The sunlight was streaming down at the end of spring, on a neatly arranged assortment of sweets on the garden table, but I only listened to the female noble in front of me while asionally responding to her.
Sitting across from me, chattering away for thest hour was Senior Viscountess Dani Felhi-Berendorf, aunt to Senior Baron Felhi, a financial minister of the pce, and she was a domain lord from the Artsbelf region northwest of the royal pce.
“Anyways, that knight really couldn’t read the mood! Choosing something like earrings to give a woman, he reallycks consideration!”
Since Earl Terejia was currently boating on the pond with the other male nobles, and other than the servants, only this woman was left with me, but her topics weren’t really something that would be meant for a six year old. I wonder if she’s actually saying all this to Kamil standing behind me who was being so still all this time like a statue.
At neen years old, she was actually younger than her nephew Baron Felhi, she had gotten married at sixteen and became a widowst year when her husband passed away, and she was only interested in the romance gossip between men and women at the royal pce.
Since her husband had passed away, she inherited his position and became the Viscountess of a small domain near the royal capital, but she left its management almost entirely up to her head steward, and it seems that she lives here in the royal capital instead.
Having her dumped on me as my conversation partner without taking into consideration the difference between our ages, of course this had to be an episode from my entrance into the florid noble society. She started from which young noblemen were nice and handsome, and continued with who seemed to getting along with each other and who danced with who. And currently, she’s getting heated up after she reached the topic of recalling about various unfortunate men.
“Ahh…… Is it that bad to give women earrings as a present?”
“It’smon sense for western nobles. Earrings should given from a woman to the man they love. For men, they usually only gift them to other men as a sign of true friendship.”
“I understand, so that’s how it was.”
What’s with this custom. A man giving another man an essory as a sign of true friendship, seems like such a mysterious custom to me, so I replied reflexively with a perfunctory answer.
“It’s a venerable tradition. In the ancient story about Ugaria’s knights, two men who shared an earring each would protect each other’s backs on the battlefield.”
What’s with this, I wonder if this was a roundabout way of expressing homosexuality back in the day for them?
Two men sending essories to each other, no matter how I look at it, I can’t see it as simply dering true friendship to each other. When I nonchntly checked Kamil’s expression as he stood behind me, he seemed slightly ufortable, and he didn’t really seem convinced either. It seems that my sense was most likely urate.
However, if there really are records of the country that came before the Holy Ar Xia Kingdom, Ugaria, then it does make sense that such a custom is present in western Arxia.
Western Arxia has a strong sense for preserving traditions and customs from the Ugarian era. Since the Jugfena region has its own customs left by ancient times, probably the entirety of Arxia is like that as well.
“That’s why, for a man to give a woman earrings as a present, is like dering he doesn’t see her as a woman. If only he had ever been to the royal capital, of course he should have known!”
As Viscountess Berendorf got even more heated up while remembering that man, I just replied is that so, and pretended to be taking her seriously. Right now, Earl Terejia is probably speaking to her nephew Baron Felhi about the main issue, and I was only speaking with her just in case.
When the nobles returned from their boating trip, today’s tea party changed locations to a different house for dinner.
Today’s goal was to get as much financial assistance from the kingdom as possible from the financial minister Baron Felhi and his noble colleagues, and since the earl had already contacted them about the issue via pigeon before, today we’re here to greet them as a matter of courtesy.
In fact, it seems that we’re staying here for an extra day in the royal capital specially so that I can make some connections with the nobles in the royal capital. Since we had ounted for an extra day’s time while visiting the royal capital, this is no problem.
“What happened?”
“There’s no problem. Originally, I had loaned money to their fathers several times before as well.”
Earl Terejia unceremoniously returned with a nonchnt tone of voice. This earl, he didn’t simply have connections, he used debts from their parents’ generation to choose coborators to work with this time, eh. Even I felt slightly chilly at his outstandingpetence and abilities.
For something he did a generation ago to still have such arge impact, noble society must be indeedpletely interconnected. When I thought about how he managed to increase the budget for financial support from the kingdom for the refugees to 1.5 times its original amount, I carved how important these types of things were into my memory.
The tea party during the day had been at Viscount Avon’s older sister’s house, and when we hurriedly joined the private dinner at Earl Trada’s house, we received a rather strange level of wee for just Earl Terejia.
Well, after all, Earl Terejia is the younger brother of Marquis Rittergau, who is the prime minister as well as the Terejia family head. While he’s in the countryside now, there’s still probably many people that want a good rtion with him simply because of who his older brother is.
As if to prove me right, Earl Terejia was immediately surrounded by people, while Kamil and I went around greeting the important nobles courteously, then udia joined us for some reason, and the three of us quietly had some food in a corner of this venue.
“W, why isn’t Charlie wearing a dress and you’re in knight attire instead?”
“There’s no time or money to get aplete set of dresses or essories. Besides, in the House of Lords it’s been determined that the proper wear for minors should be knight attire.”
As we enjoyed the beef braised in red wine, I answered Kamil who seemed to be smirking for some reason with today’s excuse.
In Arxia, males have priority for session to the peerage, so there wasn’t even a precedent where an underage girl has seeded to the peerage before. Normally there would be more rtives. In my case, since my father had done his best to eradicate all his own rtives apart from his children, I was in the unusual situation of ending up being the only person with inheritance rights. Come to think of it, although he’s my father, that person might end up in the history books as one of the most evil viins ever.
So because of that, birthday celebrations for nobles with peerage had only rules for boys, and their formal wear was supposed to be knight attire for the same reason. And since I feel that wearing dresses is troublesome, it’s actually something I wee.
“How nice, Elise-dono. I’d also like to be in knight attire rather than my dress.”
“My name’s not Elise, it’s Eliza.”
This time udia had mixed up my name with Elise’s, and she was wearing a sky blue dress. She’s tall and slender with a good sense of style, she’s quite an eye-catching beauty. Since she usually liked to dress in men’s shirts and shorts to move about easier, today’s was a rare appearance for her. However, just like usual she had a mountain of food on her tes, and there was nothingdylike about her.
And so, we spent some time chatting and having light-hearted fun, but Kamil who had beenughing suddenly fixed his line of sight on someone.
“……Ah, he saw us, Charlie. Over there.”
“Hm?”
I looked over at the direction he indicated. Someone unexpected was standing there, what’s this, I turned around reflexively, he noticed me looking at him as well, and he smiled mysteriously just like before.
It was Margrave Molton.
His beautiful silver hair was shining brilliantly under the light of the chandelier.