Chapter 7

“How did it go?”

The moment I returned home, Rieard asked anxiously.

He thought I had gone out to see Ian’s injuries with my own eyes.

“It failed.”

I answered curtly without even looking at him.

“At the rate the building collapsed, Ian could definitely dodge it. You should have used a more expensive bomb.”

Even in the middle of the whole affair, it was painfully obvious that they had used a cheap bomb just to save money.

Rieard sighed and rubbed his forehead.

“Damn.”

Then he added with a huff,

“It’s fine. There will be plenty of opportunities in the future.”

Yes, there would still be plenty of opportunities.

Plenty of opportunities for us to end up in prison.

This time in particular had been extremely dangerous.

Later, when Ian became suspicious and investigated the entire incident, the Hibiscus incident ended up adding “attempted assassination of a prince” to the list of charges.

Rieard knew that Ian regularly reserved a secluded table at Hibiscus.

That was why he had planned everything this way. He had never imagined that the person Ian was meeting would be Robert.

Well, with Rieard’s intelligence network, that would have been impossible to find out.

I left him behind, went upstairs to my room, and flopped down onto my bed.

That Ian and Robert were close enough to meet regularly, I mean.

If I were a prince, I would probably want to be friends with Ian too.

He was the strongest swordsman in the entire world, had a decent personality, came from an incredible family, and had absolutely no interest in politics.

I’m jealous of the male lead buff… Sigh.

Other than the fact that he wasn’t particularly warm and sociable, he really had everything a male lead could possibly want.

Then again, that was probably why he would eventually end up with a perfect female lead who was just as flawless as he was.

Anyway, since this novel was a romance-fantasy, Ian did eventually get involved in a romance plot.

Of course, the comments had been rather lukewarm.

Ian was simply too perfect and handled everything so sensibly that many readers complained that “that’s exactly why he’s boring.”

There was nothing about him to hate, but there was also nothing particularly memorable about him.

He was just an utterly normal person.

Well, even so, normal and handsome is probably the best kind of man to live with. At least he doesn’t have any obvious drawbacks.

A crazy, perverted male lead might be fun to watch when he belonged to someone else, but he was absolutely not boyfriend material for me.

Besides, Ian was the one man in this world who would never get romantically entangled with me.

I should just find a handsome, ordinary man who’s similar to Ian, but a slightly inferior version.

Anyway, I had a feeling Ian wasn’t going to let this incident slide.

He would definitely grab me and demand to know what had happened.

Only after coming up with a vague excuse did I finally settle down for the night.

If he started interrogating me too closely, I could always just throw out another random insult or curse and run away.

It was actually somewhat fortunate that the original me had behaved so irrationally and senselessly without any rhyme or reason.

No matter what outrageous thing I did, there was rarely any need for it to make sense.

But the next day, I found myself facing a situation I had never anticipated.

“Greetings.”

The pink-haired young man who was always by Ian’s side had come all the way to my house himself.

“My name is Aaron Rainfield.”

He had a cute-looking face and smiled brightly at me.

There was a playful quality to his manner of speaking as well, making him seem like Ian’s complete opposite.

I had naturally expected Ian to show up, so I was somewhat taken aback.

“I’m Lord Ian’s adjutant, but I’m also Lady Leslie’s—well, the Duchess’s—chatting companion. I mean, conversation partner.”

Aaron had always looked at me with curious eyes, but he had never actually spoken to me before.

Then again, I had never had anything to do with anyone from the Wadeiros Knights except Ian.

“Lady Leslie wanted to see you, so I came to escort you.”

Lady Leslie?

The Duchess of Wadeiros?

In other words, Ian’s mother?

Wait, what is going on?

I had imagined the ending where Ian reported me and I was thrown into prison countless times.

But being summoned by Ian’s mother?

That had never even crossed my mind.

Leslie Wadeiros was also a swordswoman.

A genius swordswoman from a commoner background, she too had been stuck in second place for most of her life.

The person who had always defeated her was the Duke of Wadeiros.

Apparently, she and the Duke had been fierce rivals when they were young.

I had heard that after she was injured and could no longer hold a sword, she fell into a long period of depression, and that was when the Duke of Wadeiros proposed to her.

I knew all these stories because my mother, Caitlin, was constantly gossiping about them.

To her, the fact that a poor commoner swordswoman had somehow managed to “snag” a duke was so unbearably infuriating that she couldn’t stand it.

She had made up all sorts of stories.

That Leslie had obviously pretended to be sick on purpose.

That she lacked refinement because she was a commoner.

That she must have seduced the Duke with her swordsmanship.

And so on.

Despite all that, Leslie had never shown the slightest interest in Caitlin.

No, she simply wasn’t the sort of person who took anything too seriously in the first place.

Even when her son, Ian, rose to become the strongest swordsman in the world, she had merely shrugged it off.

In her mind, it was only natural that the son of the first- and second-ranked swordsmen would become number one himself.

Other than that, I didn’t know much about her.

