CH 7

Chapter 7 Count Asher

Translator: Tseirp

Jeffrey Asher was drinking while enjoying the afterglow of a good time. The large living room had a clean interior, and all of the furniture was antique and made by a master craftsman.

This is Count Asher’s family mansion in the royal capital, whose brother is the head of the family.

Jeffrey usually lives in the knights’ lodgings, but worried about his sick mother’s condition and missing her, he makes it a point to come to the mansion about once a week.

“You’re home?”

“Yes. Brother, aren’t you still in the middle of work?”

His older brother Edward also has silver hair, a trait all of them inherited from their late father. He is forty years old but still an overprotective man who worries and looks after him when he is just eight years younger than him. No matter how many times he told him that thirty-two is no longer the age he has to worry about him, he doesn’t understand.

“I heard that you went out in unusually fashionable clothes. You went out with a woman, right?”

“Did you show up just to say that?”

“Don’t be defensive. I’m happy for you. How long has it been since you went out with a woman?”

Jeffrey sighed at having to repeat a line he had said dozens of times.

“Brother, can you please stop treating me like a pitiful victim forever?”

“Okay, okay. I won’t talk about that anymore.”

Edward raised his hands in a pose of surrender.

“So? Did you have fun?”

“Yeah, it was fun. A foreign woman who just came to this country and a six-year-old girl she took custody of, we had a fun meal together.”

“…”

“Brother, you have a successor so you should be worrying about them instead. You don’t have to worry about me. Well then, I have to get up early tomorrow so I’m going to bed.”

He went straight to his room after saying that.

Victoria Sellers is a commoner woman, but her words are intelligent and her demeanor elegant. And she’s a woman of considerable courage.

In the royal capital, women who know and even those who don’t know that he is the commander of the Knight’s Order send him flirtatious gazes when they look at him. After experiencing that since he was a boy, he had only gotten better at refusing them with a smile.

That’s why Victoria, who didn’t try to rely on him, didn’t give him clingy gazes and tried to take care of an abandoned child in the country she had just entered, seemed fresh and desirable. She surely had to have been reluctant to ask him to guarantee her identity, with such a strong independent character.

Even so, he couldn’t believe she tripped that snatch thief.

What was she going to do if that young man got up and attacked her? Her body is too thin to fight a man, and she was carrying a sleeping child on her back.

Too reckless.

He did feel as though she didn’t show any openings and thought ‘ah, that woman is a fighter’, when she faced the man running at her with Nonna on her back, but perhaps he was mistaken.

When they ate together, she showed a pleasant appetite for her thin frame. She was far more attractive than the young ladies who tried to impress their fragility and fragility.

And it appeared that she was going to check out the rental rooms late at night. She seemed to have thought ‘Oh no’ when Nonna let it slip. Her emotions never appeared on her expression, but he could tell that she was flustered from the faint movements of her eyes, having worked among the people of the city for many years.

Interesting.

It was refreshing to see a woman who doesn’t rely on others that much, but he was worried. Until she got used to the country and safely builds the foundation for her life, he wanted to help her as much as he could if she would rely on him… but.

Well, that was unwelcome.

He smiled wryly and decided to stop helping. He could keenly tell that she didn’t want it. Judging from the hotel she was staying at, it didn’t seem like she was in financial trouble, and as a guarantor, it would be proper to help her only if she asked. Jeffrey decided that tonight would be the last time he would talk about Victoria and he would not get involved.

The next morning.

When he stepped into the Knight’s Order building on the grounds of the royal castle, everyone looked at him with sparkling eyes. He wondered to himself ‘What?’ as he entered his room and his secretary, a noblewoman in her 40s, looked at him with the same smile as his brother.

“What is it?”

“No, it’s nothing.”

Even as she said that, she looked at him with warm eyes. It wasn’t until he entered the Knight’s Order canteen at lunch that he knew what it meant.

“Commander! I saw it! You had fun last night!”

The young Bob Knolls of the Second Knight’s Order. (Is he the source of the rumors?) He guessed the circumstances and beckoned Bob over.

“Bob, it seems you have a lot of energy to speculate and spread rumors. Come to the training grounds at 13:00. It’s been some time since you’ve gone through some intense training.”

“Yes…”

He almost laughed at the miserable reply, but he tried not to break his stern face.

One day three weeks later.

Jeffrey followed the rules and headed to the hotel where Victoria was staying with her adopted child as their guarantor.

“Is Miss Victoria still staying here?” When he asked, the receptionist handed him a letter.

The fine envelope had his name written in beautiful writing. He hurriedly opened it.

『To Jeffrey Asher, Commander of the Second Knight’s Order

It has been a while.

Thank you for being my guarantor when I adopted Nonna. The dinner you invited us to was also wonderful and delicious.

I felt helpless right after I entered the country, so that really cheered me up. Thank you.

Both Nonna and I are doing well. I managed to find a job and was able to rent a room where I felt safe. Please forgive me for moving without contacting you.

I have heard that in this country, the person who takes in an orphan is obligated to report the situation to the guarantor every month. We will send you a report letter in a month. I will send the report to the Knight’s Order next time.

End of the current status report.

Victoria Sellers』

Laughter welled up in him at the overly businesslike content. But as long as they’re doing okay, that’s fine. She didn’t look like she was helpless even once, but that was probably just obligatory words. If fated, he’ll bump into her somewhere, and even if they don’t, a report would arrive in a month.

The new address written was in the East Ward, where the nobles live. It wasn’t far from his family mansion. Did she find a live-in job at a noble house?

“I’ll have to check on the two of them.”

Even though he thought to accomplish that today, it wasn’t going his way.

『The person who took in the orphan should send a monthly report to the guarantor, and the person who guaranteed their identity should check the residence reported and check if there are any differences between the child’s situation and the report.’’

The deadline was approaching.