Chapter 44
As I only looked down at the proposal letter and still said nothing, Father poured out his frustration as though this was a situation that would make even ghosts wail.
“I have absolutely no idea how this happened, Giselle. How this man knew you and sent a proposal letter is utterly…”
Silence continued for a moment, as though he was trying to calm the emotion surging up. Father’s words continued again before long.
“At first, I thought my eyes had gone wrong. I thought, I am not yet of an age where my sight should dim, so has death come this close? Only after checking several more times did I realize that neither my eyes nor the letter were wrong.”
“……”
“I should have known from the moment the envelope was a black color that could not have been more ominous! Ahh…”
There was no way Father did not know that refusing to open the letter would not allow him to avoid the proposal.
Even so, Father deeply lamented and regretted the fact that he had opened the misfortune that had happened to fly in by chance without any suspicion.
“…Did you check the family crest?”
When I suddenly raised a question, Father nodded weakly.
“Yes, I checked. It was unmistakably the crest of House Barietsch.”
“It was sealed with red sealing wax on a black envelope?”
“…Yes. There too, a crow, the crest of House Barietsch, was engraved. It’s certain. This really was sent by Grand Duke Barietsch.”
With Father’s despairing confirmation, the possibility that the proposal letter was not from Raven Barietsch completely disappeared.
Without anyone knowing, the corners of my mouth slowly rose.
At last. The letter I had been waiting for over three years had finally arrived.
“Of all people, for the Barietsch family to send a proposal letter to you…! I simply cannot understand it.”
“……”
“What should we do about this, hm?”
Father asked me in a voice steeped in grief and despair, as though clinging to me.
There was no way Father had not thought about a method to settle this worst possible situation. If there was anyone in this world who least wanted to hand his daughter over to Raven, it was him.
He must have failed to find an answer despite thinking in many directions, and was seeking an answer from me as his final hope.
But unlike Father’s wish, I had been counting the days until Raven’s letter arrived. Since this was an inner thought that could not be discovered by others, I merely composed my expression and asked while pretending not to know.
“We can’t refuse the proposal, can we?”
“……”
Father answered with his expression instead. His complexion, which had already not been good, now looked almost no different from a corpse.
Even if our household was one of the most prominent families in the Arvasia Empire, we were not to the extent that we could compare to House Barietsch. There was no telling what sort of retaliation would come if we refused the proposal.
Above all, the private soldiers Raven commanded were famous for using dark arts that humans could not approach and magic that had clearly been obtained by selling their souls to demons. Moreover, vast mineral veins ran through his land, so he even controlled more than half of the minerals circulated in the empire.
Anyone could easily guess that, through the overwhelming wealth and military forces Raven possessed, his retaliation would be anything but ordinary.
That was the reason people avoided and shunned him, yet in the end feared him.
“I’m not sure why the Grand Duke sent me a proposal letter either, Father. I have hardly participated in social activities.”
However, to me, Raven was not someone frightening. Rather, I wanted nothing more than him.
I brazenly spoke with a shameless face.
“Is there nothing that comes to mind?”
“Not at all.”
The image of the crow I had sent away three years ago came to mind, but I gently shook my head.
Father groaned, as though troubled, and crumpled his body onto the sofa. While Father sank into deep worry, Mother, who had only been shedding tears with a face that would not have made it strange for her to faint at any moment, opened her mouth.
“How could I send you to that man? Do you know how I raised you? I would rather die than see you marry that filthy and utterly impure man.”
Mother burst into indignation. But that did not mean she had any sharp method either.
I watched my parents’ moods for a while. Then, soon, I carefully put one method I had been thinking about all along into words.
“If it’s difficult to refuse his proposal, how about entering an engagement first?”
“What did you say? Are you saying you’ll become engaged to that Grand Duke Barietsch? Are you serious, Giselle?”
Immediately, Father opened his eyes wide with both agitation and worry and shouted angrily, spitting as he spoke. Mother looked at me with a horrified gaze.
Enduring their gazes, I adjusted my posture, straightened my back, and answered calmly.
“Father, please calm down for a moment and hear me out until the end.”
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