Riftan suddenly took a deep breath and sighed.
“There will be guests from the palace in a few weeks, they’ll be about twenty to thirty people. I’d like to have the best room available for them to stay, and a small welcome.”
Max opened her eyes wide at the unexpected announcement. She knew that guests were supposed to come visit in spring, so she was appalled by the news that it was going to happen earlier than expected.
“Guests…?”
“It is King Ruben’s Inspection Team. The Knights of The Crown.”
Riftan blurted out the last words and glanced at her face. For a moment, his sensuous lips were subtly twisted because of complex thoughts, but then he immediately returned to his emotionless face and casually added: “Princess Agnes is coming.”
Max stared blankly at Riftan’s face, without even breathing. A lady who once had a marriage talk with him is coming, but Max couldn’t figure out what kind of reaction she was supposed to have. When she didn’t answer, Riftan added in a nervous tone.
“Of course, they’re just coming here to inspect Anatol under royal orders. Agnes is the only member of the royal family who is acquainted with me and has a friendly relationship with the Knights of Remdragon.”
“Well, I see.”
Mack swallowed, her nerves on edge hearing that she was close to him, but they were colleagues of the Dragon Toval, of course they were acquainted! According to Ruth, everyone had thought that Riftan was going to marry Princess Agnes, so they had to be close enough for such rumors to spread. Her stomach twisted painfully, still she smiled nonchalantly, fearing that if she had showed a sign of dislike she would have looked like a woman blinded by jealousy in his eyes.
“W-We will prepare the best r-rooms and get ready… Do we have a-anything else to do?”
“…just tell the maids to be thoroughly prepared for the guests. You don’t have to do anything more.”
Riftan, who was staring at her face as if he was looking for something, replied bluntly and lowered his gaze on the table again. It was a strangely cold attitude, but she didn’t have time to pay attention to it and hurriedly got up from her seat before her emotions could show on her face.
“T-Then… I’ll tell them right now.”
“Please.”
Riftan said without raising his head. Max left the room immediately and quickly went down the stairs while calling Rodrigo.
After hearing the news from Riftan, Max’s mind was a mess. She grumbled in confusion over the thought of Princess Agnes visiting Anatol.
Is it common for an aristocratic woman who got refused for marriage to visit the estate of the man who rejected her?What makes the princess want to come to visit Riftan?
Perhaps King Ruben had not given up on making Riftan a member of the royal family yet. The inspection could be just an excuse and the Princess might be coming to change Riftan’s mind. The thought terrorized Max. Just because Riftan wasn’t willing to divorce in that moment, there was no guarantee that he would still not be willing to divorce in the future. What if Princess Agnes tried to persuade him?
“Madam, you look pale. Do you feel uncomfortable?”
Rodrigo, who saw her face, asked with a worried face. Max quickly shook her head.
“I-I think I’m a l-little tired.”
It wasn’t the right time to zone out. Max hurriedly shook off her anxious thoughts and tried to concentrate on what she had to do: she couldn’t let the castle show a shabby appearance when the guests would come from the Palace. She looked down at the landscaping plan crumpled like a dishcloth in her hand and thought she hadn’t the time to put her head together with Ruth and leisurely review it.
“P-Please call Aderon for me. I w-want you to start the landscaping now, c-can you tell him? We need to h-hurry up and decorate the e-entrance of the Great Hall. I-I hope that the trees we planted few days ago started to grow.”
“I’ll get in touch with him right away, Madam.”
“T-The guests will be staying a-at the colorful tapestries room with a-a luxurious bedding, I’d like to have that ready. P-Please inform the maids that every inch of the castle has t-to be clean and I’d like you to serve the guests with r-respect.”
“Yes, Madam.”
Nothing more than the instructions she had already given came to Max’s mind, so she tapped her lips and sighed.
“I-If there’s a problem… let me know.”
Max returned to her room after informing the servants and mechanically opened the magic book, but none of the letters caught her attention. For a moment she nervously turned the pages, then she bit her fine lips. She hadn’t any sign of being pregnant yet, so if Riftan changed his mind their marriage was still as easy to tear as a parchment. Her anxiety doubled when her awkward attitude came to her mind. He said he couldn’t easily give up on his marriage vows, but how strong was his determination? Wouldn’t it be shaken if a beautiful woman seduced him?
Maybe Princess Agnes is just coming for an inspection, like he said.
Max desperately tried to drive out her growing cloud of anxiety. Riftan was an upright and adamant man, his will wasn’t as easy to bend as a reed.
Let’s stop imagining bad things.
