Chapter 13: The Count's Daughter
Adela stared intently at the landscape through the windows of her luxurious carriage, escorted by a small retinue of her father's knights. Her golden hair, tied in a low ponytail, fell down her back and shimmered under the sunlight, which illuminated her face and enhanced her natural beauty. The glow accentuated her sapphire-blue eyes, and even though she was only fifteen, the sky-blue dress she wore highlighted her developing figure—one that would undoubtedly only improve with time.
She had traveled a great distance to reach her uncle's humble barony, all because she had been betrothed against her will to her older cousin. From what she remembered of the last time she had seen him, the boy had looked more dead than alive, and yet—somehow she couldn't comprehend—he had managed to reach the age of twenty.
Honestly, she had no idea how such a frail, sickly young man had survived for so long. At the moment, though, she was angrier at her father than worried about her cousin. She knew perfectly well that she was being used to secure a stake in Kufstein's rich iron mines. As a nobleman's daughter, she was nothing more than a political tool to forge alliances, and she was not pleased with that reality.
Even so, she obeyed her father's wishes and demanded to meet the man she would eventually marry. That only led to a full month of evasions and delays for the first meeting, to the point that she was forced to leave her home and travel across the entire Duchy of Austria just to see him.
From her perspective, her fiancé's and his family's behavior was deeply improper. Clearly, something was wrong with his health; at least, that was her conclusion. And if it turned out that he was too ill to travel, she would convince her father to break the engagement.
Upon entering the town of Kufstein, she immediately noticed black smoke rising into the air. Her first assumption was that there was a fire, but to her surprise, the peasants were running toward the smoky area instead of away from it. As if, rather than danger, something important was happening. Intrigued, she ordered the coachman to approach so she could investigate.
After stepping down from the carriage and venturing into what a sign identified as the barony's new industrial sector, her gaze did not fall upon the strange machinery producing smoke, but on a tall and surprisingly handsome young man. His black hair framed his face, and his steel-gray eyes shone like two silver moons. Despite wearing the finest clothes among everyone present, he stood beside a villager with one arm casually draped around the old man's neck as if they were the best of friends.
Adela stopped paying attention to her surroundings entirely. Her whole focus settled on him, whom she recognized almost instantly as her cousin, despite the many years that had passed since they last saw each other.
"Rose…?" she asked aloud, incredulous. Her cheeks ignited in a deep red upon seeing how unbelievably attractive her once-sickly cousin had become.
And although her voice was barely a whisper drowned out by the roar of machinery, Rose heard her. However, assuming she was just a village girl, he ignored her for the moment, thinking he could address her later. His attention remained fixed on the machinery: the Bessemer converter was about to pour its load of molten steel into the factory, where it would be processed into ingots. The slag, as a byproduct, would be removed to be turned into phosphate fertilizer according to his instructions.
Of course, Adela didn't hear a single word he was saying. She remained in a sort of trance, moving almost automatically toward him while her knights cleared the way to escort her. Rose, oblivious to the scene, continued speaking with Ludwig.
"Ludwig, you haven't disappointed me. With this first batch, we'll be able to use the profits to get the mines running at full capacity. We should have an overabundance of steel by the end of the year," the heir declared with a wide grin.
But before Ludwig could respond, Rose finally noticed the knights approaching. He didn't understand why, but his fight-or-flight instincts did not activate, as they normally would when a group of armed men approached him.
"Rose? Is that you?" the young woman asked timidly.
It was enough to confirm they knew each other, though Rose had no idea who she was. And since it would be rather inappropriate to ask her name directly, he chose the least impolite option available.
"Do we know each other?" he asked calmly, hoping it wouldn't anger the knights. Fortunately, just as his fight-or-flight instincts hadn't activated earlier, they didn't activate now either.
Adela felt her heart—which had begun pounding the moment she saw her fiancé—drop completely the instant he asked that question. The bastard had become so attractive that he couldn't even recognize her face anymore. What the hell was wrong with him? Even so, suppressing her initial fury, she offered him a tight smile and gave a slight bow.
"It's me, Adela… your fiancée."
That answer caused two things to happen. First, Rose's mind began working at full speed to replace the mental image he had formed of his betrothed. Second, he fell into a mild panic: he hadn't expected her to arrive that very day. His father had told him she would arrive the following morning. Damn it—he really needed to teach that old man not to mislead him… though that would have to wait. There was nothing he could do about it now.
And, being honest, with her standing right in front of him, he couldn't help but notice that the girl was growing into an incredibly beautiful woman.
However, despite how beautiful she was—and despite the fact that he was very clearly attracted to her (thank God for loose trousers)—he was, above all else, a gentleman. He offered her a small, polite smile.
He had far more experience with the opposite sex than he cared to admit. In his youth, he had been quite the womanizer, identical to his father according to several uncles and aunts, so he knew perfectly well how to charm a lady—whether she was nobility, upper class, or even a commoner.
