“Count Arceides. Could you please explain what this is all about?”
“…gugu.”
Now that the Count of Arceides’ assassination attempt on the royal family had been discovered, it appeared that the situation would no longer be the same.
According to Cam, or rather His Royal Highness Camille, His Majesty the King was involved behind the scenes, and even if the charges were presented as they were, there was a chance that they would be covered up.
Father grunted bitterly at Cam’s words and looked at me, who was sitting beside him, with such hatred in his eyes that I felt as if beams were coming out of them, so I couldn’t help but sigh of relief.
“Carol, you! You’ve neglected to thank me for everything I’ve done for you!!!!”
“…”
I silently tilt my head slightly at Father’s words.
“I forgot.”
“Youuuu!!!”
“Count Arceides! Please be quiet.”
“…Kuh.”
Cam gave him a quick shove to calm father, who had started screaming. I thought his blood vessels were about to burst; was he okay? That seemed like a lot of trouble.
If this were a period drama, it would be [This is it, people, come on out, come on out!], but the dark knights had been nearly destroyed, and the ordinary knights had been sent out to stop the weak demons that had overflowed from the demon forest, so there were few left around here.
Well, Pochi was responsible for driving them out, under my orders.
It seemed like Cam had decided to make the Arceides family owe him a favor.
Still, a crime was a crime, so Father retired and went to the countryside to recuperate with Mother. The inheritance would be passed down to Dirk when he came of age, and Cam would try to persuade him to become an ally of ours if possible.
Cam asked me in the carriage on the way home, probably thinking that I wanted to destroy that House, but I didn’t.
“…Not really.”
I would not complain because Cam was doing what Cam needed to do to survive.
As for me, I would prefer no setbacks, but even in the current situation, the dark side of the Arceides family has been destroyed. I had also carefully crushed the suspicious units of the knights and confiscated almost all of their hidden assets, so it was obvious that Dirk, who was handed over the reins of the family, would have a hard time, so it was good that he would be troubled by it.
The reason I looked dissatisfied was because I didn’t know how much I could trust Cam.
After all, almost all the great men in this country were perverts, so there might be something wrong with him like the others. It would be wrong for me to be so easily persuaded just because he seemed nice.
I had been attracting stalkers since elementary school in my previous life, simply because I was a quiet person with long black hair, but I had also recently learned a lot.
“I’m serious about this, you know.”
“…”
Well, whatever the case may be, I also needed to move on with my life.
The people who followed Father were only connected by money, so I thought that we could almost neutralize my family’s relationship with me.
The question was where the surplus money was going, but when I told Nicholas, the butler, about the description of the man I saw in the forest, he told me that he was probably one of the Prime Minister’s confidants.
I see…the Prime Minister. Hmmm…
According to Nicholas, the prime minister was doing many things behind the scenes, and many noble families, including my own, donated money to him, but it seemed that his two main sources of income were trade with the other Continent and large-scale farms.
The amount of money they moved was simply too large for that, so they could have been dealing with forbidden goods, but there was no proof, making it impossible to find a weakness.