He was a knight who followed King Ruben, there would be occasional encounters with the Royal Family, she couldn’t be so intimidated and anxious every time. She struggled with her unstable mind.
***
As Max began to prepare for the guests at a fast pace, she couldn’t let herself worry over anything: she supervised the task carefully, gathered merchants to select the decorations for the rooms and gardens and kept studying magic too.
Since she hadn’t time to decorate all the wide garden right away, she started to plant shrubs and put statues everywhere. Fortunately, the frozen ground had begun to melt smoothly a few days before, so it didn’t take as much time as she thought. Workers were tasked to dug deep the ground with shovels and to plant trees at regular intervals, while servants planted seedlings in flower beds and sprinkled flower seeds everywhere. Although it was a little early, mixing the soil had helped in softening it, so when the weather would get warmer they were meant to quickly take root and sprout. Max wanted the lifeless garden to be revived before the guests arrived.
“The Royal Flag and the knights… T-they will stay in the Annex. The P-princess and her attendants a-are staying in the Great Hall. Everyone s-should pay special attention s-so that there will be no i-inconvenience.”
“Yes, Madam.”
“All the u-utensils should be made of s-silver and gold. E-expensive wines are already prepared… if more food is needed, p-please don’t hesitate to a-arrange it.”
“We will keep that in mind, My Lady.”
Max gave meticulous instructions to the servants and went around the castle several times a day to see if they were ready to greet the guests, but it wasn’t just her. The maids opened the wide shutters and wiped the foggy glasses, spent all day scooping up water from the well to wash the rugs and ripped off the curtains on the windows to wash them clean, while the servants cleaned the soot from their faces, settled the fireplace with piles of ashes, took out the brazier and washed away the scorched marks.
Max was busy supervising all the work and filling out orders every day, but she didn’t mean to complain, others were several times busier than she was. Ruth seemed to stay up almost every night since he had to deal with everything on his own, busy as he was making harnesses, and Riftan and the knights worked from dawn to late night on the road construction plan that would begin in spring.
Building a wide road connecting the port and the Anatol was a great construction plan that involved a huge amount of manpower. Riftan stared at the map all day discussing the safest and fastest route with the knights and paid full attention on securing the manpower and structure materials needed for the construction.
As a result, the number of nights that Max and Riftan could be together decreased. It was not until the dark night that Riftan returned to his room, but Max was exhausted from walking around in every corner of the castle since early in the morning, so she always fell asleep in the evening. There was even a time when he came back late at night, slept like a shrimp, and left early in the morning, so she couldn’t even see his face the whole day.
Max became increasingly discontented with such habit, she wanted to get a warm and soft kiss from Riftan, to lie on his solid and wide chest, rub his face like a cat and feel his big hands touch her hair. She thought it would have been better if the season of winter didn’t end, missing the days when they were stuck together in the dark and cold castle.
As such loneliness accumulated, her anxiety, which she had worked hard to put aside, gradually shook her.
Maybe he’s tired of me. His passion for me may have cooled down, so he’s now showing a lukewarm attitude, Max thought.
When Max was lying in the bed waiting for Riftan, she thought about this and went crazy. At least the busy daytime was better since she couldn’t think of anything, but when she was gripping the cold side of the wide bed all kinds of negative thoughts came and bothered her. She felt like she was drying up with the desire to see her husband’s smiling face, to ride a horse out of the castle and spend time alone with him.
On a sunny afternoon, when spring was in full swing, Max, who was overseeing the landscaping of the garden, stiffened her body when she heard that knights with royal seals had passed through Anatol’s gates. The garden was growing from its previous wild appearance thanks to shrubbery planted here and there, but it still wasn’t to the point of being satisfying.
Max hurried to go prepare herself to welcome the guests, thinking it would be inappropriate to welcome the Royal Inspection Team with a dull appearance. She urgently called in the maids and ordered them to clean up the entrance to the Great Hall as neatly as possible and went into the room to check her clothes. She was wearing a colorful and nice dress, but she thought she was lacking somehow, so she opened a jewelry box, wore a brooch that she didn’t usually wear and dressed up with a necklace and a ring, then asked Rudis to fix her hair again. She didn’t want to show a shabby appearance to the woman who had a marriage talk with her husband. Rudis, who had realized her thoughts, worked several times harder than usual to braid it up and cover it with silk and jewelry.
After a while, a long sound of copper was heard from afar, announcing the arrival of the guests.
Note –Guys do you sleep like a shrimp too? Idk why this expression made me laugh so hard, I imagined a big man like Riftan sleeping in shrimp version~