"Forgive me, my lady, I didn't recognize you. The last time we met, you were just a child. Now you've become a truly charming young lady," he said, though in truth, the last time he had flirted had been during the First Era, so he was somewhat out of practice.
Fortunately, his charming appearance helped quite a bit, and at the risk of sounding arrogant, he was incredibly handsome. Everything went smoothly: Adela was completely captivated by his demeanor and bearing, almost entirely forgetting the anger she had felt over both his repeated rejections and the fact that he hadn't recognized her immediately.
Ludwig, meanwhile, had witnessed the cheesiest romantic display he had ever seen—and he had seen quite a few—having to make a serious effort not to laugh. Fortunately for the baron's young son, the girl was fairly easy to please and fell for his cheap tricks without much difficulty. Still, the longer Ludwig watched, the clearer it became that Rose needed practice, though his intervention wasn't necessary at the moment.
"You needn't worry, my lord. I can handle the rest of the production myself. Why don't you invite your fiancée to have a sandwich?" he suggested, giving him a few pats on the back.
Rose looked at Ludwig with an expression that mixed mild exasperation with gratitude. The former because it was obvious he was out of practice; the latter because it was painfully clear that he was attracted to the young woman and, well… this sort of thing was only natural for a young and rather hormonal man. His self-control, forged in a previous life, had gone straight to hell.
"If you insist, I'll leave it in your hands," he replied with a nod.
Adela watched Rose with growing interest. Despite being a baron's son, he treated peasants as if they were his equals. She had never seen a noble behave that way; most would have mocked him for showing such an attitude. She, on the other hand, found it endearing.
With matters settled, Rose offered her his arm for support. The young woman accepted without hesitation, and they began walking toward the town center, both smiling. Along the way, Rose took the time to greet every local he encountered, treating them as friends—or at least close acquaintances—even though they addressed him with proper respect.
That only deepened Adela's curiosity. She didn't fully understand Rose's relationship with the commoners: they neither feared him nor felt intimidated by his status. On the contrary, they approached him gladly and spoke with ease… and by extension, with her as well. It left her with a strange sensation in her chest.
She wasn't used to such social strolls. In her father's lands, peasants kept their distance from the count and his family, not daring even to meet their gaze. It made her feel as though she had stepped into an entirely different culture.
At one point, a woman approached the young couple and handed Rose a rose—which, for some reason, sounded like a bad pun—so that he could offer it to the young woman at his side.
The commoners had already noticed, by Adela's manner of dress, that she belonged to the nobility, and by the way she walked so close to Rose, they deduced almost instantly that the two were engaged. Because of that, they treated her with the same respect and dignity as Rose himself, who had spent much of the past month improving their lives.
By the time they reached the sandwich shop, Rose approached a woman of around thirty who was tending the counter in her husband's absence.
The woman in question was named Helga. She was the local baker's wife and helped manage both the bakery and the sandwich shop, which were jointly owned by the baker and the town butcher. Rose had made sure that arrangement was properly formalized, complete with ownership titles; in the process, he had apparently invented the stock market—though he wasn't really aware of it.
Setting that aside, the moment Helga saw Rose enter the shop with a young woman hanging from his arm, she couldn't help but smile.
"My lord, you honor us with your presence," she said with a flattering grin.
That made Rose roll his eyes. They had moved past that sort of formality long ago, so he assumed she was simply teasing him.
"Helga, two of the usual, please," he asked kindly.
He supposed Adela might want to choose her own sandwich, but given that he had invented them—at least in this era—he wasn't sure she fully understood how they worked. He would explain it eventually; for now, it was better to take the initiative.
Helga got to work immediately, not without first washing her hands. She had personally witnessed her husband and the butcher being scolded for failing to do so, and truth be told, the number of cases of dysentery and other stomach infections had dropped noticeably ever since. Because of that, people had adopted those hygienic habits, at least for the most part, though many still bathed only once a day or every few days.
After serving the two sandwiches, each accompanied by a glass of fresh milk—which Rose continued to curse mentally due to the absence of cocoa powder—the young man paid with a silver pfennig worth more than the entire meal, enough to cover several more orders as well.
"Keep the change," he said with a smile.
He then carried the food and the glasses to a table outside the shop. Had it been winter, they likely would have eaten indoors, but it was the middle of spring and the weather was pleasant enough to sit outside.
Adela hadn't said a single word throughout the entire walk. She had devoted all her attention to observing her fiancé, who was nothing like the man she had imagined: a lazy, petty, and sickly youth.
Clearly, he bore no resemblance to the rumors, which led her to believe that someone was spreading them with the intention of ruining his reputation. Of course, she wouldn't know—at least not until he confessed it himself many years later—that her fiancé's personality had changed overnight, much less the reason behind it.
Setting those thoughts aside, and being a well-bred noble lady, the absence of cutlery deeply unsettled her. She didn't understand how she was supposed to eat what the locals called a sandwich.
That was something Rose noticed… or rather, he noticed the way she stared intently at her food.