Half of everything Caitlin had babbled about was probably nothing more than rumor anyway.

All I really knew was that Leslie was an easygoing person who didn’t particularly bother hiding the fact that she had come from a commoner background.

For the first time, I entered the Wadeiros Ducal residence through the front gate in a carriage instead of climbing over the wall.

Of course, it was also my first time riding in such a luxurious carriage.

“You really didn’t have to send a carriage like this.”

I had casually spoken to Ian in informal language despite being a commoner.

So I figured I should speak informally to his adjutant, Aaron, too, or the whole hierarchy would get confusing.

Aaron didn’t seem to mind at all.

“It’s fine. I needed the carriage anyway.”

“……”

“I’ve been listening to your recent insults with great interest, Lady Annabelle.”

Aaron sat across from me and proceeded to say something completely ridiculous with the utmost seriousness.

“To be honest, I wasn’t particularly fond of your old insults. They were rather vulgar and crude. But ever since the sandwich curse, every single one has been a masterpiece. I didn’t want to miss even a single word.”

So I told him about the curse he’d missed the previous night.

Aaron nodded thoughtfully.

“Exactly. The key point is that the toenail doesn’t actually come off. It hangs there, barely attached.”

He seemed like a young man with a screw loose, but Aaron Rainfield was also an extremely skilled swordsman.

“When that happens, it bothers you for days.”

He had participated in a swordsmanship tournament once, when he was twelve, and had never entered another tournament afterward.

Unfortunately, his very first opponent had been fourteen-year-old Ian.

He was eliminated in the first round and, from then on, devoted himself entirely to judging the other competitors from the audience seats.

Whenever someone asked him why, he would answer that he was never going to beat Ian for first place anyway, so losing to the number-one swordsman in the first round was actually the superior strategy for preserving his pride.

It wasn’t entirely wrong.

Because of that, there had never really been a way to properly evaluate Aaron’s skill.

But the sword aura I sensed from him was definitely no ordinary thing.

There was a reason he was Ian’s adjutant despite there being no official ranking system.

“But…”

As I stepped out of the carriage, I cautiously asked,

“Why exactly did the Duchess summon me?”

“She must want to see you.”

Aaron avoided saying anything important and instead enthusiastically continued talking about things that weren’t important at all.

“And the important thing is that this is an invitation to lunch. Lady Leslie specifically requested it, so my father personally stepped in and prepared an excellent course meal.”

“Your… father?”

“Yes. My father is Oscar Rainfield.”

I stared blankly at Aaron with an expression that probably said, Do I really need to know the name of the duke’s chef?

Aaron, on the other hand, blinked at me as if he were even more suspicious.

“Isn’t this the part where you’re supposed to be surprised?”

“Why?”

“I said Oscar Rainfield. The famous Oscar Rainfield.”

“……Is he famous?”

“You don’t know the Rainfield Restaurant?”

Even after digging through my previous memories, I couldn’t find anything.

Aaron sighed and shook his head.

“Lady Annabelle Nadit… You really are a fool who knows nothing except Ian Wadeiros…”

I really wished he wouldn’t make statements that were so open to debate.

When I didn’t respond, he tilted his head and muttered to himself.

“That’s strange. I distinctly remember hearing that the Nadit mother and son always celebrated their birthdays at the main branch of our restaurant.”

“Mother and Rieard?”

Come to think of it, whenever their birthdays came around, Caitlin and Rieard always went out together in the evening.

Seeing my complicated expression, Aaron declared firmly,

“Let’s just taste the food first.”

I had come because Ian’s mother had summoned me, but somehow the entire purpose of this visit had shifted toward lunch.

It was almost absurd.

Who in their right mind would simply forget everything because someone offered them food in a situation like this?

I was exactly that crazy person.

Not only did I get over it easily—I got over it insanely easily.

This is crazy. This isn’t food. It’s a work of art.

Every single dish was unbelievably delicious.

Of course, Lady Leslie was also eating with almost military determination.

By now, she had been upgraded in my mind from merely “the Duchess” to “Lady Leslie.”

She had black hair and red eyes, and she was incredibly down-to-earth. She had said that we should eat first and talk afterward, and she was genuinely doing nothing but concentrating on her meal.

“The first thing I did after becoming Duchess was offer Oscar Rainfield a position as the head chef of the ducal residence.”

Lady Leslie spoke with determination.

“It took three years to convince him to move into the ducal residence, though.”

Lady Leslie and I talked about nothing but food throughout the meal.

Even Oscar himself, the chef, personally came out to serve the main course.

I had vaguely imagined a big, burly middle-aged man, so I was surprised by his sharper-than-expected appearance.

He had pinkish hair and blue eyes and was a tall, handsome middle-aged man.

He looks strangely similar to Aaron.

Aaron will probably look like that when he gets older.

“I…”

I said while eating almost frantically,

“I’ve honestly never eaten food this delicious before! And I’ve never had a meal where so many dishes kept coming out one after another!”