Chapter 9

Chapter 9

“Not going to... what?” Veleque stared at me blankly for a moment, then laughed. He seemed to have come to the conclusion that I was joking. “You seem to find new ways to vex me with every passing day. If that was your idea of a joke, it was hardly amusing.”

“I wasn’t joking.”

“Deborah, you really need to learn what constitutes an appropriate thing to speak out loud and what doesn’t. You’re saying that you plan to abandon the duty expected of all young noblewomen. Have you lost your mind, or are you set on joining a convent?”

My heart fluttered when he mentioned the convent—an ending I wanted to avoid at all costs.

“Behave yourself. Stop ruining our family’s reputation,” Veleque growled maliciously. When his retainers approached, he clucked his tongue and backed away from me. “We’ll talk about this later.”

“I have nothing more to say to you,” I disagreed, clenching my quivering fists.

“We will speak again, whether you like it or not. And as a final piece of heartfelt advice from your brother—give up on Pilav Montes already,” he said. “Louie Gazelle is a perfectly respectable young man. His house is wealthy. You’ll thank me later.”

With a pretentious smile, he patted me lightly on the shoulder. “You’re past the age of getting everything you want just handed to you, wouldn’t you say?”

Having said his piece, he strode quickly away.

A convent… I stood there silently for a while, massaging my aching temples.

* * *

After the verbal confrontation with Veleque, I fell into a state of panic for a while. Who knew he would end up shoving a man at me like that? Veleque’s influence in the family was far greater than my own, which made this situation a very serious one indeed.

This is driving me bananas. Deborah was turning nineteen this year. When she made her debut in society in the fall, she would be legally eligible to be married. At this rate, I’d have no choice but to marry that pervert Louie Gazelle…

“I’m done for.”

I hadn’t foreseen that such a terrible option awaited me in the story. This was probably another of the reasons why Deborah had been so hard on the female protagonist. Of course, the haughty Deborah had been unhappy to see that gazelle of a man shoved in her face.

In addition, the son of the House of Montes, someone she’d had her heart set on for a long time, had suddenly been doting on a girl from a destitute family. It was only to be expected that she was so frustrated whenever she lay eyes on Mia.

“God damn it!”

I was pretty frustrated myself. After my experience with the bully Kim Hanjun, I didn’t fancy the prospect of courting anyone in the first place. And Veleque was pushing me to marry a pervert? It was absurd.

I had a feeling things were going a little too well. Feeling anxious and upset, I beat against my soft pillow like it was a punching bag. I’d had no intention of doing anything cruel to the female protagonist, so I’d assumed that I’d at least easily be able to avoid ending up in a convent, which meant I could keep a hold of my current lifestyle.

“You there. Wait,” I said, shooting up from my bed, hair a disheveled rat’s nest atop my head, stopping a servant who’d just come in with some tea.

“Yes, my lady,” the maid said, putting down the tray. She went pale and quickly prostrated herself.

“What happens if a lady from a noble house refuses to take part in a marriage her house is trying to arrange? I’m suddenly dying to know.” I tugged at my hair, frustrated, and the maid turned a shade paler. As a rule, it was the crazy ones who were far more frightening than the actual villains.

“I-I’m sorry, but I’ve never heard of anything like that happening…”

“Well, be imaginative.”

“If you refused to marry…”

The maid’s words made me despair. If I insisted on staying unmarried I would end up with no surname. Thus, my social status would be stripped from me, and I’d be banished from the nobility—sent to some remote convent. That can’t be right. This is no different from the way the novel ended.

Perhaps I would end up in a convent no matter what I did. Veleque’s dumbfounded reaction to hearing me say that I refused to marry was beginning to make sense. So it was truly that ridiculous a notion, huh? With a bitter taste in my mouth, I pressed the maid for more information, grasping at straws.

“Odd. Why does no lady ever refuse to get married? Their family might try to pair them with someone they don’t want after all.” Surely there were exceptions to every rule. “There has to be someone who didn’t marry, right? I’m just curious. You know, I don’t sleep well when I’m fixated on something. Are you going to take responsibility if I lose sleep over this?” I said, using this absurd line of reasoning as an excuse to question her ruthlessly. I had a feeling I could get more out of the maid if I just pushed a little harder.

Having read the novel, I knew full well just how well-versed in everything regarding high society the maids actually were. The lifeblood of servants working for nobles’ households was rumors and gossip. The maids’ favorite pastime was to gather during breaks and gossip.

“Keep thinking until you recall such an exception,” I said, glowering at her as if to say she wasn’t going anywhere until I was satisfied.

The maid broke out in a sweat, thought for a long moment, then cried, “Oh! A young noblewoman once eloped with a commoner mercenary after falling in love with him.”

“And?”

“The lady earned herself a title, so the situation resolved itself. She was a class five fire mage, and I’m told she joined her husband, who was a mercenary leader, in battle, and it was her contribution that led to the defeat of an enemy nation.”