"What's wrong? Don't you like it? I don't think you've tried it before," he asked, ignoring two important details: first, that at this time eating with one's hands was uncommon, even among peasants, who usually used wooden utensils; and second, that nobles had deeply ingrained customs, and Adela had no idea how she was meant to eat what she'd been served.
The young woman made a monumental effort to find the right words, never taking her eyes off her future husband's face.
"There are no utensils," she finally said.
That drew a restrained laugh from Rose. He had forgotten the aversion nobles felt toward what they considered peasant customs, and how deeply rooted their habits were. He decided to lead by example: he picked up his sandwich with his hands—a simple roasted chicken one, ideal for a light but energizing lunch—and took a bite as naturally as if there were nothing unusual about it.
Adela watched him with a rather amusing expression, as though she had just seen a barbarian.
However, after a moment, seeing him eat so calmly, as if it were perfectly normal, she could no longer resist the temptation. She carefully took the sandwich in her hands and gave it a timid bite. That drew a smile from Rose. In a way, it reminded him of one of his younger sisters from his previous life, though he couldn't quite tell which one; it definitely wasn't Mordred, for starters—she was five years older than him and a complete tomboy.
He didn't dwell on that thought for long. His attention shifted to the unmistakable sparkle that appeared in Adela's eyes, clearly delighted by what she had just tasted. It wasn't particularly surprising: medieval culinary arts were rather poor. It wouldn't be until centuries later that truly flavorful and elaborate dishes emerged, rather than food designed simply to fill the stomach.
Rose hadn't been subtle at all while watching her, and she noticed it after a moment. Still, though she felt slightly embarrassed by his gaze, she said nothing until she finished her sandwich.
"What are you staring at?" she asked, visibly embarrassed.
In response, Rose let out a soft chuckle. Girls, in truth, were rather complex, but he always seemed to have the peculiar luck of running into two very specific types: the incredibly shy and adorable ones, or those with explosive tempers.
"I was just thinking that you look really cute right now," he replied casually.
It wasn't a lie. He genuinely found her cute, and his thoughts had drifted to the person she reminded him of… though, of course, saying that would neither be wise nor appropriate.
The moment she heard those words, Adela's face turned red as a tomato. The sentence echoed over and over in her head, to the point that her brain seemed to overheat. She hadn't expected something so direct. Did he have no shame at all?
Well… it wasn't as if she disliked the compliment.
Only after they had both finished eating did Rose mention that they still had a few obligations to attend to, and that if he had ignored them, it had only been to annoy his father a little.
"Well, I suppose we should go visit my father so you can pay your respects. God knows he'll be offended if you entered his territory without doing so," he said calmly. It wasn't that he cared all that much, but his father could be incredibly intense.
That immediately snapped Adela out of her daze. In that instant, she realized she hadn't followed even the most basic noble etiquette, which almost made her mentally slap herself for letting curiosity override protocol.
She had no way of knowing that Rose didn't give a damn about protocol. Of course, if any other noble had entered his father's lands without paying respects, it probably wouldn't have ended well—partly because Lucifer wouldn't allow Rose to die and would respond to any attack with extreme violence, and partly because his father had a rather fierce temperament.
But Adela was a special case. She was his niece, and more importantly, the fiancée of his firstborn son. That alone would be enough for the man to forgive her easily, especially considering that the purpose of her visit was for the two of them to meet and see if they were compatible.
Even so, the young woman began to tremble with fear as she grasped the magnitude of her mistake. She didn't know her uncle well; her mother rarely spoke of him. Little did she know that this was due more to her mother's lack of respect for her vain brother than anything else. That lack of information led her to fear repercussions.
Rose noticed immediately. To calm her down, he knelt in front of her to be at her eye level—damn, she really was short—and took her hand in his.
"Relax, you don't need to be afraid. My father is much calmer than you imagine. And if he gets angry at you, I'll take the blame. After all, it was because of me that you skipped the formalities," he said gently.
Technically, that wasn't entirely true. She had been curious and decided not to go straight to the castle, but it was also true that Rose had unnecessarily delayed her arrival after their meeting.
The young woman wiped away the tears that had gathered in her eyes and let out a small sob.
"R-really?" she asked, unable to believe that he was actually willing to stand up to his father for her.
Rose simply nodded. As an older brother, he had done that countless times when his younger siblings got into trouble. It was his responsibility to protect them. And besides, he was going to marry her. In his view, a man should protect his family from all harm, whether physical, emotional, or otherwise.
That was enough for Adela to dry her tears and stand up straight.
"Then… what are we waiting for?"
The engaged couple then headed toward the castle, closely followed by their retinue of knights. They knew that if they followed too closely on the couple's first outing, she would become angry, so they kept their distance—close enough to fulfill their duty should any trouble arise.
Though, to be honest, that would never happen in a town that revered their young lady's fiancé not only as the baron's son, but as a pillar of the community… a friend.
End of chapter.