118. Caitlyn Pochet and Her Grand Dream

〈If you keep even one of my possessions, on the day I become the Grand Duchess, I’ll expose your thieving habits to the entire social world.〉

Flinch.

Caitlyn’s shoulders trembled slightly as she recalled Anette’s growling voice.

‘I-I compensated her with money!’

Suddenly, as if she’d taken some strange medicine, right before marrying into the Grand Duke’s household, Anette had confronted her with such confidence—unbelievable compared to her previously timid demeanor—demanding the return of all the items Caitlyn had taken at will.

Even when Caitlyn clung to her crying and wailing about how impossible it would be to replace all those items one by one, Anette didn’t bat an eye.

With no other choice, Caitlyn borrowed money from her mother and scraped together all her funds to place a few pieces of jewelry in Anette’s hands before her marriage.

Though it was woefully inadequate compared to what she had taken, Caitlyn still acted as if she’d bent over backwards, and amid all this, she claimed to have lost this tiara and didn’t return it to Anette.

‘I absolutely cannot return this one! It was the prettiest thing Anette owned. It doesn’t suit her anyway. Such a historic tiara suits me better!’

The sparkling jewels of the tiara captivated the eye. Its beauty seemed to even cover up Caitlyn’s thin hair.

‘Ugh, that Anette girl!’

It had been a good year since Anette had pulled out a handful of Caitlyn’s hair.

But the memory of her own hair slipping through Anette’s white fingers remained so vivid that it appeared in her dreams.

On nights when Caitlyn dreamed of having her hair pulled out by Anette, she suffered from nightmares, groaning in her sleep.

‘The hair should have grown back long ago!’

She had been in her growth phase then, and afterward, she had her hair combed frequently and applied hair-growth tonics occasionally, so it should have grown back.

Yet Caitlyn kept suffering from the illusion that the traces of where Anette had pulled her hair remained intact.

‘Me, going bald! That’s impossible! It might be common for men, but it’s rare for women! Besides, Father……!’

Wait?

Had her father’s hair been abundant? Marquis Pochet, who had recently entered middle age, seemed to be losing hair little by little……

“Ughhh!”

“Oh my, Caitlyn, what’s wrong? It would be terrible if you caught a cold.”

Caitlyn shuddered at the threat of approaching baldness.

But Caitlyn’s true nightmare was just beginning.

“Caitlyn!”

Thump, thump, thump, with rough footsteps, Marquis Pochet barged into Caitlyn’s room.

“Darling, perfect timing! Look at how our daughter has dressed up. She looks so pretty, just like us!”

“Do I look like I’m in the mood to admire the child’s makeup? How much money have you spent running around dress shops! And not just one or two outfits—you went into every visible dress shop and ordered clothes from all of them? Saying you’re participating in the crown prince’s bride selection, so don’t worry about the price, make it the best!”

“Have the clothes arrived already? They must have used gold and silver thread generously? I specifically ordered that!”

“I don’t need to hear more! Fortunately, they haven’t started production yet. Go cancel everything immediately!”

“What did you say?”

“Are you out of your mind? When a daughter who’s about to get married pays attention to her appearance, you should think it’s admirable! Why are you canceling everything? Caitlyn put so much effort into ordering those clothes!”

“Ordering as many as twenty dresses and you have so much to say! Do you think she’ll wear all those clothes this year?”

“This isn’t just anything—it’s the crown prince’s bride selection! To make our child look the prettiest, we need to do at least this much.”

Marchioness Pochet snorted as if it were obvious.

Of course, even to Marchioness Pochet, twenty dresses with gold thread seemed slightly excessive.

‘But with her exceptional taste, her spending is bound to be larger. Indeed, a future crown prince’s bride is different.’

The Marquis, however, seemed to think differently. Usually, he would just grumble about Caitlyn or the Marchioness being extravagant when they ordered five or six dresses, but wouldn’t say much more. But this time, the spending seemed to have crossed a line even in his eyes.

‘You can’t turn a pumpkin into a watermelon just by drawing lines on it!’

Marquis Pochet wanted to blurt this out as he watched the mother and daughter insisting that they needed to be adorned with only the best, but he held back since, unfortunately, Caitlyn was his spitting image.

Comparing Caitlyn to a pumpkin would be like spitting in his own face, as he would also become a pumpkin, being Caitlyn’s father.

“Caitlyn, you’re as beautiful as your mother, so you’ll become the crown prince’s bride just by showing up. No need to order anything new, just wear what you already have.”