“So she won herself a title by means of distinguished military service?”

“Yes.”

Oh, so simple. If I want to have things my way, all I have to do is go to war and seize an enemy nation’s territory as my own. Damn it, I’m not anywhere close to being a class five mage. In fact, I can’t even use mana in the first place…

I was floundering, drowning in an even deeper pit of despair when a fragmented memory regarding titles suddenly came to me. There had been a house in the novel that Deborah despised because the previous generation’s lord had purchased the title from a bankrupt house.

Someone was able to buy a title, without going to war. What if I bought a title myself and formed a house of my own? Then I would not have to marry the Gazelle man. If I was the lord of my own house, who would dare force me to marry?

“One could purchase a title to avoid marriage, Isn’t that so?”

The maid hesitated. “Y-yes. But as far as I know, even the lowest of titles, like a baron, would be astronomical in price.

No matter how expensive a title was, it was far more attainable to me than fighting in and winning a war. “How much are they?”

“I couldn’t possibly even guess, my lady. I’m deeply sorry.”

It wasn’t common practice to purchase titles, anyhow. I supposed she couldn’t be expected to know. “Get out. I’m sleepy.” I sent the terrified maid from my room, then shot out of bed.

Let’s take stock of my possessions first.

* * *

“No way… There’s so much. What am I, a treasure-hoarding dragon?” I was shocked when I saw the countless jewelry boxes Deborah owned and all the gems within. Deborah had so many jewels, their value was roughly equivalent to the average noblewoman’s dowry.

She had led such a luxurious life. I’m very grateful. Thanks to the piles of gems now sitting in front of me, I was able to regain some semblance of calm. There’s also a decent amount of gems attached to all of my dresses.

If I squeezed the House of Seymour dry and worked on building a secret fund, maybe I would be able to afford a title in the end. The only issue was time. Considering the usual age women get married, I might be able to delay my marriage for two or three years.

Young noble ladies here usually married between the ages of nineteen and twenty-two. Many ladies had begun attending advanced courses at the Academy, and so the average age of marriage had gone up by around two years. I supposed that was better than nothing.

And thankfully, I’m also attending the Academy right now. Theoretically speaking, there should be no problem if I can delay my marriage and save up enough money to buy a title in the meantime… Veleque won’t take charge of the house before I manage to buy one, will he?

I shook my head after a moment’s thought. Duke Seymour was the only class seven mage in the empire, and his influence over the Magic Tower was immense. Because Henrique Seymour, the youngest son, was still very young, he would not make Veleque the head of the household any time soon. Even so, there was no way to be sure. It would be wise to save up the money I needed as quickly as possible.

So money solves all problems in this world, too. I was brainstorming all the ways I could gather more gold when someone knocked on my door. Unexpectedly, it was the duke.

“Hello, Father,” I said, quickly pushing my notebook into the drawer and rising to my feet.

“Don’t tell me I interrupted your... studies?” the duke said, staring as if he couldn’t quite believe his eyes. Deborah almost never made use of the study, so I could understand his confusion.

“It’s all right. I’ll have the servants bring some black tea and refreshments.”

“All right.”

I sat opposite the duke in the drawing room next to my study. He was a reticent man, and I didn’t have much to say to him, so we sat blanketed in heavy silence. This is so awkward. I fidgeted a bit, then plopped a sugar cube into my tea.

“I can give you another letter when you leave,” I said finally.

The duke gave a short sigh. “I didn’t come here today for a letter.”

W-wait, don’t tell me you’re here to tell me I’m to be married? I nervously waited for him to continue.

“Deborah, about that poem you read to me. Could you read it to me again in the future?”

This was not at all what I’d been expecting him to say. “I’ll read it to you whenever the white flowers bloom and whenever it snows heavily,” I promised, implying that I wanted to stay in the mansion for many seasons to come.

The duke, however, only sipped his tea impassively in response.

He isn’t an easy man, to be sure. Silently sucking on my bottom lip, I plucked a snack from one of the plates.

“That poet wrote quite a few poems. It couldn’t have been easy to find the one mentioned in the letter, since Marienne didn’t include the title. It must have taken you quite some time.”

It probably hadn’t taken as long as the duke might have expected it to. South Korea was a country in which high schoolers were expected to be experts at speed-reading poems in order to pass the college admission exam. Not that I could explain that to him.

“I was lucky,” I said.

“Lucky? You seem to be on your best behavior these days, but excessive humility isn’t admirable either, Deborah. The same goes for repeatedly refusing when someone offers you a boon,” he said. “I meant it when I told you I wanted to give you that which you desire. It took me a while, but I realized that you were sincere when you said you wanted to be the link between Marienne and myself. I’m not testing you this time, so please tell me what it is that you want.”

I felt like it would be foolish to continue to refuse him when he was asking so sincerely. Never once in my life had I been given the chance to ask for something I wanted. I felt nervous.

Wetting my lips with a sip of tea, I began slowly, “In that case...”