The Trash Lady Who Stole the Duke's First Night
Chapter 18
“Sir, do you not get along with the Holy Knight Order?”
Elio hesitated to ask if someone in his family was ill, ultimately choosing to ask something else instead. Bringing up family felt a bit too much just yet…
“We get along.”
“Liar.”
Elio narrowed her eyes at the man, who kept tugging her hood down low over her face while pulling her closer.
“Aren’t you hiding with your hood up because of the Holy Knights? You keep avoiding them every time one comes into sight.”
Elio was certain there was something between this man and the Holy Knight Order.
She was completely convinced, especially after seeing the Lobitan knights wandering around scattered like petty thieves with their hoods pulled down, and this man carving a path away with her whenever the Holy Knights appeared.
“Sir, you’d win, right…?”
Carlos looked at her with an incredulous expression.
“No, I mean, of course I think you’d win. I was just wondering if getting caught by the Holy Knights would put you in danger. Would you have to duel them or something?”
Carlos let out a sigh and pulled her even closer. Sitting her down as if hiding her between his thighs, he closed his eyes.
Elio’s eyes widened, but so as not to disturb his hiding posture, she swallowed hard, wrapped her arms around her knees, and curled up even smaller.
“I’d win.”
Carlos gave a childish answer fit for a seven-year-old, his voice low as he responded to the anxious woman poking the back of his hand as if demanding an answer.
“Then why are we hiding—”
Elio glanced back, but at the fierce, menacing look in his eyes, she bowed her head immediately as if thoroughly persuaded.
Carlos let out a sigh as he watched the woman curled into a tight ball like a baby rabbit.
He hadn’t wanted to get tangled in any quarrels or disputes with this skittish woman in tow, so he had instinctively altered their routes—only to realize it might have made her even more anxious, drawing a bitter smile from him.
Asking why he was covering her face.
Seeing how utterly oblivious she was to how much her own face stood out made him feel even more exasperated than when she was a wailing baby who couldn’t understand a word. He tapped the back of her hand lightly.
“I avoided them because it’s a hassle. We get along fine. We won’t fight even if we run into each other.”
Elio swallowed dryly, listening intently to the man’s deep voice, and nodded while staring straight at a trash bin in front of them.
The man fell silent again, and the boisterous clamor of pilgrims and mercenaries erupted around them.
As night fell, harsh curses flew and glass bottles shattered, as if people had started picking fights with one another.
Elio fidgeted with her sweaty hands and pulled her hood down even further.
The man wrapped his forearm around her front.
Elio blinked rapidly, staring down at the firm forearm suddenly resting across her chest.
“…Rather than competing against others, I think it’s much cooler to overcome your own battles and move forward.”
Carlos chuckled in disbelief.
“You think I’d lose?”
“No. I believe in you, Sir.”
Elio shook her head vigorously and spoke firmly before sharing the chicken skewers in her hand with the children hovering nearby.
Carlos stared intently at the woman’s flushed cheeks. The shop’s yellow light sparkled softly over her rosy face.
“…You believe in me?”
“Yes. I believe you’re strong, and that you’re not a bad person.”
Elio swallowed the words that rose in her throat—that he had never once laid a hand on her.
A memory flashed through her mind of her Nanny, whom she had thought gentle her whole life, suddenly turning on her and hitting her.
Carlos smirked faintly and rolled up his sleeves.
“Based on what? You’re naive.”
“…Me? I’m not as naive as you think.”
Elio chewed slowly on the chicken skewer he had bought her, savoring each bite, and let out a soft laugh.
She couldn’t help but giggle at the absurd sight of Carlos scowling as he arm-wrestled the kids who had been hovering around him.
“What was that? Sir, did you lose?”
She thought that someone who, surprisingly enough, had a soft spot for animals and children and wore a portrait of his mother around his neck couldn’t possibly be a bad person.
❖ ❖ ❖
“Are you sure we’re really arriving today?”
Elio mumbled, curling against the carriage wall.
“We’ve arrived. Look outside.”
“……You’ve been saying we’ve arrived for a while now.”
“I told you, we’re really here.”
Carlos drew back the curtain, taking the wavy tips of Elio’s fluttering golden hair into his hand.
Elio rubbed her swollen eyelids from having slept so much and pressed herself close against the window. Poking her head out slightly as the carriage rattled along at a flying speed, an endlessly towering mountain range unfolded before her eyes.
“…Are those the Dragon Mountains?”
Elio parted her lips, unable to take her eyes off the scenery beyond the carriage window.
Her eyes narrowed against the relentless wind. Behind an ash-gray fortress wall as long as an entire plain, a colossal mountain range curved and stretched into the distance.
“How do you know about the Dragon Mountains?”
“It’s always on the first page of history books!”
Elio turned around from where she had been leaning close against the window.
“‘Even as a founding contributor of the empire, Schuppenhardt chose the most dangerous land as their fief! The land of death bordering the Dragon Mountains!’”
Carlos chuckled at her excited voice.
“You sound like a bard.”
