klisemfg Chapter 497 Miss Leila is eating fruit
Chapter 497 Miss Leila is eating fruit
"Clap."
"Clap."
The nights in Tandin County were not as lively as Highgarden or Gloria. Once the sun went down, there was no sound outside. It was so quiet that it was frightening. Only the mercenaries guarding Miss Leila's door could hear the occasional noise coming from inside. The two looked at each other, their tired faces full of helplessness.
Miss Leila is eating fruit.
In this season, a batch of fruits that look like loquats but are purple in color will ripen in Tanding County. They are a crop that can be sold at a high price. The farmers are reluctant to eat them themselves, so when they hear that the lord of the manor has returned from the capital, they happily send the fruits to exchange for money.
This is a fruit that only nobles can afford to eat!
Leila was barefoot in the room, wearing only a nightgown, leaning on the carpet beside the stool at the end of the bed. The huge fruit plate on the bed was filled with plump and lovely fruits, but Leila couldn't resist eating them one after another to vent her anger, and soon finished half of the plate.
Leila ate very wildly, as if she was competing with a jackal for food. Before she could swallow the previous bit, she bit into the flesh again. The juice flowed out, and a large patch of bright red spread on the front of her white nightgown, like blood.
And after each one she finished, she puffed up her cheeks and spat out the core like a pea shooter.
"Ding Dong!"
This time the fruit core did not hit the door again. She watched the crimson fruit core draw an arc in the air and finally land accurately in the copper bowl behind the door. She laughed and the thick iron chains on her hands and feet jingled with her movements.
She had been amusing herself like this for a long time, and the floor from the edge of her bed to the door was covered with her conquests, so much so that Viscount Friar almost sprained his ankle when he came in.
"...I'm glad you ate well." James Friel looked at the fruit cores all over the floor, then swept the grass stains on the hem of Leila's skirt, and decided to pretend he saw nothing.
"I haven't done anything wrong, why should I punish myself by not eating?" Leila hooked her hands behind her back and grabbed another fruit from the fruit plate. After another failed escape, she urgently needed food to replenish her strength.
"Don't try to escape again, Leila. The duel is about to begin. You won't have enough time to get back. I will let you go after that."
Leila didn't say anything, just focused on the fruit in her hand. Once James stopped talking, the only sound in the room was Leila's chewing. He seemed to be ignored by his daughter.
"I thought the result of the King's Court that day was enough for you to face the reality." His daughter's attitude made him irritated, and his tone became stern, "Don't you understand? The Holy See does not allow any stains to exist!"
Leila was finally full. She wiped her mouth, tilted her head and looked at her father quietly for a while.
"Father, you don't seem like a devout Christian."
Although Leila was in a mess, with chains as thick as her wrists tied to her hands and feet, she looked calm. "As far as I can remember, I never had to go to church on a weekly basis like other children to pray those boring prayers. I always thought you were an open-minded and tolerant person... Was mother deceived by you in the first place?"
It was clear from his words that he had great respect and admiration for the Church of Light.
She seemed to have discovered the truth behind her mother's departure. Perhaps her father was not what her mother had imagined him to be. Even Leila now felt that she seemed to have never understood this father.
"...Is this how you speculate about your loved ones?" James' face was hurt. "When did you become like this?"
"When you made me a deserter and a laughing stock in High Court, when you knew that the trial by combat would be either me or Lilith, but you still took me away alone—"
"Don't mention that name again!"
James seemed to be unable to bear it any longer and roared. Leila's resistance these days made him exhausted both physically and mentally. His once well-behaved and sensible daughter now spoke with thorns in every word!
——It’s all that thing’s fault! She instigated and deceived my daughter to be separated from me!
"When you grow up a little, you will know that I am doing this for your own good."
"I've grown up a long time ago."
"If you really grow up, you won't risk everything for some ridiculous knight's oath. I see the situation in Highgarden more clearly than you do. There is no future for you to follow that princess. Your mother's teachings to you are just like that. You lack—"
"What's missing? The vision to seek benefits and avoid harm?" Leila's calm expression disappeared. How could she tolerate others judging her mother like this? Even if the other party was her father, she immediately stood up with thorns and her eyes became sharp.
"The Taylor family is a family of knights. We hone our swordsmanship and will because we know that danger can never be avoided and we have to face it." She sneered, "And the generations of mediocrity of the Flair family are not caused by me, nor is it my mother's fault."
"Mediocre?" Viscount Friar's cheek muscles twitched. "I, a mediocre person, have done my best for you and your mother to provide you with a good life—"
"Mother has always taken care of the house, and you just guarded your magic stone vein. Finding it is your greatest achievement in life, right?" Leila did not accept his moral blackmail. "You got it too easily, so you don't understand that nothing is easy to succeed. Everything has a price."
These words made Viscount James' face turn red, and his anger escalated again.
"Easy? No one's life is easy! Everything has a price... Heh, I understand this better than anyone else!"
"So you just want me to be an oath breaker?" Leila looked at him dimly, "Father... are you jealous of mother?"
"Wha, what?!"
"That's not surprising. She is much better than you. Don't you also regard marrying her as your life achievement?"
"enough!"
"And everyone says I'm more like her, so you—"
"I've said enough!" Viscount Freyr shouted angrily!
"I gave up my reputation and spent a lot of money and resources to bring you back, but you don't understand my painstaking efforts at all!" The man's lips trembled, as if he was really sad.
"This is the most respectable excuse I can give myself." Leila was actually sadder than him. How else could she think? Her father had already determined that Angel Russell would lose, but he left Lilith to face it alone. He wanted her to... Whenever Leila thought of this, she would stop forcibly and dare not continue.
"I am your father. Would I harm you? Even if you follow the Taylor family's surname, you are my first child—"
The air in the room suddenly froze.
"…What first child?"
Viscount Freyr realized that he had said something wrong, and the color on his face suddenly faded!
After a brief moment of shock, Leila suddenly rushed forward, the chains that clamped her rattling. She rushed to a position very close to Viscount Freyr, like an attacking lioness. Such momentum frightened Viscount Freyr, who retreated with a trembling face and distanced himself from his daughter.
"-What first child? What do you mean by that?!" Leila's eyes widened. The places where her hands and feet were connected to the chains had long been worn out, but she seemed unaware and kept asking.
"She looks like you. She inherited all your physical features. What makes you say that?!" Leila was furious, staring into the blue eyes that were exactly the same as Lilith's. "Speak!"
Viscount Freyr's eyes flashed with regret and fear. The peace and tranquility of the past few years had made him relax his guard. His daughter's aggressiveness also made him lose his mind, and he blurted out the most inappropriate thing...
"I have a clear conscience towards you, and the same goes for Lilith." Viscount Friar turned sideways to avoid Leila's burning gaze. "It's getting dark, you should go to bed!"
This should have been the gentle words a father would use to coax his child to sleep, but now neither of them could find the warmth they once had. Leila was dragged into a huge mystery, her mind full of questions, but no matter how she shouted, Viscount Friel still left without looking back.
When he came out, the two guards at the door were like wooden sculptures, not moving at all. Viscount Freyr had no intention of interrogating them about how much they had heard. He didn't want to talk to anyone now.
Without the mistress, Friar Manor always lacks some of its former flavor. The servants seem to have not yet adapted to the master's return. They are so careless that they did not turn on the lights in the corridor. It is dark. Only the moonlight shines through a row of windows, dividing the corridor into picture frames. Viscount Friar's shadow follows him through the picture frames on the wall one by one.
He walked in a daze and therefore did not notice that there was more than one shadow in the "frame" behind him.