136. The Remains of St. Dismas

“……Am I supposed to be thankful for this?”

When I couldn’t bring myself to accept the finger bone of some unknown person and looked at Margarita with an astonished expression, she tilted her head.

“St. Dismas is one of the 120 martyred saints venerated by the temple. Though he ranks exactly 120th among those 120.”

In this world, even the dirt that comes from not washing is revered as sacred, considered evidence of holiness because saints kept their distance from bathing.

— It was believed that bathing spread disease, so saints did not bathe — I should consider the finger bone as a gesture of goodwill from Margarita.

After I openly snubbed Caitlyn at Bertang Dress Shop, rumors spread among the nobles who had been observing the situation that the Inkhearts didn’t like Caitlyn Pochet as much as they had thought.

That was precisely why Margarita suddenly welcomed me so warmly.

“Would you consider changing the candidate you support?”

She hoped the Inkhearts would take her side.

“Caitlyn is my sister.”

Even as I casually uttered words I didn’t mean, I found it strange.

Margarita was currently the most likely candidate for crown princess.

Although candidates with less backing than Margarita, who was supported by the Great Temple and the eastern duchy, had made many proposals to recruit the Inkhearts, there was no particular need for Margarita to want our support as well.

“You don’t particularly think your sister will become the crown princess, do you?”

“If you think there’s no possibility of that happening, then you really don’t need to be so wary.”

“I hate it. Situations I can’t control.”

Oh?

The unshakeable number one candidate bluntly mentioned her own weakness.

“If Miss Caitlyn has the Inkhearts in her grip, she might not become the second-ranked candidate, but she could be fourth or fifth. I hate being blindsided by an unexpected competitor if the situation takes an unforeseen turn.”

She was saying she disliked the rise of Caitlyn and other minor candidates. Because it differed from the scenario she had planned.

It seemed she wanted to nip things in the bud by preventing the unremarkable Caitlyn from even submitting a challenge for the crown princess selection.

“There is one possibility that the Inkhearts might change the candidate they support.”

If she provided a sacred artifact that could extend lifespan, I could easily break the contract with Caitlyn and take Margarita’s side.

“I’m looking for a sacred artifact that extends lifespan for a personal matter. If you give me that, I might actively support you, Miss Margarita.”

A strange light flickered in Margarita’s eyes.

“A sacred artifact that extends lifespan? There’s no such thing.”

I must have seen wrong. What strange light?

“But speaking of sacred artifacts, I just remembered something.”

Margarita hesitated, as if debating whether to say it, with an amused look.

“From what I’ve heard, there’s also a rare treasure in the Pochet family, which is your maiden family, Grand Duchess.”

“A rare treasure?”

“Yes. And coincidentally, there’s a rumor that St. Dismas, the owner of this finger, died while searching for that treasure.”

With those words, the conversation with Margarita ended briefly. Since the meeting was to ask if I would consider supporting her instead of Caitlyn, there was no need to prolong it.

As I was about to get up and leave, a priest brought me an unrequested divination slip.

“This is a blessing slip for guests visiting the temple. It tells you about future events or warns you if there’s something to be careful about.”

What you seek is in the south.

“That’s not very accurate. With apologies to my uncle who serves as high priest at the temple.”

Margarita, who was still beside me, mischievously whispered to me, avoiding the priest’s eyes.

“The slip I received last time warned me to be careful of someone from the south. That’s why I actively interfered with Miss Caitlyn, but in the end, I only earned the hatred of the Grand Duke and Duchess of Inkheart.”

Margarita shrugged her shoulders. If it hadn’t been for that divination, she wouldn’t have interfered with Darius and my marriage registration to eliminate Caitlyn from the candidates, and we wouldn’t be in the capital.

A single divination slip that Margarita had received by chance had led Darius and me to the capital.

‘But can we really say Margarita’s divination slip was wrong?’

If this was God’s plan to give Darius a broader path……

‘I’m overthinking a mere fortune slip.’

Meeting Margarita today must have left quite an impression on me. I shook my head and put the temple’s divination slip I had received earlier into my pocket.

* * *

After the last party the Grand Duke and Duchess attended, Anette excellently fulfilled Darius’s possessive request to stop social activities and only look at him.

For a week, Anette stayed at home with Darius, and he was satisfied with that time of having Anette all to himself.

So much so that he scraped up even the last remaining pudding and fed it to his wife, who could no longer hide her expression of growing tired of pudding, pretending not to notice and insisting she eat it all because he made it.

