My Own Mother’s Distorted Love (2)
The sensitive Shepherd had a high fever after Marie got enrolled at the academy.
No wonder.
I wonder how he felt because of the disgraceful rumors Marie spread around about him being an older brother inferior to his younger sister.
Shepherd was better than her.
At first, I thought she might have cheated.
“Even His Majesty the King can’t interfere in the examinations, okay? Are you trying to insult me?”
“However… isn’t it strange that Marie could pass the exam?”
She didn’t study anywhere but the church.
Shepherd, on the other hand, had several tutors, you know?
“Do you know who Miss Marie’s teacher is?”
“She’s a sister of the church…”
“She used to be a tutor of the royal family, and she’s a rough-and-tumble one. That person helped her study every day, you see?”
“Huh?”
What?
I did not hear about this.
“One of the best royal tutors in the Capital has a different teaching style from tutors sent to the countryside. I was told that Miss Marie was very talented, so I recommended her to take Miss Marie in as an apprentice.”
“Who asked you to!”
“Oh my? If you’re going to work for our family, you need to have some academic ability.”
But that doesn’t mean I, the mother, don’t have any say in this.
“I sent you a letter that day. And you accepted… well, it seems that you had someone write the reply letter on your behalf.”
“That’s…”
“Who do you think is to blame for not confirming it? Or have the Viscounts of nowadays become so great that they can defy the Counts?”
“… I apologize.”
This woman.
She is a useless woman who can’t even have children, what’s up with her sarcasm.
“Still, will your son, Shepard, be all right?”
“Huh?”
“If he repeats another year, his school expenses will increase… because the tuition at the Royal Academy is very expensive.”
As she said, the cost of the supplementary exams and repeating a year was very high.
But it was not an amount that I could not pay, and I thought that I could get Diaz to work more.
Then I received unpleasant news.
Marie had been awarded first place at the Royal Academy.
First place among the girls is no big deal.
Marie must have been lucky to get into the special class, and many of the daughters of high-ranking nobles were probably idiots.
Boys and girls are different.
But she got carried away and said she wanted to marry a guy she met at the academy, who looked like a commoner to me, after graduation.
If Marie leaves, our family will be even more impoverished.
We need her to earn more money.
So instead of allowing her to marry him, I told her that I would take him in as my son-in-law.
Of course, I would never adopt a child, and I would never give him a single copper coin of our family’s property.
I asked a lawyer I know to help me with the family register, and I deceived them.
All of this was just a stopgap until Shepherd could bring me a good fiancée.
And now the time has come for my wish to finally come true.
How pleased I was with the news that he had decided to marry a young lady from a Count’s family.