“I actually heard it once from a real bard, too! It’s famous, isn’t it? The story of the friendship between the first Duke and the Black Dragon.”
Her eyes sparkling, Elio was once again captivated by the view outside. As the fortress grew closer, she tilted her head farther and farther back.
The gray fortress wall, rising sheer like a cliff as if a towering mountain had been sheared clean through with a single blade, reached toward the sky. Never in her life had she seen a wall so high.
It was so immense that it felt as though God had divided the world in two, declaring that beyond this point was no longer the realm of humans.
The saying that it was the largest fief in the Empire, cleaving the Southern Continent and the Northern Continent right down the middle, was indeed true.
Before long, the massive fortress gate loomed right ahead. She gazed entranced at the black banner fluttering vigorously above it.
Schuppenhardt’s golden crest, depicting a sword piercing golden wings, fluttered resplendently.
“Welcome back from your great journey! May the blessings of God Himmel and the courage of Archangel Euros be with you!”
Forty to fifty guardsmen, fully armored from head to toe, slammed their long spears firmly against the ground in salute.
Overwhelmed by the oppressive aura, Elio swallowed past her dry throat and bowed her head.
A rough cloud of dust billowed as the thick gates of Schweiz swung open.
Passing inside the fortress-like walls, a scene of such prosperity unfolded that it made the bard’s classic songs—about how it had returned to a land of death after the Black Dragon’s corruption—seem entirely unfounded.
“Ahaha, it’s Schuppenhardt!”
Children daring to shout the lord’s family name as they chased after the carriage, farmers holding pickaxes and waving enthusiastically—everyone looked completely peaceful.
They seemed to have reached the town center, as the lined-up restaurants were packed with people and hearty laughter rang out. Perhaps because the territory bordered the Kingdom of Cyprus, merchant wagons were packed tightly enough to fill the main thoroughfare.
As they sped down the central boulevard past merchant carriages clearing the way, the crowds along the walkways grew thicker, and the cheers of the fief’s residents roared in their ears.
“Death to monsters! Freedom to Schweiz!”
“Glory to Schuppenhardt, vanquisher of the Evil Dragon!”
Startled by the thunderous shouts of the people, Elio shrank back instinctively before squaring her shoulders as if nothing were wrong. Her heart beat rapidly against her ribs.
…How are there so many people?
The sight was astonishing, so completely different from Aquitaine, which had always been quiet and desolate.
When she had read about it in books, she had never imagined it would be such a bustling territory…
“Sir, aren’t you going to greet your people?”
Elio asked, clutching her chest where her heart pounded with anxious energy. Carlos gave a nod as if to say there was no need to look out, pulled up the cardigan slipping off her shoulder, and turned another page of his book.
“It seems like everyone wants to see your face, though…”
Elio pressed her legs tightly together where they touched the man’s solid thigh. Keeping her face hidden behind the window, she reached a trembling hand out of the carriage and caught a flower petal in her grasp.
“…Why are there so many lilac trees?”
Lilacs—the national flower of the Kingdom of Cyprus, said to dye the entire Northern Continent in purple—embroidered the whole main avenue of Schuppenhardt.
“My father planted them.”
“Ah… Does he like flowers?”
“No.”
“Then why…?”
“He thought my mother would like them.”
Elio looked at the utterly blunt man, her blue-green eyes shimmering faintly with wonder.
He must be… quite the romantic…
Then why is his son like this?
Absurdly enough, he seemed entirely unaffected by this brilliantly breathtaking sight.
……Did he take after his mother?
Elio gave a slight shrug of her somewhat drooping shoulders and took in the laughter overflowing outside the carriage.
Those happy faces, unburdened by a single worry like the midday sun, felt rather foreign and fascinating.
Her anxiety—that the people might believe the ridiculous newspaper allegations claiming she had assaulted this man and scream insults at her—gradually began to ease.
Contrary to the wizard’s frantic worries that the Commander’s honor would be dragged through the mud, the first-night scandal with her seemed not to have had the slightest impact on the young lord of this vast domain.
…Then again, who would ever believe this man was the victim?
“Sir, the people of Schuppenhardt are all so good-looking. Their smiles are lovely, too.”
Carlos looked toward the men at the end of Elio’s gaze and raised an eyebrow.
“……They look frail.”
Elio smiled along as she watched the beaming residents.
“Well, I happen to like pretty men.”
The calls of merchants hawking their wares, the sweet scent of street food—with all her senses coming alive, Elio whispered in a voice laced with excitement.
“Wow, steak is only two thousand shillings. It seems so much cheaper than in Aquitaine.”
“Commander! Are we tearing into some meat today?”
“And booze, too! Let’s bust open every keg after so long!”
The knights shouted toward the carriage window with boisterous laughter, their appetites whetted by the smell of steak.
“All right. Gather in the banquet hall.”
Elio let the conversation between Carlos and the knights wash over her as if it had nothing to do with her. Wondering if the inn where she would be staying served steak, she gazed toward the luxury inn district.
And as soon as Carlos finished speaking with his knights, she whispered with a look of deep concern.