Watching Anette eat while saying she didn’t hate pudding with a pale face had been his joy lately.

So when Anette announced she would go out today, he readily agreed, but when she returned in the evening, she was deeply lost in thought, not giving him any attention.

“What are you looking at?”

“They say it’s the remains of St. Dismas.”

Darius embraced Anette from behind. He parted her always-lovely thick hair and buried his face in her shoulder, but Anette’s gaze remained fixed on the bone fragment of a stranger.

“St. Dismas is said to be the patron saint of explorers. It seems the owner of this finger died while searching for a sacred artifact during his lifetime.”

Darius didn’t care what it was. He just disliked the fact that Anette was distracted by another man’s finger.

“Isn’t there anything else? I was secretly hoping for something when you said you were going out without me today.”

The husband, failing to attract attention, mischievously bit his wife’s neck and asked.

“Where did you go today?”

“Well, I had important business……”

At that point, Anette’s face froze in embarrassment. The last time Darius had hidden his schedule from Anette was to propose to her in secret.

Perhaps because of that, when Anette went out today without saying where she was going, the expectation that there might be a gift for him was visible in Darius’s sparkling eyes.

“What did you prepare? Should I wait longer?”

Though the longer he waited, the greater his expectations would grow. Implying such nuance, Darius looked at Anette while feigning innocence.

The remains of St. Dismas and the meeting with Margarita had long been erased from Anette’s mind.

“Darling, the gift is……”

Facing her husband who was expressing his annoyance in a roundabout way, Anette felt her back becoming damp with sweat.

“Your gift is…… me. It’s always me, okay?”

Anette hurriedly made an excuse as she wrapped her arms around Darius’s neck.

“What kind of gift comes without wrapping?”

“Are you not going to accept me because I don’t have a ribbon?”

“Depends on what you do.”

“I only ever think about you, are you really not going to accept me? Hmm?”

The man who would eagerly accept and hide Anette in his arms if she really came as a gift was just being difficult because he wanted to see her act cute. Darius’s hands firmly supported Anette’s waist as she clung to him.

The first time is always difficult when it comes to begging, but it gets easier with practice. Anette confessed her day’s activities in a ticklish voice to her husband, who was avoiding her kisses by nodding while holding her tightly.

Darius gave Anette a sidelong glance when she admitted she had met with Margarita alone because he seemed to dislike her, but Anette soothed him well and continued.

“But Margarita told me an interesting story.”

〈You know how they say cotton only grows in the south. My father was so curious about it that when Marquis Pochet came to the capital before, he made him lose all his stakes at a card house and then asked the intoxicated Marquis Pochet about that secret.〉

That card house belonged to the eastern duchy.

〈He asked if the story about a Holy Grail in the south was true.〉

Although Marquis Pochet had lost his mind after losing all his stakes through deception, he suddenly came to his senses at that question.

〈My father said he never played card games again from that day on, despite how much he had enjoyed them. We didn’t look into it further since cotton wasn’t that important to us.〉

“What could the Holy Grail be?”

Anette said this and then sank back into thought.

* * *

Despite the enviable rumors that the south’s granaries would never empty thanks to the blessing of the Holy Grail, the Pochet family had recently been driven into a corner.

Until a few days ago, Simons had been a young nobleman who had just started frequenting gambling houses, having come of age.

But with his father’s absence, he suddenly became the acting Marquis, and as he received reports of worsening harvests in the territory, the resulting discontent among the territorial residents, and even signs of riots, he was going crazy.

“Master Simons, the moneylenders who lent money to the Marquis have come to see you! What should we do?”

On top of everything, there were debts his father had secretly hidden!

“Argh!”

He couldn’t find any answers, yet the vassals were clinging to Simons, looking only to him.

And in the midst of all this, a monster problem had erupted.

Monsters rampaging in the south rather than the north was an unusual event. The southerners, accustomed to a peaceful world, were in disarray due to the sudden situation, and Simons, who needed to quickly resolve and lead through this crisis, was no different.

“Master Simons, Lady Caitlyn has!”

“What about my sister! The situation is so urgent, why should I care about her now?”

Simons irritably shouted at the vassal calling for him again. But soon he couldn’t even express his irritation at the bill the vassal brought.

“Lady Caitlyn, who is staying in the capital, has charged the following amounts in the name of the Pochet family.”

Bills that Caitlyn had charged to the family’s credit were arriving one after another at the Pochet Marquis household in the south.

It was a disaster.