Mother’s madness.
We had stayed strictly within the Marquisate’s estate precisely to avoid something like this.
Now the rumors would spread. That the princess of Riente was indeed mad.
After all the money spent to secure my engagement…
My fiancé’s family would be furious.
They would accuse us of having no shame, hiding such a grave matter just to rush the engagement through.
What if her madness was hereditary…?
Holding the hand of my mother lying in the cabin, only then did my tears begin to fall.
From regret, misery, and… sheer hopelessness.
“Mm?”
Mother only opened her eyes after the boat outing had ended.
“What happened? I feel a bit dizzy…”
I wiped away my tears and smiled with a clean face.
“You said you were seasick, Mother, so you took some medicine.”
“Did I?”
Mother tilted her head.
“Oh dear, I must have missed the prize drawing. Where is your father?”
“In another cabin,” I said calmly.
“He didn’t seem to be feeling well either. Since the official schedule is over, shall we head home?”
“Let’s do that. My stomach does feel a bit unsettled.”
Mother remembered nothing. But as always, she accepted the blank spaces in her memory without question.
“In any case, the engagement ceremony went well, right? Didn’t it?”
“Yes, Mother.”
I nodded.
“Everything went well.”
I couldn’t tell Mother the truth because I was terrified.
She still hadn’t accepted her own madness. I couldn’t fathom how devastated she would be if she found out.
What if the shock drove her completely insane…?
Right now, she had far more lucid moments than not…
Yet she would find out eventually…
Leopold had witnessed her madness, the rumors would spread like wildfire, and my engagement would soon be broken off.
Naturally, Mother did not get better even after the engagement ceremony.
Night after night, she wailed behind her locked door.
“I don’t want to go! I said I don’t want to go! I’d rather die! How am I supposed to live there all by myself? How?!”
Unable to eat or sleep, screaming that she would never go to the Empire…
“I won’t marry that man! Marquis Sears? Why do I have to marry an old man whose face I’ve never even seen?!”
Inside my room, I buried my face in my arms and wept silently.
If she despised the Empire and Father so much, could she ever truly love me, the child she had been forced to bear?
When she had dreaded bearing Father’s child from the very moment she left Riente?
Was the reason she kept returning to the day she left the Kingdom of Riente because she regretted every single day spent with me?
Yet after making such a scene all night, the moment the sun rose in the morning, Mother would look for me.
“Brisa? Go bring your Teipan Language Textbook at once. We must move on to the next lesson. Mm, your lace is wrinkled, so sit down properly. Just so you know, we’ll be having an ancient language vocabulary test this afternoon.”
I always tried my absolute best.
If I did well, Mother was pleased, which meant she might not regret having me, and perhaps if she could break free of the past, she might miraculously become well again.
‘I tried and tried so hard… but if the engagement is broken, will it all have been for nothing?’
Unable to tell anyone about what Leopold had witnessed, I suffered in agonizing silence.
Yet one month passed, then two, and then three.
Until the day Mother passed away.
Not a single person ever spoke of what had happened that day.
Even when I reunited with Leopold at the Academy, neither of us ever brought it up.
I was the only one who remained on guard, careful never to utter nonsense or foolish words in front of him—terrified he might suspect me of being ‘crazy like her mother.’
In truth, I acted that way around everyone.
Never losing my composure, never crying or laughing easily, never saying anything irrational.
As a result, many judged me to be cold and distant, but that was far better than being called mad.
Unlike me, Leopold was a gentleman who extended such courtesies to anyone.
To him, someone who involved himself in other people’s affairs with moderate kindness and then simply forgot about it, that day had likely meant nothing at all.
“Everything will be fine.”
Yet in life, there are moments like that.
Moments when you incur a debt all on your own, one you can never forget for the rest of your life.
Because my heart felt so heavy, I tried all the harder to treat him as if nothing had ever happened.
Lest he feel burdened by the fact that I still remembered that day.
There was a reason I had fed Baron Forman so well. And why I had sent him off with potatoes and radish sprouts.
‘Actually, that wasn’t all.’
I had even given him eggs. Carefully picking out the largest ones.
Leopold quietly watched Brisa and her party vanish through the warp.
The knights were doing their absolute best to carry the towering sacks of wheat.
“The Central region must not have active warps either, seeing as they’re hauling wheat like that.”
“Indeed. I truly thought I was going to starve to death.”
Standing beside Leopold, Baron Forman let out a sigh.
“Yet that young lady fed us all. The very young lady you anonymously sent flowers to, that is.”
“I suppose I’ll have to replace my subordinates,” Leopold remarked languidly.
“Since confidential information seems to have reached Grandfather’s ears.”
“You can change your subordinates a hundred times, but in the West, you will never escape the eyes of the Grand Duke of Nozen.”
Baron Forman grinned.
The moment Leopold heard that his maternal grandfather had gone to the Central region, he had already pieced the entire situation together.
Knowing that playing dumb would be futile anyway, Baron Forman asked slyly,
“Why did you send the flowers?”
“A small comfort to a former Academy classmate who might be disheartened by a broken engagement.”
“Then why send them anonymously?”
“Because I dislike situations where people ask me ‘why.’ Just like this very moment.”
Leopold replied without a trace of emotion.
Baron Forman murmured in satisfaction.
“She truly is a remarkable young lady. I’ll have plenty to report to the Grand Duke of Nozen. First of all, I owe that lady an immense debt.”
“A debt?”
“Lotus root, fried fish, grilled mushrooms…”
At Baron Forman’s earnest list, Leopold gave an easy smile.
“An amusing debt, indeed.”
“It is by no means trivial, Leopold.”
Understanding the unspoken ‘it’s no big deal’ behind Leopold’s tone, Baron Forman turned solemn.
“Having stayed in the West this entire time, you do not know the value of food. Here, abundance reigns no matter where you go, monsters or not.”
“Is that so.”
“Leo, you understand nothing.”
Baron Forman’s gaze deepened.
“The worth of that young lady, I mean… In your current state, even if I explained it, you wouldn’t truly grasp it in your heart.”
“Hardly.”
It was a flat denial.
“No, I told you that you don’t know,” Baron Forman cut him off firmly.
“If you had truly understood, you would never have given her something like Tracking Incense.”
“That was the most valuable thing I possessed. In fact, I half-expected Grandfather to throw a fit over it.”
“What a clueless novice you are… Couldn’t you tell she only accepted it out of mere politeness? She looked at it as though it were the most useless thing in the world.”
“Then I’m curious what gift Grandfather wished to give Brisa instead of Tracking Incense.”
At that, Baron Forman answered with a proud puff of his chest.
“Another sack of wheat.”
“Hardly.”
Then, with a hint of regret, he added,
“Then we might have caught a glimpse of that lady’s smile.”
“Hardly.”
“But before that.”
Baron Forman surveyed his surroundings.
“We need to find out since when black magicians started crawling into the ports of the West.”
Nodding, Leopold’s eyes also gleamed chillingly.
Beneath his feet, the black magician who had confronted Brisa still lay unconscious. He had no intention of granting him a swift death.