“What are you saying? All the notable young ladies will be dressed to the nines, and you’re telling me to wear last year’s dress? Are you trying to humiliate me?”

“That’s right. For our perfect child to miss the crown prince’s eye because she couldn’t wear a new dress—what a terrible thought!”

“But there’s no money in the household this year!”

The Marquis pounded his chest as he looked at the mother and daughter who simply wouldn’t listen to reason.

The South, once said to yield crops effortlessly without fertilizer thanks to its favorable climate, had seen its agriculture collapse last year despite its long history of abundant harvests.

And that wasn’t all. This year, the Marquis had already been hearing troubling reports that the fields were cracking due to drought.

“Aish, Anette was also at an age where she should have been interested in dressing up like Caitlyn, but she didn’t spend a penny!”

“Why bring up that unlucky girl who’s not even here? Since when did you care so much about her, hmph!”

They say even a rich man who goes bankrupt can last three years. The marquis household wouldn’t stagger just because of one year’s failed crops. Nevertheless, there was another reason the Marquis was so anxious.

It was because the Marquis Pochet had secretly invested a large sum in the illegal slave market in the North.

Perhaps his interest in the North suddenly grew because his son-in-law was there?

Human greed knows no bounds. Bewitched by something, the Marquis had heard that slave auctions secretly conducted in the North could bring in big money, so he invested all the family’s wealth in the slave trading companies.

But why, of all times! The slave market that had guaranteed large profits every year collapsed last year!

Thus, Anette had succeeded in delivering a blow to her family home without even knowing it, while eradicating corruption.

Anyway, the Marquis Pochet, pretending to be a nobleman, couldn’t bring himself to tell his wife and daughter that he had invested in slave trading and failed, so he made other excuses.

“Ahem! Isn’t it already a difficult time with the crops failing? We should be setting an example for our territory’s people by saving money. Yet you and Caitlyn spend money like water, and that young Simon has already been corrupted at such a young age, starting to gamble!”

“What gambling! Why say such frightening things? When a man goes out and socializes with his peers, he might spend some money on games. You’re acting like you’ve never played cards at a gambling house!”

With funds not readily available, the Marquis now found even his family’s spending irritating.

Especially how much Caitlyn and the Marchioness spent—so much that his son Simon, who had started playing cards as part of noble etiquette, was actually the one who spent the least.

Of course, while scolding his family like this, the Marquis had no intention of reducing his own expenses. The money he spent was all spent with purpose, after all.

“Hmm, if you really want new clothes, why not sell some of your existing possessions to raise money? Yes, if you sell the tiara you’re wearing now, you could buy the clothes you want!”

“Oh my! Dad, are you telling your daughter to sell her possessions? My goodness!”

This was the same tiara she had refused to return to Anette, its rightful owner, when asked.

Sensing her father’s greedy gaze, Caitlyn quickly removed the tiara from her head and clutched it to her chest.

“Aish, go cancel all those dresses you ordered at the dress shop right away!”

“No! How embarrassing would it be to cancel an order I’ve already placed? I can’t do that!”

“Then should your father take out a loan to pay for your clothes?”

“Yes, you should!”

Caitlyn declared boldly.

“I’m going to be the crown prince’s bride! When I become the crown prince’s bride, do you think the imperial family will ignore our family’s financial difficulties?”

“Crown prince’s bride?”

The Marquis let out a hollow laugh.

* * *

〈You sent Anette to marry into the Grand Duke’s family so I could qualify to become the crown prince’s bride, didn’t you? After making such efforts, it doesn’t make sense to tell me not to participate in the crown prince’s bride selection now!〉

‘Caitlyn becoming the crown prince’s bride?’

Tap, tap, tap.

The Marquis paced restlessly in his room, lost in thought.

Caitlyn’s words weren’t wrong.

It was just that the current urgent situation made him reluctant, but originally, marrying Anette to Inkheart had been for the purpose of fully supporting Caitlyn’s future.

A family listed on the Golden Plate. This referred to special families that, even among nobles, had connections to the royal family or equivalent households.

Only families listed on the Golden Plate were qualified to form marriage ties with the royal family.

Through Anette’s marriage to Inkheart, the Pochet family could be listed on the Golden Plate, and as Caitlyn sang, they gained the qualification to nominate her as a candidate for the crown prince’s bride. However……

‘Can Caitlyn really become the crown prince’s bride?’

Unlike his daughter Caitlyn, who had grown up like a frog in a well within the South, the Marquis Pochet, as the head of the family, viewed the situation more objectively.