Violet Zerotta’s Hasty Marriage - Chapter 83

Until he reached a certain age, Aldrick had no particular interest in how Violet saw him. It wasn’t indifference so much as ignorance.

Whether she viewed him with affection or pity didn’t matter much. As long as she smiled at him before his eyes and occasionally came to see him, that was enough for him.

He had no way of knowing why Violet treated him well, even if it meant enduring the scornful gazes of the villagers.

Likewise, he didn’t fully understand his own feelings for Violet.

When he saw her smiling face and felt his heart race or his face flush, he just thought that was how it was supposed to be.

He believed the emotions he felt were simply because she was the only one who cared for him, his only friend. That she was someone special to him, different from what he felt for others.

It wasn’t until he had grown a little older that he learned Violet, too, was merely a child who had sought him out because she needed someone to lean on in her own loneliness and hardship.

Only then did Aldrick understand. The feelings he held for Violet weren’t mere fondness or friendship.

Without even realizing it, Violet had become his entire world.

He loved everything about her—every action, every gesture, every word she spoke to him, even the tiniest expression. Her lovely brown eyes, her tousled chestnut hair, and the smile she gave him like spring sunlight.

Even her nagging, which she threw at him often, was dear to him.

He found it adorable when she pretended to be an adult and treated him like a baby simply because she was three years older.

The problem was that Violet didn’t feel the same. To her, he was just a younger brother.

Aldrick found that unbearable, but there was nothing he could do about it.

He resented the fact that he was younger than her and wished with all his heart to grow up as quickly as possible. And if he was going to grow up, he wanted to become someone impressive.

That’s why Aldrick, rare for an orphan, lived a life of diligence and sincerity. Looking back, it was all because of Violet.

Around the age of ten, Aldrick took on all sorts of chores around the village and learned any work he could get his hands on. He wanted to earn a lot of money, no matter what it took. Even at that young age, he understood that money was what he needed most.

At the very least, he needed money to repay all that Violet had given him.

Later, it became about wanting to make her happy, and to not be an embarrassing husband in her eyes.

At the root of it all was one constant reason: Violet.

At twelve, he caught the eye of a knight from the lord’s castle and decided to become a squire. Again, all because of Violet.

Even a boy could tell that a knightly husband seemed far more respectable than a mere porter.

From age twelve to fifteen, Aldrick served as a squire to the knights of the lord’s castle. Around fifteen, a knight from the capital recommended him for promotion, and he became a junior knight.

That knight from the capital would later become the current commander of the order.

After being officially knighted, Aldrick was assigned to the capital’s knight order and had to spend most of the year there.

He later regretted not staying as a knight at the lord’s castle and remaining in Wölze, but by then, it was too late.

And it was around that very time.

Just as Aldrick’s stays in the capital were growing longer, Violet began to blossom, not as a foolish little girl, but as a woman.

Watching her bloom delicately like a newly budding flower made Aldrick anxious day by day.

She was kind and gentle, and more than one man in the village had started eyeing her. But he, Aldrick, was still too young.

What if someone else came along and snatched up Violet before he had even finished growing up? The thought nearly drove Aldrick mad in the capital.

It was nothing short of a miracle that no such thing had happened by the time Aldrick turned sixteen and reached adulthood.

If not for the Baron’s pride—who, despite his daughter’s illegitimacy, refused to marry her off to a commoner—and the declining state of the Zerotta family, Violet might have already become another man’s wife.

And just because it hadn’t happened yet didn’t mean it wouldn’t. There were no guarantees.