The Sixth Plan. To Know Thy Enemy. (12)
“You have to take care of yourself first before you can take care of your own husband and children. You are the Duchess, so why don’t you just hand it to others and let them do it if you don’t wish to do it by yourself?”
My mother dried my hair off quite skillfully and combed it well to make it all shiny—as she still kept on and on. Well, even before I got married like this, when I was still with the Viscount, my mother used to dry my hair like this. Swish swish—the constant sound of brushing and the teeth of a comb that continued to sweep lightly through my scalp. I would then doze off at her touch before being made fun of by my brothers. I even had to listen to my mother nagging me all the while one-sidedly, just like right now itself.
“Okay? Amanda? From now on, take care of yourself no matter what anyone says. You’ve been so nice ever since you were still very young. No matter how good of a friend you are, why did you have to step out and pull on that Agatha girl’s hair when the Young Lady of Count Petrika was simply staying still instead? You shouldn’t have done just the same as the Young Lady of Count Petrika after all.”
The old story that was suddenly revealed had been quite different from what I remembered before. The old story of Agatha and I when I just couldn’t bear to see Agatha bullying Merilyn, we then grabbed a hold onto each other’s hair before we started fighting between ourselves. At that time, my mother told me that I did good. It had been quite bad to fight with a friend, but it was still good that I stepped up in order to help Merilyn anyway.
I became startled and tried to turn my head, but it was impossible since Mother still held my head tightly in place. She then kept talking to me.
“I’m saying this now, but I never liked the fact that you were friendly with the Young Lady of Count Petrika. I didn’t want my pretty and precious daughter to be criticized from the side. On top of that, I never wanted you to do all those dangerous things while the Young Lady simply pretended to be nice all by herself. I never liked it at all, but I didn’t want to stop you just because I was the one who hated it, so I just put up with it instead. After the Young Lady of the Count got married, I thought that my own daughter would start to bloom now, but she even went on and passed her bloody son over to you right after.”
“Mom…”
“You’re being so kind again, accepting her child… Hah, what’s the point of talking anyway. It’s just that the insides of this mother are rotten to its core.”
When Gellerhard remarried me and I were to soon become Carlos’s mother in Merilyn’s place, my entire family opposed my decision, but my mother was the one who objected to it the most. After I still dared to marry him, Mother even declared that she never wished to see my face. Mother simply said that it wasn’t the fact that she had gotten angry because I had remarried a man with a child, but she was actually more angry that I had taken Merilyn’s place instead. Hearing that had actually made my life very difficult indeed.
“I still thought that it was fortunate to see you’ve gotten married and are now living well…”
I instinctively knew what kind of words she had to swallow back. Theodora, that pretty daughter of mine and Gellerhard’s. From the moment she found out that I was pregnant, it became difficult, but right at the time when I had given birth, that child immediately turned into my joy. My daughter, whom I wasn’t able to keep after all.
“…Did you know that the maid who tried to feed me that strange drink during my pregnancy was run over by Baron Viette’s carriage and died on the spot?”
Count Petrika had been trying to harm that child ever since she was still in my stomach.
“And that the maid is one of the Count of Petrika’s?”
“Mandy.”
“Did you know that dad knew that Baron Viette was like that, but he didn’t actually care to tell me?”
It was something that I simply forgot about or never wanted to think about, so I didn’t even look at it thoroughly. This time, I had been able to turn my head since Mother was already hanging her head down. The moment I met her face to face, I could just tell that Mother was feeling absolutely sorry for me.
“Your father hasn’t known him for that long. But I am not making any excuses for your father. He suspected it at first and thought that maybe someone had brought in a maid in order to alienate us, you as well as the Count of Petrika. He even suspected that it was solely the daughter of Count Emile who had been scheming to take over the place of the Duchess. He didn’t want to believe in the simplest answer that Count Petrika was actually the one who had been trying to harm you and Theodora, so he kept on wandering around the whole time.”
“……”
“Your father was a knight who served Count Petrika. Your grandfather, the late Viscount Bentta, was like that as well. In fact, your father has been serving that Count Petrika ever since he was born. So did I… and so do your brothers now. I’m not asking you to understand all of this. You thought that it was strange even when you were still young.”
Within which territory, under which Lord and with what kind of status did one have when being born. That was the determining factor of life in this world. Only a reincarnated person would feel frustrated while all the other family members who had been serving their Lord for generations did not even question it at all.
My father had trusted his Lord. And with the clear evidence out now, my father had to make his choice. And my mother’s choice seemed to be rather obvious.
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